Euripides

They chunked fruit from fists with down-turned thumbs.
Your prologues were new to them.
Your poetry was crude to them.
You made mere slaves string beauty
Between common words
Their nobles mangled,
Tangled in lines of twisted prose.

A chauvinist comedian
Smeared you as a misogynist
Because you dared understand his hated wives
And saw that even Trojan women cried
As their sons died under the hands
Of his nation’s heroes.

The country could not conceive the gods in your machine
Pasted together happy scenes not to comfort the crowds,
But to ridicule them.
Their children were the ones to see
As tragedy left the stage for their streets.
Their descendents would ensure
More of your art would endure
The centuries that devoured your so-called masters.

The disasters of your genius faded with your world,
Euripides,
Patron saint of rebels
The Muses deign to bedevil.

3/12/04