Antiphon
from issue Number 3, July 2010
by John Griffin

I saw the night birds carrying off the sun, who am I?
I watched the caryatids abandon the Erechtheum
and fill the Acropolis with tears, who am I?
You are the son of the man that quarried the stones,
the mason's kin, and you have within you the blood
of the hand that planed and unsplintered the wood.

You were born the same day the white stallions
rode in on froth, their manes checked by the battle cries
coming from the shore, you grew in the long shadows
of the kings, you prayed the silent prayers of the swans,
you knew the secrets of the trees, conversed in undertows
and swam down the streams of the children's dreams.

Who might you be now in this tranquil interregnum
before the gates of war? What is your threshold
when all piety fails? Can you lift a blade to cut
the throat of a tide, take up arms against desert winds?
Who could you be when the mongrels roam and snarl
through zones of terror? You are your fears own curfew.

You are the blue tip of the icicle, the tear in the well
of the cave, the bat in the dome of motley,
you are the mind of the pendulum arcing love's abyss,
the ontological calculus of chaos, the serpent
and the serpent's kiss, time's slave and the nomad
quaffing insouciance from the wings of migration.

You watched one day unfold and yet you did nothing, who are you?
you drove into the wilderness to verify your screams, who are you?
you exhumed lost cities, unwrapped the mummies of yourself,
authored your own apocalypse, and then forecast the sirens
that would wake the worms of the dead, you peddled peace
from an ocean of blood, who the hell are you?

Your patronymic falls with the falling of the leaves,
a mitigated mulch, a patched-up patented pulp massed
into the landfill of your name, compacted and recycled there —
you are the we navigating me on the high seas of all,
our matronymic too, hatched in the nest whose broken shells
and shards of songs and selves are cascading back to earth.

Back to the Table of Contents for Number 3

About the Author
John Griffin is a poet living in Ireland. He received his B.A. in Literature & Philosophy from St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO, and his MA and PhD from Washington University, St. Louis. He occasionally posts new writing and commentary at Odradek, where the poem above originally appeared.