Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

9
Hera paces outside the banquet hall.
Each night the men gods revel there:
Hephaestus, Apollo, blood-stained Ares,
Hades with his burning gaze, tide-worn Poseidon.
Each night they sing more merrily,
trade dangerous boasts about the Titan wars
as if Tartarus held no sleepers,
wax even stronger in their tales of love
for maids, and goddesses — and mortal boys.
Each night they leave, brawling with shields
and swords and tridents and staffs,
down to the waiting chariot hall,
until the room holds none but Zeus and Ganymede,
Ganymede and Zeus. For months, the goddesses
have been ignored and shunned.
Now Hera, the lawful mistress of marriages,
of love and hearth-fire parentage,
is banished to the kitchen of the gods,
the weaving room, the tending
of her temples. How long, she asks,
how long will this Olympian dalliance
preoccupy the lord of the gods?