M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Griffel, The Westchester Review, Feral, and Gyroscope Review. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.
There are times when I wish desperately
to hear your voice again for the first time
so that I could come to it
innocent, move through your words
as stars guided the ships to Delphi
delivering their cargo (questions),
and stand before the oracle’s cave,
see the goat, cold-water-splashed, shivering,
and know that I may enter the mystery
and feel my being answered.
A Spider Is the Sun
A spider is the Aegean sun,
splaying dark filaments spun
across the ground, lying await
for alertness to dissipate.
Enmeshed in shadow-web,
the silent stalker nears my bed
of grass, strikes deadly slow:
I feel the heated poison flow…
lulled to sleep, and sublime,
untethered from being and time.
Consciousness and care will come all too soon;
for now, the mind grows fat in afternoon.
Medusae
Ask a Greek and he will tell—
strong women belong on shields,
to make the fears of enemies swell;
or an amphora that one day yields
inspiration to a muse.
On an urn, yes, but not the fora,
where young minds we might abuse.
Goddess or oracle, in our aura
quail, so removed are we;
but as a peer? Too soft, too frail
we’re all supposed to be.
Far too weak to prevail
against the heavy press
of feathers in the night,
or cause spear to stress
and sag by whispered slight.
Such strong women could only exist
as part of some monstrous regiment,
punished for their will to resist,
banished to shadow, a shameful sediment.
The vipers writhing from my crown
are thoughts unafraid to bite;
my serpentine skin that makes you frown,
scaled because you have no right
to touch it at your leisure.
I, unbowed, am proud and bold,
and for this I induce seizure,
turning blood from hot to cold?
And so by men the tales are spun
of my piercing sight; how my dire gaze
can be averted, my mystique undone—
forced to face my wrongful ways.
You show a mirror to my face,
and now I’m fleshed in stone.
But you, long blind to my grace,
remain to your follies prone.
Previously appeared in Ponder Review
10
What is ten? A beneficent binary?
To the Greeks, ten was a mystery,
perfect Pythagorean symmetry
beginning with the all, the One,
and full circle ending
with the end of all, None.
On the right the soul bending
in its eternal arc of rebirth, two crescent
halves wed; to the left, the present,
the “I”, so briefly felt, yet luminescent.
Previously appeared on the poetry blog Poets for Science
Xerxes in Greece
Vain his attempt to seize the day,
Wrest glory from death, and Hellas slay,
Xerxes sought an easy fight;
Yielded, and in disarray took flight,
Zigzagging home in Persia to stay.
Poetry in this post: © M. Benjamin Thorne
Published with the permission of M. Benjamin Thorne