I wake up in the dark.
In dark I went to sleep.
There is a kind of stark
Accounting of lost sheep.

The day breaks with a dawn
So much like yesterday’s.
I turn the kettle on
And brew a dark malaise.

Things go from bad to worse,
Let’s call it entropy.
The blessing is a curse,
And treachery goes free

Or something. Never mind,
Here in the cradle of
Democracy I find
There’s history enough —

There on the shining rock
The entasis of state,
The subtle curves that lock
The crooked to the straight.

The centuries were slow
Where stood its solid scenes,
It took one night to blow
The roof to smithereens.

It boasts of Marathon,
It boasts of Salamis
Five generations on,
Of hemlock’s bitterness,

Between, the city nations
Of Greeks warred tribe with tribe
Why trouble with invasions?
It’s easier to bribe.

We still read Athens’ versions,
As though the Spartans lost,
As though the prudent Persians
Did not know what they cost.

Pericles died of plague,
And Phidias in prison.
Division’s sown, and vague
Suspicions have arisen.

It took nine years to build
Those columns in the air,
But half its marbles spilled,
Over fifty to repair.

It’s like a foundered ship,
That ruin on the hill.
It makes my heartbeat skip.
I’m afraid it always will.

*****

A.E. Stallings writes: “I [wrote this] poem the day after the elections. It was written on the fly, and has not been revised.”

‘An American Wakes Up in Athens, Greece After the 2024 Elections’ was originally published in Liberties Journal.

A.E. Stallings is the current Oxford Professor of Poetry. This Afterlife: Selected Poems was published in 2022. Her forthcoming book is Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon

Photo: “Parthenon” by R~P~M is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.