Then and Now
The gallery faces return: I name their names,
These powers invading dreams, who being dead
Are more alive, because of what they mean,
Than all the living, ignorant of need.
King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere
And a whole mythos for a Holy Grail;
Achilles’ wrath, thoughts of Troy—being there
As Helen causes human towers to fall.
These figures rise up now, condemn the now:
Our unheroic age of buttons pressed,
Humans depressed, and reasons which all show
Pride in packaging our powerlessness.
Deserving what we have: society’s
A eunuch posing with unbuttoned flies.
James Sale has had over 50 books published, most recently, “Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams” (Routledge, 2021). He has been nominated by The Hong Kong Review for the 2022 Pushcart Prize for poetry, has won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 annual competition, and performed in New York in 2019. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. His most recent poetry collection is DoorWay. For more information about the author, and about his Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog. To subscribe to his brief, free and monthly poetry newsletter, contact him at [email protected].
