After Sophocles
Beloved Oedipus,
there will always be a Tiresias
sitting tight-lipped in the corner
of chamber, pub or courtroom,
not saying what he is thinking,
his eyeballs an opaque mirror
on plague, famine, massacre,
a city of wailing and ashes.
Beloved Oedipus,
you can interrogate him,
beat him, even arrest him
for silence under oath,
deviancy, transgenderism
or for your father’s murder
(as you have many others)
but still you see what he sees
within and cannot unsee it
despite dossiers, ministers,
secret police and newspapers.
Beloved Oedipus,
you can kill him as your father
or fuck him as your mother
or both. It hardly matters
for there’ll always be others
somewhere in the crowd
blindly knowing what you
have done in the past
and will continue to do.
Or maybe one day,
beloved Oedipus,
you’ll even take his place,
donning sackcloth and ashes,
haunting foreign cities,
eye sockets bleeding truth,
leaving a trail like history.
..
Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, lecturer and critic. His books include the novel Melissa (Salt, 2015), the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007), and the poetry collection Musicolepsy (Shoestring, 2013). He is director of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk.
Reblogged this on reubenwoolley.
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Exquisite!
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