his patience: he decided to declare
victory and leave for Crete. His men took care
to thank the jealous gods, who’d let their king
crush Athens, with a proper offering.
Watching the hated Cretans row away
shouldn’t have caused Megarans much dismay,
but Minos mulled his loss with their laments:
he stuffed his captives’ ears with frankincense,
raised a pyre of mulch, abandoned tents,
and driftwood, where the bound Megarans burned,
sizzling prayers a low-tide Poseidon spurned
while the retreaters rowed against the wind
that couldn’t snuff the pyre or rescind
the reek it brought to wives and mothers fringing
the walls they wished had fallen on their cringing
ruler to spare them such cruel cowardice.
The pyre yielded to the combers’ hiss,
and thunder strummed a starless night when Crete
spread out before King Minos and his fleet.
The Idaean cave was clucking honeycomb
off of stalactites while the Aegean foam
absorbed the red spokes muddling the bees
whose labor camouflaged the asperities
all born on Earth will suffer, even Zeus
(hence, the imperative: don’t reproduce).
Minos commanded Crete to celebrate
when he arrived, but forced pomp can’t negate
the kind of scandal that confronted him:
his memory of Megara’s walls might dim,
his people might forgive his meager plunder,
but Knossos knew the queen had made a blunder
too suicidal to be soon forgotten.