Nisos decreed no human was allowed
to touch the body. Flies convened a shroud,
and while they gave the king a vile ablution
a sea breeze forwarded sublimed pollution
from Cretan innards to Sophia’s nose.
He couldn’t let that tyrant decompose
where Zeus might turn his gaze. Her master snored
while Sophia fetched supplies: a gourd,
some oil, incense, and a silver coin.
Drool bubbled from his master’s head’s ripe groin,
but walking out did not awaken him.
Sophia sought the land’s erratic brim
and with a rag across his nose beseeched
the guards around the corpse: The stink has reached
Olympos, and we need to burn him now
or bury him, at least. Zeus won’t allow
this outrage to continue. I’m surprised
he hasn’t rattled lightning and excised
Megara from the Isthmus. What about
your wives and sons? His rage will wipe them out.
If not his rage, his dignity. For who
would fear him if he didn’t follow through
and his son rotting there in open view!
Tomorrow’s sky will swap indifferent blue
for brightening darkness and consume us all;
nothing but soot will serve us for a pall.
I know it’s hard to disobey your king,
but I alone will pay the reckoning.
The guards laughed at their lonely, would-be savior,
whose wise proposal prompted misbehavior.
Moros replied: You’ll take the blame, that’s right?
Same way you gulp his dusty fuck each night?
His colleagues’ laughter tripled when he thrust
his spear in the sand and chased Sophia, lust
emerging from derision as they sped
up Nisaia, but the fool misread
his prey, who soon left Moros far below.
Safe at the summit, Megara’s overthrow
reoccupied his mind: he prayed to Zeus
and the poppy goddess to ignore the obtuse
king’s blasphemies or spare the citizens
if Nisos had to die. There were no hens—
let alone cattle—on the hillock, so
Sophia made his blood and semen flow
and mixed them on a stone no chisel squared.
Sunrise hailed the reveling gulls and bared
the whiteness once concealed in orange meat.
There were no thunderheads to tuck the sheet
lightning when it played a final chord
upon Apollo’s tower and restored
Megara’s high bricks to the level earth,
whose rising dust offset the sky’s cloud dearth.
The ruin reached King Minos and his guards
covering them with unconsecrated shards.
Only Sophia survived, and Demeter made
his tenor treble and her breasts cascade.
She built a shrine there for Demeter, served
as congregant and priestess, and preserved
her new virginity. The sea would bring
a man with whom she’d start resettling
Megara and erect the charred walls
now muddied daily by Saronic squalls.