Jack Harvey writes

Quo Fata Ferunt

Kill tragedy,

the significance of events

in scenic magnificence

leads to nothing.

The world of mythology,

of  human history,

blows up our scant landscape

to a transient iridescent bubble;

stories and fables,

famous and fabulous

as all get-out

shifting and disconcerting,

forever haunt our minds.

Samson bulges straining,

short-haired in Gaza;

Theseus escapes the labyrinth,

guided by a skein gifted

by the love of a girl;

the glass shoe fits Cinderella. 

The orchestra sounds

a final note, signaling

a change of scene and

Venus, Bacchus and

their followers troop in

in scanty costume,

casting doubt on the wisdom

of the golden mean

on the purpose of modesty.

Waiting in the wings,

Cassandra and her crew

crow out the dictates of fate;

from the gods they know them all,

so they say.

Lively, extraordinary,

with remarkable gestures,

under the cracking pillars

Samson, unfazed, keeps at it.

In another clime,

a heroic battle;

Beowulf kills a mother

of a monster.

Continuous counterparts,

the bunch of them and

others like them,

meet their doom or

find some salvation,

some way out,

in the last loud accident,

the last catastrophe avoided

or met head-on.

The lesson is clear;

at the end of our passage here,

triumphant in the palace

or among the ruins

failing and falling,

all will be well,

as Oedipus said,

or better yet,

all will come to

the same blessed close,

the same unfettered outcome

to be told and retold

until we know that fate

has no hand, no say

in the claptrap way

we save ourselves

from the trouble

of uncertainty,

from knowing that

in the end

in this land of dreams

our tragedies, our triumphs

lead to nothing.    

Final Vengeance (The Death of Samson) -- Kevin Rolly