Thebes
Created | Updated Sep 18, 2004
Fighting towards Thebes
He brings peace, out-thinks the Sphinx,
Oedipus the King.
As a groom his fate
Is a room in the city.
Pity his weird doom.
Jocasta the Queen
Did not mean to wed her son;
It was unforeseen.
Sickness then returned;
Less than ever gods pitied
A city's distress.
Blind Tiresias,
With hindsight and hidden light,
Tells them what to find.
Cursed to destroy them,
A boy driven from parents
Unfairly a toy.
Tricked by oracles;
Picked over by purity;
Surely this is sick.
Fear overwhelming,
His dear one hanged, he will sigh,
Eyeless like the seer.
Blind, what can he find
While his daughters support him?
The Furies unwind.
His sons join his fate
Their hate is shared in warfare
At the seventh gate.
Implacable, she
Defies the law of Creon
Wild Antigone.
Grim, the victim's corpse,
No dust to hide the rebel,
No pebble on him.
His son protested,
And though the people sang out
Creon still said no.
She went; the king bent
To a voice, the seer, his choice
too late to relent.
Then the tragic strife
Killed his wife, his son. He looked
As it took each life.
We can have no trust.
Divinely unjust they shock;
False gods mocking dust.
He brings peace, out-thinks the Sphinx,
Oedipus the King.
As a groom his fate
Is a room in the city.
Pity his weird doom.
Jocasta the Queen
Did not mean to wed her son;
It was unforeseen.
Sickness then returned;
Less than ever gods pitied
A city's distress.
Blind Tiresias,
With hindsight and hidden light,
Tells them what to find.
Cursed to destroy them,
A boy driven from parents
Unfairly a toy.
Tricked by oracles;
Picked over by purity;
Surely this is sick.
Fear overwhelming,
His dear one hanged, he will sigh,
Eyeless like the seer.
Blind, what can he find
While his daughters support him?
The Furies unwind.
His sons join his fate
Their hate is shared in warfare
At the seventh gate.
Implacable, she
Defies the law of Creon
Wild Antigone.
Grim, the victim's corpse,
No dust to hide the rebel,
No pebble on him.
His son protested,
And though the people sang out
Creon still said no.
She went; the king bent
To a voice, the seer, his choice
too late to relent.
Then the tragic strife
Killed his wife, his son. He looked
As it took each life.
We can have no trust.
Divinely unjust they shock;
False gods mocking dust.
