The Menelaeon

The Menelaeon, ruined and serene,

Like luck and beauty, impervious to harm,

Looks on its own decay without alarm,

No valley in all Lakon such constant green.

From recent fires, surrounding groves are ashen,

Are like the Trojan women, mad with thirst,

Who begged for water while the one accursed

Allowed the guards to fill her pool to splash in.

Plataean victors left offerings on this hill,

To Menelaus and to Helen.  Perhaps

We should not let the old tradition lapse.

The place is rightly named.  They lie there still.

At least, the atoms which were theirs remain.

Why else would unjust gods let fall this rain?

Anthony Lombardy

From Severe, Bennett & Kitchel, publishers, © 1995.
Reprinted by permission of the author.