And then they changed course,
building the shrines and theaters
of the wine god far away from
the cities, deep in the swamps
of maenad frenzy. They relieved
the women of their tragic duty,
the red scream of birth and
tearing off of heads, replacing
them with mean bearing phalloi
singing lewd and raucous of
the time just after maiden grief,
that winter month of fermentation
when the first flush hits
the brain with wallops of profane joy.
Stroll out the ass-men with
their stoutly-sodden staffs
waving at the heavens
with the lowest majesty
sex affords, the sacred reduction
of the civilized man into
all his laughable laments
as he blunders in his stinking
swamp. He’s led by the nose
of his pickled pompous hose,
taking every curse and abuse
like a pilgrim in reverse,
going down where wings should fly.
Behold the son of gods
in his cups, a donkey
braying to our bucolic jeers
the grand humility of which
we are so comically in arrears.
Well, it’s just a tenth part of the god
who will eventually roar forth
from kraters up from the vale of
song and tears -- perhaps all we
humanly can hold before
the wine casts us into such
tragic figurines. Three
feet separate tragic ends
from their comic origins,
those three inches
of the divine we have to wave
in sophomoric, dirty jest
before the women get it all back
anyway and tear it up for love
and the gods come in to
batten on the feast.
