This candle must have come
from petroleum, stolen
black stash of Hades, not
wax of Kore’s bees.
A philosopher wrote
that a proper tragedy
must begin with an offense,
an unpunished crime
which informs the nostrils
of Furies.
Sooted wick, smoke
untrimmed and teach
the alarm.
A little blur of heat and light
hovers above the yellow glow.
This candle was once plant-flesh
soaked in archaic sun-gold,
fallen in the layers of millennia,
squeezed by earth’s press
to fill the cisterns of the underworld.
Some choice bits of death
Hades gives back each year
to nourish new life
in her spring,
but what he keeps he claims.
He knows, when these thieves
with steel drills suck
from his store the black wine
aged in death’s cellar, and all
smell its burning.
The chorus is split idiotically,
half in denial of any offense, the others
praying to the wrong god.
And how do proper tragedies end?
Can we still read the script?
Are there any more candles?