THE DAINTY MONSTERS
Michael
Ondaatje
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The Inheritors
...............for Quintin on her birthday, July 7, 1964
The light is tapped from stars
and a raw dawn
suggests a wakening for virile Greeks
who oil their spears in patience
or clip their manes for style.
The right sky for the wrong age therefore.
Water towers and beacons
have heaved out of the ground long since.
And a girl crawls through thighs
with a bland look.
Only this connects the two worlds,
a loin clothed body present at a dawn.
The rest is compromise.
A Joycean or Homeric hero to clatter up the steps with the pay?
A Molly with nimble words
or Penelope with none at all?
She must burn in an age of afternoon men
and find beauty now in smoke
for bombs are shaped like cedars.
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