SENT TO BE TORTURED BY THE PEASANTS
The Greek Olympians sent one of their own
To live among the peasants in a pastoral setting
Punishment for past transgressions with mortals alone.
O she thought there must be some mistake.
When she saw the rolling hills and fields covered with flowers
The grazing sheep at peace among the olive groves and vineyards
Bursting with life and energy in a symphony of love and music
A pastoral beauty the envy of every mortal and semi-deity, awake.
But soon she began to beg for mercy, begged for a release
From the incredible creatures who lived there, worse than beast,
Worse than the invasive weeds they violently try to kill,
Hungry ghosts or demons she thought from Hell.
And she begged to return to Olympus before they destroyed her,
Or killed her in their savage raging senselessness and ignorant weight,
In their spiteful vengeance and moral depravity and falsity,
Descending into brutality, transgressing all civil decency and restraint.
With scheming nastiness too heavy to even try to understand,
Surrounded by niggardliness and suspicion in an incomparable generous land
Incomprehensible ferocious jealously unheard of anywhere she had ever been,
Biting sarcasm beyond anything she has ever seen.
They even ridiculed her beauty and divinity.
She begged for deliverance from their filth and spite and ignorance,
From their gluttony and violence, which made the pastoral landscape
Become something quite disgusting, transforming her view of it into a rape
An intolerable nightmare of perverse selfishness seen through their sin.
Then she knew why she had been sent to this ruined Paradise,
The visual vestiges of Eden, turned into a veritable human hell
So, in the infernal heat of a passing summer, which seemed an eternal spell,
She began to see the consequences of sin, and repented for hers.
The Olympians’ divine purpose had been well served and she confers.
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