In Pericles' city, cold marble nights,
Protagoras, Socrates, pacing beside me,
ideas like stars arcing, or steadily blazing, or falling.
Mornings of papyri, mounting in rolls.
Reports of the War.
Afternoons, the agora, democracy's
broil. Men tricked out in the old dried skins
of politics, masculine voices
braying the many tongues of money,
reports from the War.
Believers bellowing gods like crowds at the races
urging their runner on with ...