Posts tagged susan hampton

At the deadlock, Athena turned up, Athena!
her garment having been kissed by many men or what,
we don’t know, and she in her deciding vote acquitted
him. For us to lose, in effect, a case of matricide
meant the balance of power was shifting.

I pour another vodka. What I didn’t say to Jade was,
it meant we’d be lying low for some time,
centuries perhaps. I remember the fires of earlier camps.
In the distance, border furies, heat furies, storm furies.
The sound of the Barking Owl.

And this owl, a real owl, sounds like a woman being murdered –
Athena, your bird is telling you something!
But Athena, last we heard, was with her cousin Kate Kyriakou
on their way back to Greece for the Olympics.
At the last minute they got a Virgin flight.

It’s an irony of fate, I said, that it was a foremost goddess
who helped tilt that power.
Or not, Jade said, maybe it was simply a pivot-point in storytelling
where men must be shown to be in control, and the best
way to do that is to get a woman to do the job.

Yes, I said. Let’s present it to Athena this way: she’s being chosen
to give an award in a public ceremony and get her picture
in the morning paper, her big chance, as a goddess,
to be kind and compassionate.
To downplay the warlike.

Mesmerise her with theology – Jade said,
and perhaps flirt with her at the same time.
For whatever reason, I said, Athena – without consenting
to matricide – did not give it a high level of punishment.
Certainly she didn’t exact a death.

In that sense you have to admit she is a civilising factor, I said.
Flick your dreads as you may, Jade said.
We hounded the son, though, I said. One time we said
we’d leave him alone for a while if he promised to do
penance at the Temple of Artemis.

—Susan Hampton