her son antinous

her son antinous knew first what the other suitors
could only guess at: there would have been less
trouble if he had left off all this wooing: remained
in his mother's chambers. she was always happiest

when he laid there on the couch drinking wine from
a chalice. admiring the high-roofed countryside they
called home. the light of dawn fell across the portico
on the morning she told me all this. her only son and

what good was he to her now? the sun of attica itself
cannot help she said - pointing out and then with her
hand seeming to erase the valley - political men to see
beyond the bloody field of their own vanities. in the end,

for all his pride, ambition earned antinous an arrow in his
neck. and for her, exile to these bright and widowed halls.