Old Hades turns the ledger’s leaf, Where five-and-twenty winters keep The ash-pale ghosts of falling towers, Awakened from their troubled sleep; Hermes unseals the secret scrolls, The shadowed scripts of auguries past, Revealing how the serpent coiled Before the fatal die was cast. Upon the Red Sea’s narrowed throat, Ares strides through the coral reef; An isle is seized, the iron veins Of black earth choke in sudden grief. Poseidon heaves a darkened tide Where stranded vessels drift and wait, While through the desert’s severed pipes, The dry sands whisper hymns of hate. Far westward, past the salt and storm, Hephaestus stirs his buried forge; The anvils of the state ring out To bid the stubborn cauldrons gorge, Compelling flame to yield its crude, To fuel the chariots of brass, While anxious merchants watch the scales And wonder what will come to pass. At the high fortress five times walled, A voice invokes the ancient pyre, And binds the ghost of twin stone halls To Persia’s new and rising fire. The Fates spin out an endless cord, Entangling present, past, and war— While Nemesis stands in the mist, Unmoved beside the temple door.
