Shall I Read from the History of the Battle of Thermopylae?

Now that there is nothing left, for instance,
the taste of fear dries the upper lip. 
            Wood-doves rustle coppery wings along city 
gates. What I want is to not want, 
            not you, not the scent of mango, not the livid 
faces of fashion models, their necks 
            arching perversely upward. 
                        Not a single moment. 

            The cigarette smoke’s shapes auger thirty 
mornings of fraught 
                        silences, cold tea, that flickering anger 
            of morning 
talk shows and an empty table set for three: for you, 
                        for me, for the polite ghost of intensest 
            manners. 
            A quince no one will eat rolls 
behind a stove cold
                                                 to the touch. 
When things go bad, it gets like this. 

                        Where’s the gift of sudden continuity? 
            Dare say no
                        into an open well or we’ll all drown of 
            such falling. 

The field of middle distance is dry. 
                                                            Sepia-colored 
                                                 cornstalks strewn
                        all around, pointing a given direction. 

                        Sing out the measure

of a narrow pass. I’ve been lost here 

before. With thumb and forefinger, blot out 
                        the sun, 
Pilgrim. So as not
to turn my back, trembling, shine towards
            the unspeakably insistent. 
            With the lights
out, it’s not so far. In the movies, it’s called
day for night and I will open 
my eyes to a shadow cut in the shape of your mouth. 
            In the pattern of ten stars and three thousand 
times three thousand 
                        pearly eyes of gutted mackerel, 
the map home is a logic of longitude and shame. 

What if you were a Persian king, ashes covering 
your forehead, your eyelashes, your scarred 
                        right cheek, how would you arrive 
            across a trail of broken 
            leaves, mercury poisonings, the ocean’s 
systemic threat and verdict? Would you 
            take the shore 
born aloft on a dozen strong backs? 

And when articles of faith fashion 
                                                 a loosened garment
            the disheveled will not return. 
In the days before now, before this one stretched 
so wide round us, 
I wanted a direct address, 
                        in something else I wanted to say and 
            yet
            I do not know how to ask for fresh water, 
for a ripened date, for three 
                        pomegranate seeds. 

                        On the last night of the sordid republic, 
a soldier’s wife 
            waves goodbye as
the right nipple thickens in the 
                        cold, pressing
itself against her blue t-shirt. 
A bright proximity is a wrong kind of silence. 

            In this garden of unregenerate narrative, 
see words but think: 
            arrows darkening the sky

for the unseen
                        read: loss;
            for every comma reckon the ways 
hope can pierce the sternum
                        in half. A rose leans near
            the open window and thrushes play 
                        at voices. 
The world thus put under
                        by verb and noun. 

A husband runs headlong towards the river while 
over his shoulder the cottage window 
brackets the wife’s face in an attic room. Drapes
            stir, then she’s gone as each promise 
            he does not keep 
            drifts down
                        past the walls, 
                                                 along the paths
            to the sea, there where 
children and old widows 
            heap up driftwood and dried seaweed
            and this is, so please it, where I am loved. 
            There are such Spartas.