Solitude

  by Stephen Sandy

Cretan farmers still press their olives. Swallow
retsina, tend their flocks. Our scholars know
—oracular computers tell them so—

it’s just as the Minoans did. Do we
know them then, the Minoans? Is their debris
ours too? Rather consider to what degree

warehouse palaces are dazzlements,
and through the dark mullions of romance
see for once that we see nothing, nothing.


from: Weathers Permitting: Poems. Copyright 2005.