Debating along the western shore,
Sunset colors sweetly filling the sky,
Ionian waves softly doing their chore;
Whispering news from the bridged Gallipoli,
Its beauty due not only to its name,
But also its taste, its touch, its prize;
From its aging wine, and oily fame,
Praising its Island beauty and limestone thighs.
The idyllic waves of the Mediterranean Sea ;
Calmly they report the stunning view,
Its eponymous founder once felt on knee,
As he rode dolphins near the Appian Way ,
Neither also must one cast a worried glance,
For the Theraphosidae keep away;
The Tarantella thus a superfluous dance
Pleasure dribbles across the lip,
And the opulent musings of the mind,
Keep the body closely to the sensuous script;
The song the sea that with wind combined,
Follows the hips in their regulated,
March upon the beach of mystery,
Its fields behind, its waters ahead,
Nearly all is washed away through history.
Politicians, bureaucrats, and those lacking zeal,
Gathered as one, and sought with success,
The scorn of the nations –oligarchic ideal–
Drowning the beauty of happy excess;
The passion of rage and resentment,
Raising Telys, their demagogue devil,
Who would free them of contentment,
Unto their lowest and darkest level.
The sea, mapped closely, does run,
As do fugitives from pleasured simpletons,
Along the grave of Dyrrhachus’ son,
The way to the Panhellenic Olympians,
Safety was sought in power, in discipline;
Away from the tug of luxury, of vanity;
In exile then, contented Crotona within,
From the voracious Telys, from insanity.
Reaching strong gates, housing men of the same,
Seeking surrender and completion of the death,
The luxurious citizenry, sought to regain,
Those gasping through the blood for breath,
Into their hands, bloodied by the greed of security,
Calling down curses upon their sober opposition,
Preparing to draw the sword even against purity,
The seekers of indulgence pined for deposition.
Unable to stand by and unwilling to yield,
Those strong Crotoniats, upholding the right,
Boldly they, to the partisans of doom, themselves revealed,
Heavily outnumbered but in strength not slighted,
The defenders of plainness battled the aggressors of lavishness,
While the reckoning of pleasure saw insufficiency;
The science and strength of the simple saw success,
Over those with a distaste for pleasure’s deficiency.
Down at the river Traeis did the armies meet,
To decide the graceless end of this sudden war,
Which leaned most powerfully to the defeat,
Of the seekers of pleasure with their luxurious rapport;
Reaching their own gates, gasping for breath,
Even the devoted could not deny the demonization,
Of their own personal Angel, whose name is Death,
And who sought with success their complete annihilation.
So ended the army of the city, pleasurably inclined,
But the simple in life, could not be simple in mind,
Destruction of this pleasurable place, determined,
As they were, that no human within should any ever find;
Turning the course of the river Crathis with spades,
The victors drown the ruins of the city of brutalities,
As they turned the battle with their blades,
And buried the aggressors in their own fatalities.
This divine punishment, the luxurious ignores;
Drowning the pleasured in their complete inability for restoration,
Allowing the survivors refuge on the Tyrrhenian shore;
A temporary base for the unsuccessful reparation,
Of their prosperous city of fantastic lore:
Complete was the punishment and swift the retribution,
Keeping dark the streets of pleasure forevermore,
Under the watchful and sharp eyes of the solution.
The questions of time weary the mind,
While the sun slowly ceases it dozing,
And bumbles to that to which it is consigned:
Dipping itself into the hills, dark enclosing,
Its rays slowly receding from the troubled tide,
Slowly moving over the finality of appropriation,
Appropriation of pleasure debates with one’s pride,
Misunderstanding simplicity and reservation.
This mysterious shore, near the sunken city,
Its somber message to the listener whispers,
Queries of the value of luxurious prosperity,
As does the wind in the ear and through the firs;
Those who hope to see its profound combat,
Must move beyond greatness enjoyed,
For this city of pleasure, was that, and for that:
Destroyed.
