Bacchae

[poliphilo]

For a year or two in the early ‘‘80s
I wore a shiny badge with a fist
Enclosed in the ankh-like symbol for Venus.
Mad about women in every way

I wanted a role in their new republic.
They had the wisdom. They had the looks.
So I got in touch with my anima.
She’d several faces, all of them tough,

And smacked back my questions with zinging contempt
Like a Williams sister of repartee,
Till I learned she was only my discontent
With its buttons fastened the other way.

And the mystery of the feminine
Remained the torment it always was.
I think the sex-drive's fifty percent
Us scrabbling after that hidden stuff.

The Greeks invented Tiresias.
Who lived as a man. And then as a girl
And got his eyes seared with a thunderbolt
When he stupidly started to blab what he’d learned

I'd like to be him, but I'll settle for Kadmos
The old man clambering over the scree,
Calling out to those full-strength women
The Bacchae, wait for me, wait for me, please