THAUMA IDESTHAI              (WONDER TO BEHOLD)

daedalus fled athens
his birthplace
being prosecuted
for the murder of talos
his nephew
whom he had killed
in jealous rage
over his alleged invention
of the compass

KOSMON                            (ARRANGING, ORDERING, ADORNING)

he fled to crete
to knossos
to king minos
to queen pasiphae
to court and residence
far away from athens
in another land

TIKTEIN                               (TO GIVE BIRTH)

where he built
the celebrated
mechanical cow
in which the queen
hid herself
in order to seduce the bull
her perverse passion
and from that
unnatural union
was born
the minotaur
a man
with the head and neck
of a bull

TEKTEIN                               (TO BUILD)

king minos
then had daedalus
build
the labyrinth
in which to conceal
the monstrous evidence
of his wife’s
infidelity

TECHNE                                 (A LETTING APPEAR)


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Disjunctive Greek Poem with Parenthesis – Lanny Ray Quarles