….
Golden Age
Saturn
This is the limit of humanity:
rings of ice and dust surround us
the boundaries of wealth and wheat.
We make haruspex offerings for divination upon
the civilized, ideas passed down from the ancient:
Baal, Satre, Dagon.
This is the melancholic humor:
a veiled sadness, our father of truth
returns now to mark this economic significance—
this mudpuddling for nutrients.
We try to prove our worth,
we are not merely common broad wings
iridescing in the dense woods.
This is the day of freedom some say:
we chose our own merry king to preside
over us in jest, to light these candles of knowledge
that melt the gag wax
I gave them.
This is the great malefic:
a pallid, jaundice age
marking conformity.
This is the time of the sickle.
….
This poem is from the chapbook A Heavenly Symposium by Claire-Elise Baalke (Finishing Line Press) and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-heavenly-symposium-by-claire-elise-baalke/
The common definition of symposium is a collection of papers on a particular subject. Another, more antiquated meaning of the word is a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece. This chapbook is written as a kind of conversation in the same sense as the definitions of “symposium” between the author and myth, psychology, astrology, history, and science of the planets. All of these ideas come together to display the sense of apotelesma or connection between human nature and the influence of the stars on human destiny and how one might pull together such fragmented ideas of one very specific (or not) thing, the heavenly bodies.
Claire-Elise Baalke received a MA in English at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and recently began her PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico. She has poetry publications in The Bangalore Review, Cirque Journal, and the Flying Ketchup Press’ collection titled, “Night Forest.”
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