Helios makes all things right:
night brands and chokes as if destruction
broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot
and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron,
the bracken-stems, where tender roots were
sown, blight, chaff and waste of darkness
to choke and drown.

A curious god to find, yet in
the end faithful; bitter, the Kyprian’s
feet ah flecks of whited clay, great
hero, vaunted lord ah petal, dust
and wind-fall on the ground queen awaiting
queen.

Better the weight, they tell, the
helmet’s beaten shell, Athene’s riven
steel, caught over the white skull, Athene
sets to heal the few who merit it.

Yet even then, what help, should
he not turn and note the height of forehead and
the mark of conquest, draw near and try the helmet;
to left reset the crown Athene
weighted down, or break with a light touch mayhap
the steel set to protect; to slay or heal.

A treacherous god, they say, yet
who would wait to test justice or worth or right,
when through a fetid night is wafted faint
and nearer then straight as point
of steel to one who courts swift death, scent
of Hesperidean orange-spray.