Cretan farmers still press their olives. Swallow retsina, tend their flocks. Our scholars know —oracular computers tell them so— it’s just as the Minoans did. Do we know them then, the Minoans? Is their debris ours too? Rather consider to what degree warehouse palaces are dazzlements, and through the dark mullions of romance see for once that we see nothing, nothing.
Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press from Weathers Permitting: Poems by Stephen Sandy. Copyright © 2005 by Stephen Sandy.