an answer to Yeats

Imagine her, beside Sparta’s river, 
young gift-bride, on a king bestowed,
rich resource, mother lode.

Were there swans on the water,  
caught up in mating, 
wings beating, legs churning 
the silver flow? 

Did rushing wind caress her nape,
feather deliciously through her white linen?
Did her feet, in their sandals’ dark webs,
feel the river’s lapping?
Did watching vague currents 
and gleaming birds
calm her terrified, homesick heart?

No brute assault for artists to show, 
no Olympian knowledge of ruin ahead —
Iphigenia lost, Clytemnestra dead. 

Despoiled in art time after time:
Myth seized her, then dropped her, 
an indifferent divine.

[Laura Hannett’s poetry has appeared in Willows Wept Review, Amethyst Review, Macrame Literary Journal, Belladonna’s Garden and Abandoned Mine, among others. She has also appeared in several anthologies, including “The Color Wheel: Poems,” from Terrapin Books, and “Into the Deep, Dark Woods” (WordFire Press).]