The Gods and the Colonels

If one saw an actual snake
wreathing through an actual
skull’s eye.

Instead I arrange such a tableau
with a rubber viper and a badger’s skull
and have left it on the spare
room window-sill.

And somewhere cold
clear water flows under
pink oleanders of
Theocritus-

Whom I should, I think, now
Spell Theokritos, de novo,
judge of the gods, accent
on the i-

Without
cutting of the throat
of a white kid. But

The gods and the colonels
whom they serve, the whole
time insist
on blood.