TELEMACHUS BY ODYSSEUS' GRAVE Poem by Sigitas Parulskis

You paraded about your victories so much that
you forgot that in this world you don't have to learn
to win, but to lose

And now you lie under this rock, here,
that those treacherous asslickers erected for you, rolled
on top of you by your hurt lovers and quite simply stabbed into your heart
by all indifferent time

Sometimes I hated you, sometimes I yearned for you deeply
to your mother you were an unrequited love
to me - unhealed teenage dreams

While you fought with the Polyphemuses birthed by
your drunken consciousness and laid with immodest sensuality
in sorcerer-conjured holes and with Charybdises
a fortress of colossal emptiness grew in your soul

You never believed that
in the world there is something stronger than storming
city walls - a body that needs be taken at any cost

Now, by your grave, I can tell you - it is without reason
you left me alive by the walls of this world

I am saying this as your son, a Trojan horse
of your own creation - without any perfidy, I will rightfully
penetrate your memorial city, enter your
glorious life's museum and with pig's feet
will trample your victories and open the gates to squalor
degradation and fiery scorn
will destroy it to the foundations of existence