Laocoon: Another Poem About a Father's Tragic Life
- joybragi84
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Since I am removing all footnotes from Atheists and Empty Spaces, let me help readers here by giving a very brief version of the story of Laocoon (pronounced "lay-oh-koh-ahn") as found in Virgil's Aeneid. I'll get some research help here.
From Greek Mythology Notes: A Trojan priest of Apollo, Laocoon warned the Trojans not to accept the wooden horse, hurling his spear at it and declaring that he feared Greeks bearing gifts. Athena, who favored the Greek stratagem devised by Odysseus, sent two sea-serpents that crushed Laocoon and his sons on the altar. The Trojans, interpreting this as divine punishment for sacrilege, dragged the horse inside the walls. That night Odysseus, Diomedes, and the hidden Greeks emerged, and Troy fell. Laocoon's fate embodies the cruelty of a war Zeus himself ordained.
That is a brief version of the story. If you want to read the whole tragic story, check on Virgil's Aeneid or some altered and revised version of it. Here is my poem that adds a lot of details to a very tragic story.
As always, ENJOY!
Laocoön
I.
Riding the dark waves’ foamy crest,
Two serpents slither breast to breast,
Their fiery eyes and blazing breaths,
Concealed before the blood-red sun.
Across the twilight sands, they twist
Diffusing poisons in the mist
To keep their god-appointed tryst.
Troy’s soldiers drop their spears and run.
II.
A troubled father kneels in prayer,
His rites performed with priestly care.
His blood libations fill the air
With tangs that hide the poison’s scent.
On temple steps, two boys at play
Are in the god-sent serpents’ way
And their sad fate on this dark day
Is being where gods’ wrath is spent.
III.
The father knows Achaean spies
Lie waiting in that hippic prize,
Which Priam will not realize,
And, thus, he seals his kingdom’s doom?
What fools are Trojans to believe
That enemies dare not deceive
The fickle gods through gifts they leave
When those same gods would Troy consume.
IV.
Then, muffled cries reach baffled ears,
Sparking a father’s deepest fears,
And from one sacrifice he tears
To find his sons martyred for Greece.
Cursing both faithless gods and men,
He rends his robe and charges in
To fight for lives he cannot win
Against two fiends who bid no peace.
V.
Still, he must try to break the grasp
And let his murdered children gasp
One breath of life before Death’s clasp
Provides an infinite relief.
Although he’s pierced by toxic fangs,
A needling guilt inside him hangs
That stings him more than poison’s pangs.
His children died for his belief.
VI.
Sobbing for breath and steeped in gore,
The doomed man writhes upon the floor,
Damning the gods who watch no more
This massacre of faultless youth,
For gods know well the dying cries
Of newborn babes and widowed wives
Whose only sin is trusting lies
Revealed to them as father’s truth.
VII.
Laocoön is now at rest,
His mangled boys clasped to his breast.
The monstrous snakes that killed them nest
At wise Pallas Athena’s feet.
King Priam and the Trojans haul
The wooden horse into their mall
And praise the gods for Troy’s great wall
That bested Agamemnon’s fleet.
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