by Steven Shankman
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| The former guy and a detail of “Oedipus and the Sphinx” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, part of the collection at the Louvre in Paris. (Trump photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images; “Oedipus” image by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images via The Los Angeles Times) |
King Oedipus was certain he alone
Could fix it. When he heard his Thebans groan,
Then die en masse, he offered his expert
Advice. Blame Creon, blame the seer! Hurt
By the grim news, he vowed to find the cause
Of the great plague, to act at once, not pause
To look within himself. It soon was clear
He was himself the cause, his pride, his fear
Of self-examination. Sophocles
Saw Oedipus as Athens, her disease
A plague of arrogance. Our former leader
(Unlike King Oedipus), a bottom-feeder,
Has none of the ancient king’s nobility
But like King Oedipus he fails to see
He is the plague. Devoid of empathy,
Obsessed with money and celebrity,
He feeds red hats to haters. USA!
USA first! We’re winners, led the way
In COVID-19 deaths! The plague will stay
Until the voters make it go away.
Steven Shankman holds the UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor of English and Classics Emeritus. His poems have appeared in a number of journals including Sewanee Review, Literary Imagination, Tikkun, Literary Matters, and Poetica Magazine. He is one of the co-editors of The World of Literature (1999), an anthology of world literature from a global perspective that contains some of his own poetic translations from Chinese, Greek, and Latin. His Penguin edition of Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad appeared in 1996. His chapbook of poems Kindred Verses was published in 2000. His book of poems Talmudic Verses (Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2023. He is the author of many scholarly books, including Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies (SUNY Press, 2010), which contains some of his own original poetry, and Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison (Northwestern UP, 2017).