My Poetry – Hermes

Today I’m posting up a poem I wrote for a class I took about a year ago.  The basic idea for my project was to write poems with Greek mythology as a main subject.  This poem, concerned with Hermes, is my favorite of the collection I wrote.  My next review for poetry, as I previously mentioned, will be over Sharon Olds’ book One Secret Thing and should be up by next Tuesday.

Hermes
by Stephen Recker

The slayer of Argos:
forever remembered
for a murder.

I couldn’t do it,
live with that constant
reminder of killing
another.

Yet for him,
he had no choice.  To live
forever with blood
on his hands,
as a god,
and to be reminded
of his deeds
for ages, through
the oral traditions.

Can being a god
really remove the
guilt,

or does he
awake in the middle
of each night, sweating
and in tears, make
his way to the sink,
splash soothing water
on his face and
stare in the mirror,
into his own eyes
and ask himself,
“Was it worth it?”