Sonnets Of The Blood Viii Poem by Allen Tate

Not power nor the casual hand of God
Shall keep us whole in our dissevering air,
It is a stink upon this pleasant sod
So foul, the hovering buzzard sees it fair;
I ask you will it end therefore tonight
And the moth tease again the windy flame,
Or spiders, eating their loves, hide in the night
At last, drowsy with self-devouring shame?
Call it the house of Atreus where we live-
Which one of us the Greek perplexed with crime
Questions the future: bring that lucid sieve
To strain the appointed particles of time!
Whether by Corinth or by Thebes we go
The way is brief, but the fixed doom, not so.