A lamentation for Minos:

Alone, Minos stands in the room above where Asterion roams,

the beast’s heavy tread below constantly heard, each step

a haunt for the King, a reminder that the monster’s blood

is not His own but the bull-god’s lie. Surrounded by tapestries

that depict Cretan victories and billow in the Island’s gentle breeze,

The King’s stares out across His land, takes in the bright sun

above that hurts the eyes, the blue skies, the lines of bronze crops

that stand straight as attentive soldiers, Crete’s sea, filled with ships 
laden, empty or between the two, testimonies to legitimacy of The King.

Chosen before their youth has fallen from them, like browned petals

off the rose, Bull-dancers are dispatched to the monster to assuage

a King’s guilt, fault does not lie with the shocking child; Minos,

despite the rage that ruins his love, knows the mistletoe strangles
the tree so it can reach the light; there is no fault, only the act.