A man telling a story to another man
At a bar in Brooklyn
Sometime in the mid eighties or nineties,
I think maybe I have conflated the persons
Who were the principal actors in this recollection
From when I was either three or two decades younger.
I convey this in memory of our fathers,
Of their past past reckoning . . .
Yes, this man, telling a story to another man,
Said what he said as he did
When he did
Wherever it was he did
To the other sitting with him listening, as he was,
To the story about how yet another man had said something
About someone saying something about Agamemnon,
To which it was put as follows:
“He said, ‘Agamemnon launched a thousand ships, not Helen.
If Helen had looked like a monkey,
A hundred thousand Greeks would still have battered Troy.'”
The Falling Leaf Review 