The Birth of Athena

Written by Yusra Ali from London, United Kingdom

The Birth of Athena

Daughter. Wisdom. War itself

was once a child sprung

from the misery of man

with sagacity forged into her

vambraces,

enlightenment malleable in her hand.

Daughter. Wisdom. War itself

knows she is the sunken eye of Tiresias.

Her footsteps, a form

of divination

thundering into the 

rockland of Zeus’ mind,

his headache shifted

as ire to the world

Daughter. Wisdom. War itself

watches as the gods 

gorge themselves on the

morsels of mortals,

their flesh, their 

souls as 

barren

as the city of Troy --

a palace of bones

searing the Olympians’

tongues.

Daughter. Wisdom

understands that

warriors are forged from

the failings of 

kings.

Daughter. War itself

was moulded 

by the rumination of

an unkept skull.

Daughter.

Listen

to his laboured breath, laced

with ambrosia the 

patriarch cannot digest,

large shoulders carrying an

artificial pain as

the saccharine particles dance within his chest.

Daughter. Wisdom. War itself.

Show us what it means 

to become

  a shell of yourself. What 

life without a conventional

birth must be.

To abandon your good counsel

in the belly

of poor judgement,

what it means

to be

deposed

from a brain,

dense and emptied

from the moment you stepped out.

Daughter.

Clutch wisdom, remember war itself

was once a child.