Lesser Titans by Salvatore Difalco
The excavations generated wealth
but incited crime and heated irons
appeared, harmful to the struggle.
We employed waving, bashing
arms, bloodstained hands
and throat-thunder, no enemy safe.
We piled the mountain up to the nearest star
when an all-powerful being hurled lightning
and threw us back to Earth.
To dreadful sounds, bodies buckled
en masse—though streams of blood
sparked new life and remain transformative,
shaping the angel progeny despised
by those eager for slaughter,
or born to bloody the marble.
Bio
Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and author of five small press books, including Black Rabbit & Other Stories (Anvil Press). He currently lives in Toronto.
Author's note
This is part of a group of poems I wrote in spring of 2023, after finally shaking off the Covid
cobwebs and doldrums. I’d been reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the poetry of Giacomo
Leopardi in its original Italian, which is beautifully and austerely musical. At the same I was
flipping through John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, a book of poetry I’ve always loved if
not completely fathomed. Noodling around with pen and paper, infused by the lexicons of Ovid
and Leopardi, and prepared to take a few fresh risks, I composed a bunch of these pseudo-mythic
pieces, relying more on the lexicons themselves and a natural ordering of the words and rhythms
rather than a strict adherence to the myths or classical tropes mined and reprocessed by Ovid or
Leopardi. “Lesser Titans” is an example of this work, and one that I think succinctly represents
my efforts with these poems.
