COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: Say what you like about Charaxos,
COUNSELOR: I’m sorry, ma’am, but at the Poetry Crisis Line we care about confidentiality.
CALLER: that’s a fellow with a fat-bellied ship
COUNSELOR: I’m sorry—do you mean an actual boat, or are you talking about—
CALLER: always in some port or other.
COUNSELOR: I think I get your meaning.
CALLER: What does Zeus care,
COUNSELOR: It’s none of his business.
CALLER: or the rest of his gang?
COUNSELOR: Or theirs. And if it is his business, it’s still none of theirs.
CALLER: Now you’d like me on my knees,
COUNSELOR: And that’s your business. I’m not here to judge.
CALLER: crying out to Hera,
COUNSELOR: Well, I suppose what Zeus gets up to is her business.
CALLER: “Blah, blah, blah,
COUNSELOR: Not that I’d blab. Like I said, we care about privacy.
CALLER: bring him home safe and free of warts,”
COUNSELOR: That may be an exception to medical confidentiality; I’m not sure. It’s not something I’m required to report.
CALLER: or blubbering, “Wah, wah, wah, thank you, / thank you, for curing my liver condition.”
COUNSELOR: Liver warts? I’ve never heard of that.
CALLER: Good grief, gods do what they like.
COUNSELOR: I guess so. Are you sure you don’t mean liverwurst? You know, the sausage?
CALLER: They call down hurricanes with a whisper
COUNSELOR: You mean like the vacuum cleaner? Or the app on your phone?
CALLER: or send off a tsunami the way you would a love letter.
COUNSELOR: Neither rain nor sleet will stop it.
CALLER: If they have a whim, they make some henchmen / fix it up,
COUNSELOR: That sounds like a dirty job.
CALLER: like those idiots in the Iliad.
COUNSELOR: Did they bring a Whisper in the Trojan Horse?
CALLER: A puff of smoke,
COUNSELOR: They brought a bong?
CALLER: a little fog,
COUNSELOR: It just seems like it might blow their cover. Even if it is on little cat feet.
CALLER: away goes the hero,
COUNSELOR: Right. That’s what they were waiting for.
CALLER: it’s happily ever after.
COUNSELOR: For the Greeks it was. For the Trojans, not so much.
CALLER: As for Larichos,
COUNSELOR: Which side was he on?
CALLER: that lay-a-bed lives for the pillow.
COUNSELOR: So…not getting up before sunrise to get stoned in a wooden horse.
CALLER: If for once / he’d get off his ass, he might make something of himself.
COUNSELOR: Has he tried visualization exercises?
CALLER: Then from that reeking sewer of my life
COUNSELOR: Yes, like that. But instead of a reeking sewer, try thinking of your life as a clear, flowing fountain.
CALLER: I might haul up a bucket of spring water.
COUNSELOR: Well, then.
Read the original (in translation) here.