The Fight Choreographer of Laocoön

The casting of the snakes had been delayed;
Who was needed? A viper or a python?
Didn’t or did Laocoön lose his life on
Moves so inconsistently conveyed?

Decide first on strangulation or poison
Because the basic timing is essential —
Which serpent glides, which angle he employs in
Breaking cartilage, casual and intentional.

The motive must be clear: physical follows psychic;
Whoever the producer, Poseidon or Apollo,
He weakens suspense and makes the blows ring hollow
Whose fight scene comes across as epideictic.

Look at this script’s confusion of the Gods
That has Athena as the sponsor,
Sex at the altar rendering background raunchier;
She’s fixed the fight and undermined the odds.

You, Snake One, enter from the shade,
Pivot at the youngster’s ankle and then move
Quickly to the father’s shoulders, make it smooth,
Let him be the one to writhe in cold cascade,
Agony spreading the beat of poison and nerve;
And note, Snake Two, the climax forever delayed
Stretches coordinated as the toils deserve.

NOTES for Students of English

Laocoön refers to a famous marble statuary group from antiquity depicting a man and his two sons in the coils of serpents. According to mythology, Laocoön was a priest of Apollo and Poseidon in Troy during the Trojan War. Different versions of the myth vary in their details about which of the gods (Apollo, Poseidon, or Athena) sent the two serpents to attack him, why they did so, and whether or not Laocoön or his sons survived.

Epideictic – (Pronounced epi-DIKE-tik) Emotionally rhetorical; here, trying to impress the audience with words instead of action.