Rick Snyder

AGES OF MAN

Hesiod never knew
about the Lithium Age,
in which people
collapsed into categories
and hated each other
because of them.

He also didn’t know
about the Age of Exhaust
or the Age of Exhaustion,
the Age of the Aged
or the Age of Aphasia,
when I stared at a screen
like a windshield
stares at the sun.

Hesiod didn’t know
about any of these ages
(which are really
just one), but he did
know that the worst age
is yet to come.

RICK SNYDER is the author of Here City (Parlor Press, 2021), Escape from Combray (Ugly Duckling, 2009), and six chapbooks. He  teaches in the Classics department at the University of California, Irvine.