Origins

Ode to Pandora

by John Collins

Gather ‘round, gentle readers, and hark to my tale,
Whose scope is as broad as the sea,
For it’s Origins time once again, and it’s clear
That you can’t expect Shakespeare, it’s free.

But Bardic or not, let me make one thing plain,
This will not be a waste of your time,
For within these spare lines, the pure truth will out,
And on top of all that, it’ll rhyme.

In these days of loose tongues, all a’wiggle and wag,
You’re as likely as not to be told,
That when faced with a potential loss of control,
It’s Pandora’s box that you hold.

So without much ado (about nothing, ‘tis true)
Let us take a short walk, if you dare,
To a place and a time out of our long dead past,
When the Gods ruled the Earth and the Air.

For it’s here that we’ll see, at the dawning of time,
Where this curious saying began,
And if, by the end, you aren’t better by half,
Well, don’t you think you were expecting a bit much from a quarterly column? Maybe a little therapy would help, or a good shot of...oh, beg pardon, gentle readers. Ahem...

It was Jupiter, mightiest King of the Gods,
Who commissioned great Vulcan (not Spock),
To craft him a woman, an "Eve" so to speak,
(Jupiter’s godly wife was quite shocked).

He named her Pandora, "all-gifted" it means,
And sought from the other Gods boons,
He bade them contribute one power from each,
Lest he bop them upside with the moons.

So through they did come, with the powers and such,
But no ordinary powers were these,
For you see, these were powers that, after a time,
would bring all mankind to its knees.

A name="para10">(Now, just as an aside here, what the Hell was he thinking? I mean, sure, give the girl a present, but talk about a Trojan horse! But back to our tale...)

Into a small box all these powers were stuffed,
and Pandora, all perfumed and flow’ry,
Was told they were meant for the man she would wed,
Gentle Pandora’s box was her dowry.

Epimetheus was the man made for her,
(‘course, he didn’t have a wide selection,
You might just recall sweet Dora was first)
And he showered her with his affection.

And so, on the night our two lovers were wed,
darling Dora offered Epi her box,
And despite being told that he shouldn’t poke in,
He decided that he’d be a fox.

"If I’m being warned," he thought, "not to look in,
It must be because of the size,
Of the dowry encased in that little gold box,
Perhaps diamonds the size of my eyes!"

And so, over protests from Pandora’s lips
Her dumb hubby pried off the lid,
And out flew all manner of horrors and woes,
And too late Epi saw what he did.

If only he’d left well enough all alone,
And let Pandora’s box remain closed,
But no, he had to be old greedy Gus,
And because of him we all get hosed.

Perhaps if Pandora had spoken more clear,
Things would have been different that day,
So the moral we all can take home with us now:
Say what you mean, mean what you say.