Laocoön

“According to our notions, there are phenomena, which we conceive as being essentially sudden in their beginning and end and which can be what they are only for a brief moment. However, the prolongation of such phenomena in art, whether agreeable or otherwise, gives them such an unnatural appearance that they make a weaker impression the more often we look at them, until they finally fill us with disgust or horror.” – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781).
 
The face of the Trojan priest –
whose body, and his sons’,
devoured by snakes,
writhes in pain –
merely sighs

Yet we are haunted
by his cry
which imagination
amplifies

Like a phantom
pregnant
with meaning
climaxes
and dies