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“So we grew up with mythic dead To spoon upon midwestern bread And spread old gods' bright marmalade To slake in peanut-butter shade, Pretending there beneath our sky That it was Aphrodite's thigh... While by the porch-rail calm and bold His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold My grandfather, a myth indeed, Did all of Plato supersede While Grandmama in rockingchair Sewed up the raveled sleeve of care Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright To winter us on summer night. And uncles, gathered with their smokes Emitted wisdoms masked as jokes, And aunts as wise as Delphic maids Dispensed prothetic lemonades To boys knelt there as acolytes To Grecian porch on summer nights; Then went to bed, there to repent The evils of the innocent; The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears Said, through the nights and through the years Not Illinois nor Waukegan But blither sky and blither sun. Though mediocre all our Fates And Mayor not as bright as Yeats Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum? Byzantium. Byzantium.” — Ray Bradbury