Rain of Statues

From the Mithridatic Wars,  first century BC Our general was elsewhere, but we drowned. While he rested, he shipped us home with the bulk of  his spoils that had weighed his army down. The thrashing storm that caught us cracked the hulls and made us offerings to the sea floor — a rain of statues, gold, and men. Released from service, done with war, the crash and hiss muted, we fell through streams of creatures whose lives were their purpose. We settled with treasure looted from temples of rubbled Athenian Greece; among us, bronze and marble gods and goddesses moored without grace, dodged by incurious fish. Their power was never meant to buoy us — our pleasures were incidental gifts — but, shaken by their radiance in our dust, we had given them our voices. Their faces, wings, and limbs lie here with our sanded bones and motionless devices. Little crabs attempt to don rings set with agate and amethyst, and many an octopus, seeking an hour of rest, finds shelter in our brain-cases. So we are still of use.