Seeking balance

[vagabond]

Oroestes reviled Polycartes the Consul without ever meeting him, or reflecting. He schemed, dangled money and men to back the troops. Polycrates sent his secretary Maendrius from Samos to check out his credentials. Oroetes displayed eight large timber chests filled with stones, topped by a layer of gold. Polycrate’s daughter saw her father in a vision, hanging up, anointed by the sun. ‘Don’t go’ she warned. Oroestes slew him ‘in a mode not fit to utter’ and hung his body outside the temple on a crucifix.

brimming cups spill
empty cups fill -
reach for balance

Relics of a vanished race: ruins of embankments, terraces, roads pathed with stone, crumbling platforms, tombs, high-gabled lodges, pillars, stone fish-weirs, still fill the island. Islanders now won’t touch the stones, or grow their food nearby.

to be honest: i´m not well-read enough to comment or even understand the mythological part, not to mention connect it to those 3 lines in the middle (and i have to admit i am too lazy to look up all the possible references).

but i do like the short middle part, the metaphor about cups.
i wonder if it is a negative thing to spill.