Here we are.
Supine in our togas, side-eyed
and crowned with laurels,
pressed in the Attic clay,
the urn’s belly binds us like lovers.
How you strain to find the swiftness
to catch me.
How I struggle for the stillness
to be caught.
You, the archetype with hydra heads
I could chop and chop and up springs
a new one in its place, eyes red
as a pickled cherry.
I, the sibyl.
I am the one who knows…
though I cannot decipher
what it is that I know.
I know I have the secret.
I know
it is important to keep.
I know
we do not profane.
I inhale the fire,
pungent green from offerings,
struck red with blood of a
freshly butchered ram and
hear it whistled
through the cypress fronds,
from the porphyry that hosts one thousand
mouths, the vessel gasping behind us.
The frenzy comes.
There will be death,
there will be the blotting out
of Phoebus Apollo,
a crack run through his half-eye
crushed to powder.
Made with macerated
grape skins
into the madness of man,
godless, and sobbing in the dark.
It is prophesied
in all stars, in all clay,
in all wine drunk from the shadow
of our half-seen bodies.
But, you reply in euphony,
each head askance,
askance and mine,
it will not come not today.
Let’s go down by the gladed water,
fill the amphora by the dales of Arcady,
and frighten the naiads
cavorting in their gauzy idylls.
Let’s widen the eyes of
the burbling Crinaeae,
with dire, Stygian stories of
how dreadful long
it is
to love forever.
