A Star

She had a heart like a snowflake.

My fingers were always cold

and I was very careful not to breathe

upon my hands as they reached for her.

I never warmed,

but summer came.

The Prayer of Orestes

“Astraea, purest of all the holy ones, so long absent

from earth’s stormy shores, hear me now. I have suffered.

I have suffered sorely. You, all-seeing, know well my faithless crime.

No wall was ever built to stem the fury of the wind in vengeance,

and in these long years They hound all steps

and over every hill echoes the baying of their beasts,

but never have you given unto me death’s cool embrace in judgment.

No! The oak leaves turn over all in silver from savage rolling gusts

and They ride on that dusted wind with wings of the night!

Oh, mercy, mercy, I know that Thisiphone rides ahead,

her studded scourge gnashing brass upon brass

like the wintry teeth of a loosely bundled peasant on the steppes,

her tears more blood than blood can be.

Mercy! She races to rip my bones to ribbons!

Oh, Dike, do not utterly condemn me!

My evil was no new and fearful abomination,

and yet my bare touch murders a jungle of ivy,

the flocks of those who give me shelter decline into disease,

the ocean recedes at my feet so that I may not sink to drown!

I have paid my oath-breaking, paid and paid three times again,

the trace of my wanderings a seam of iron in the soil.

No more, I beg of you! In supplication,

humbly seeking your ear, I have climbed the highest peak.

I stand mere miles from the torment of the fire-giver.

Shall the serpents that encircle your dread Furies

drip their venom ever upon my cursed body?

No longer shall I flee.

Have my life, I love it not.

To your level hand I yield.

Blameless gods, what is this silence, this peace,

this air with nary a scent of doom or flame?

Where are rivers spoiled by my lips from crystal to a swamp,

or trees that shrivel fruit into seeds before it can be plucked?

Have I gone mad, that I can no longer hear the hunting packs,

that my shoulders bear not the kiss of the lash?

Oh, though I die of thirst and am stranded in high mountains

amid the chattering ice of the past, I have found the peace of heaven.”

Imprecision

On a frigid morning some months past the vernal equinox,

a work of a young poet was perused. Her love had treated her badly,

you see, through a failing of character all too common, and so he was cast

as the many-toothed carnivore of the vast seas in spare, sad words.

As always after betrayal, an idealized past was a camouflaged hulk

of stone hopping upon paths wanderers tread,

and so her fairer lovers were awarded masks of great savannah felines.

To their heated caresses she attributed an end to chaos.

The language of the poem drew an involuntary smirk,

as if the manner of sharpening claws

was the only difference between the lion and a lioness.

Memory

Laura, today I sought you in streets while the rain was carried in the wind.

Some weeks ago I almost baptized a cat in your honor

but I decided not to let the world know your name.

I am never brave enough to speak of your lips or eyes,

or your hair (grey as wolves would be if we had not killed the wolves),

and somewhere you are grinning when I cower at your gaze.

Today I was playing at a matador with onrushing headlights,

taking all the time that was necessary in order

to understand Petrarch: there are many indisputable reasons

one must never write about a woman unless she is already dead.

Storms

Gatherer of all clouds, Zeus Horkios,

The sun beats upon me as I carry

Tree limbs from a maple you killed last night.

If ever I dared, I would seek counsel

At your table, and after wine darkened

Your beard and I had charmed white-armed Hera,

You would consent to hear my blasphemy.

-I think on the nature of the Hydra,

Nameless in the waters of deep Lerna.

No! I have sinned so grievously against

Honor, I deserve this grisly hair-shirt,

If not the Tunic of Nessus Himself!

Though cut unfathomably by your hand,

A flower like a lover lived beneath

Leafy branches steel had not yet severed,

But, oh, shame of my haste, evil of man,

Green wood cut by my hands fell in a crash

And I wiped the sweat away from my eyes

To see that the blossom, pink as sunsets,

Had lost its stem and now was bleeding red

And everywhere the ants were swarming pain

And every living thing saw I had sinned.

Pythian

The serpent was an emerald cord and its forked tongue tasted the air.

With a speed that would turn the hawk to the begging of the blind,

fangs dripping with hatred lashed out at the neck of a sleeping man.

Suddenly the breath of the assassin was twisted to a cough

as the ruse of restive dreams fulfilled its design.

Apollo cast shadows where lanterns never swayed

and closed his hands around the throat of blighted Python.

He concussed the intruder upon a hardwood wall

and flung the body to a heap in a distant corner.

He spoke:

"Oh, how clever you must be, encircling

Thus this holy place of rest and learning.

Thought you yourself as quiet as white clouds

As you sought to rob from me my power?"

His mirth was felt by shepherds on hilltops.

Python hissed and said in a woman's voice,

"Finish it! Tan my skin for toughened boots

And coat the knives of traitors with my blood!

Oh Pytho, Pytho, I murder the gods

That you may lay in my coiled embrace,

I am condemned by every judge's hand,

And now at the hour that I depart

You refuse to grace my time of dying!"

The young god stretched then folded vengeful arms.

"Peasant, usurper, welcome as a plague,

Your desires are past the impossible.

For what purpose do you seek the future,

Child of none, flesh without a father?

Know ye not that my love creates visions,

That I hold Pytho for her wondrous charms

And not to catalyze a magicked sphere?"

He clamped an angered hand o'er venomed jaws

And brushed away from weeping eyes a lie.

"No, Python, that cannot be the reason,

For I see you have not thieved my arrows

Nor picked the locks of chests that shackle death;

You truly wish to steal away my love,

To enfold her in your cavernous home,

And yet you did not realize that she

Knew before the dawn of your slithering

Approach, that alarms sounded instantly.

"You fool, did she promise to break my bow,

Or shear my hair and fury like a myth?

Pytho licks her fingers and adores games,

But she will never share your diseased bed."

From a quiver on the wall the archer took a shaft

and his touch was flame and the broad-head glowed

and he held it delicately as if it were a feather and a pen.

"You must not hate me," he said with regret

as he tacked the dragon's head onto the eastern wall.

He walked far into the labyrinthine recesses

of his basement until arriving at a set of seven steps,

the objective of the stair obscured by a net of molted skin.

He pulled it over his shoulders, revealing a woman of surpassing beauty

standing knee-deep in a basin of clear water.

"Is there a way to explain your failure

To warn me of a certain visitor?"

Her maddened laughter echoed in the earth.

"Oh, great Hunter, Pythian Apollo,

Your glory and bravery precede you.

Is that a demon in your eyes I see?

Immortal mighty warrior, come here

And tell dear Pytho why your voice is raised.

Must we have this conversation anew?

In which manner shall we gather your tears,

Or has this night given you fresh courage?

I need not turn to see your shining face

To know your far-shooting bow to be strung

And ready for the battle at world's end!

"Do you really wish to threaten a ghost?

Did you not see fit to gather wisdom

While you labored in bright Thessalian fields?

Everything that happens will already

Occur, no force in Olympian heights

Can turn the path of pain-filled Acheron."

She walked forward and was immersed entire.

On an Island in the Sea

Circe, though you sit blameless as the snowdrops in your hair,

the libel of these thousand years has carved a pedestal for your visage

beside dancers whirling with holy severed heads

and queens of mightiest rivers.

All can admit the charges true in most regards:

Your face is seen, introductions are made,

and your new acquaintances soon snivel

at the bottom of a molding trough smooth with years.

So many, so many, a thousand pigs

muddying the outskirts of a temple,

and on every pair of torpid lips a guttural

accusation of black magic and malice-

it is said that one mouthful of food

prepared at your table extends this baleful curse.

Others have sworn that the scent of sweat

(spider-caught in your hair), noticed even for a moment,

is sufficient to condemn another to your slavish horde.

Will none tell the truth? Shall these rumors of enchantments

follow in your steps like dust to the chariot? They must remember,

they cannot have forgotten, the day they first pushed the needles

of your eyes into their veins (not knowing your regard

to be more slight than the moon's shaved golden hangnail),

or at least their schoolboy lines as they waited to smelt

their hands to cloven feet.

Surely often on the backs of eyelids they see the mirror's glint

of that day in the past when they notched their own noses

with scissors (the tips bouncing bloody until snapped up

by a prowling lion with a mocking snort). Surely they recall

that they first fell grovelling among the acorns

after being rebuffed in their attempts at your embrace.

They mill about your piquant isle at the base of a flight of stairs.

In the deep night sometimes their fruitless desires

buzz and hum louder than the rubbed wings of insects on oak branches.

How is it that they do not turn to left or right

and notice an image of themselves with every gaze,

the same curl of hair above the brow on every head around

that pooled raindrops show to be their own reflection too?

They seem to have never considered

that you would perhaps have built for them a spacious house

if ever you desired an uncountable herd of swine.