Song of Kirke (Part IV)

For nine days we sailed along, grieving in our heart, plunging our oars into the wine dark sea. On the tenth day, when primal Dawn had arched her fingers through the canopy of the sky, we drifted in a mass of fog until the keels of our ships touched the breaking shore. Tincture of rose-mist dispersed through an island's extent, now incandescent and shield-like under day's jealous glare. Desert beach mounted on desert beach, rising into rings of rugged cliff upon which perched, then fell, strands of lichen and moss, silver and glistening with the damp of precipitate streams. Cliff leveled into green mesa, an ocean sown of sun's violet embrace, flowering into blooms of evanescence, traced by and tracing split currents of light -- which seemed to recall to the surrounding clatter of waves echo of their own hum, abuzz in the thickness of a stupor through which glowed, or upon which prevailed, a clarion sharper than the human voice, but more expansive too in lotus luxury.

We beached our ships and left the keels to dry on the prowed and patterned shore. Men clambered inland, seeking out fresh streams for weary limbs, fell goats by the puncture of spears. Others coerced the silicious fire's seeds on appendages dry from the forest, and lit a lusty scorcher for the service. They split carcasses from legs, poured libations, and feasted on entrails of beastly flesh, brought brimming-fat bowls to boils of sputtering grease, and ladled into their bellies concatenations of wine that flowed into dissolutions of strained arms and strewing legs.

But I stood apart, watching, always watching the sea, violent mother of earth, temptress of glittering skiffs, siren of maritime whorls and rip-tides, shore-ward bending, pregnant of rocks, the destiny of hollow barks, rind-some, of surfaces scraping their nothing folds, delivered and delivering in labors, calling harshly under horizons' bloom -- for seagull, missive stork, the razor's ternful moan, for the black and thin, crag-perched, brooding furies and wayward returns, boding the margins of sunset's eye, licentious waves flocking in moon-tide mass.

Poseidon, earth-shaker, how you have harried me! -- over and beyond Ismaros, bending the Cape of Maleia, and past Cythera too, beyond all care of mortal men. Most vengeful of the gods, consort and bride-groom of death, tireless, boiling wrath of storms, sea-squalls and hurricanes alike, your respite was the Cyclop's eye, Kalypso was your pity, who hid me from the earth in numberless, taunting waves, a sea whose floods abated just to make way for my tears, and most unjustly at that. Yes, king of injustice, you who ruminate on rage, wide-wanderer whose gift is the driving of ships past all bounds of civilized thought, great skulker of the deep -- how you have harried me! Oh, how you have harried me! I am weary.

I was weary. The day exhaled numinous stars, sighed out his misery, bewailed pearly radiance of moon, a sharp crescent, cutting tear, most cold and fiery-distant car. Cruel Artemis drove her chariot higher, whipping the steeds without leisure, the stallions of her marbled pleasure – then, when she reached that height of the aether that perches above Atlas' stooped crown, she reigned them in and paused, lengthening midnight's labors, beguiling her flaring consorts all eager to nuzzle Aurora, fearing the lingering caress of the dawn. Her downward gaze was all air and searing wind, cold and the north-breathing gale.

To Come:

Clothes ripple in the wind
Men cold
Meditation on the companions
Awakened by the ghostly song of a maiden