The Apocryphon, spiritual epic poem in ten books, as of March 21 2017 is undergoing a new revision and expansion. This is an introduction and samples from the earlier version of 2005.
Synopsis of the whole work (From a talk, presented May 2005)
“I finished this poem excitedly on April 22 2004. Before then, the most I had ever written in a single day was 400 lines. On the 21st, I wrote 300 lines, and on the 22ed, I wrote 700, completing Book X in two days.
I’ll say a few words about the form of the poem, then an overview of the myth, as a preparation for the poetry.
The poem seeks to be in communion with the traditions of epic, at the same time as forming a language of my soul. As with all verse, I want to fill communal vessels with my own wine, making vessels completely new.
The poem is comprised of 10,000 lines divided into ten Books; each Book is made of ten Cantos, of 100 lines each. Each line is made of 13 syllables.
The poem took 13 years to write.
I’ve created my own mythology within the framework of the Greek creation myth, as found in Hesiod’s Theogony. Here, there is brief mention how the Sky God Uranus was overthrown by his own son Kronos the Titan. Hesiod’s poem is gruesome and describes how Uranus was violent father, and Kronos at the bidding of his mother, Gei, the Earth, cut of the genitals of his father with a scythe.
My own poem, the Apocryphon, begins with an invocation to the muse, and describes a vision of the creation of the world.
In the beginning was Chaos. But from Chaos emerged two spiritual principles, Silence and Sound. From the weavings of Silence and Sound came the six primal beings, paired in three couples,
Love/Night
Uranus/Gei (sky and Earth)
Tartarus/Erebus
The last two are the caverns of the underworld.
From the tragic love of Earth and Sky, all the creatures of the world are descended, such as the unlovely creatures, the Kyklopes, and the beautiful Titans.
But there is another being who holds the world within her. She is the Memory of the world, or the Apocryphon, the secret book. All that has occurred is reflected in her.
When the Titan Prometheus was born, he had a vision of the future of all things. This prophesy passed into the Apocryphon and became destiny. The book of Memory gives life to the world.
But Uranus, through his violence and appetite, has become the high king of the universe, thereby bringing imbalance to the primal six by his unjust assumption of power. By his lust he drew the Apocryphon, or Book of Memory, into a single point, and he devoured it. The memory of the world is imprisoned in his flesh, and is dying. If the Memory dies, the world will parish.
The Titans, who are the children of Gei, the Earth, and Uranus the Sky, encounter a boar headed creature Eteius. Eteius is a trickster god who disrupts all order. The Titans try to capture him, but their frustrations become transfigured into an army of birds who attack and bludgeon the Titans. The Titans are driven into a cavern to escape. In the darkness of the cavern, they realize Eteius is with them. They take revenge on him, by tricking him and sealing him in a vault in the cavern. The vault leads down into the cavern of Sound, or Tartarus. Eteius desperately tries to break out of his prison. In isolation, his wild imagination, full of imaginary worlds,reaches a high peak, and his soul explodes and overflows till his imaginings fill the underworld of Tartarus.
Before the Titans had entered the caverns, their best champion, the goddess Metamethia, went looking for a way to fight the army of birds. Her quest culminated in a vision of a blue bird, and returning to a state of ecstatic trance, she encountered a ritual at the summer solstice where worshipers threw themselves off a cliff and into the solstice sun. She her self leaps from the cliff.
By leaping into the sun, she is transported into the spiritual world of Eteius, where Eteius is God.
She has a new life in this world, where the people who inhabit it have cultures which are older then creation. She meets the warrior Leiarchos.
Leiarchos tells his story. He was raised with a brother, Krato. But Krato became a horrible tyrant, and people followed him blindly. Krato has become an Emperor, conquering villages and murdering Elders.
Leiarchos is at war with him, and has formed the Army of the Sky to fight him.
Metamethia joins him
Their army is trained on a hidden island, called the Island of the Serpent. Here the serpent queen, Eudaimonia, and Leiarchos fall in love. And through the balance of passion and detachment they reach a spiritual insight and experience marriage.
Leiarchos sneaks into the kingdom of his brother Krato, and in defiance he destroys a statue of his brother, which signals the beginning of the final war. But Leiarchos is killed. His spirit is put in chains by the ghostly servants of Krato, and brought to an underground Hell. He is tormented.
Queen Eudaimonia, grieving for her lover travels to the spirit world, and playing a flute song, and she finds him. He is resurrected, and returning to the flesh, he kills his brother with his sacred spear. The Army of Krato, and Leiarcho’s Army of the Sky have a final war of cosmic proportions. And the Gate between Tartarus (Sound) and Erebus (Silence) is opened, and when silence overflows into the world of sound, the imaginings of Eteius are dissolved, everything vanishes. Metamethia, and a Titan called the Beloved one, remain. And so does Leiarchos and Eudaimonia. They have not vanished, for they have become immortal.
2
Metamethia, and the Beloved one, and Leiarchos, and Eudaimonia, each emerge from the Vault where Eteius was originally trapped. And they find the upper caverns empty. The titans have been free from the plague of birds, and have rebuilt their culture. The four are greeted by the Titans with wonder.
Now Eudaimonia is faced with a dilemma. Everything she has known were only the wild imaginings of Eteius. And yet, she has her memory, and the branches of knowledge of an ancient culture, a culture older then creation itself. She resolves to found a new Island of the Serpent. She and Leiarchos have a child, named Arius. But the Child is stolen by servants of Uranus, to be made a child priest at a shrine of the god against the child’s will.
Arius as a small priest fails in his duties because he can not kill a small goat as a sacrifice to Uranus. He is driven into exile, and finds his way to the Island of the Serpent, and is reunited with his mother Eudaimonia.
At queen Eudaimonia’s request, while she was in mourning for her lost child before his return, Leiarchos and Metamethia had children, and these children peopled the Island to be raised as Scholars and Warriors. But Arius is always a child.
The Book of Memory is still imprisoned in the flesh of Uranus, and is dying. The world begins to die. Uranus becomes obsessed with getting back the child-priest, and forces the Titans to threaten the Serpentines with war, unless they return the child to him.
The king and queen of the Titans, Kronos and Rhea, are caught between loyalty to the father, Uranus, and their reverence to the Queen Eudaimonia. But the Titan general , Acrassia, is ambitious, and is a deceiver. He secretly offers Kronos a conspiracy to overthrow his father Uranus, and become high king of all. Kronos refuses this, but as they go to war, they hear the sounds of Uranus’ violence against Gei, the mother Earth, as he, Uranus, is filled with furry against any one who would defy him. In a crisis of conscience, Kronos orders the end of the invasion of the Island of the Serpent, but the general Acrassia leads a mutiny unexpectedly, and the Army of the Titans is divided. The giant Kyklopes and hundred armed creatures are loyal to Uranus, and Kronos is captured and imprisoned. As Kronos, the favorite son of Uranus waits for his father to punish him. He is warned by the mother that the father will eat him.
Before the war began, Arius, the child of Eudaimonia, was led by visions to create the Word-Realm, a spiritual world of his own imaginings.
He was led, in vision, by Leilisia, the daughter of the Apocryphon. She awakened him with her Beauty and wisdom. It is revealed that Eudaimonia is the earthly incarnation of the Apocryphon.
Leiarchos, when he wandered into the Word-Realm, became lost in the dark forces of his soul. Especially his guilt for killing his brother the Emperor Krato. He became lost in illusion, and assumed the identity of this brother. He is deceived by a group of ghostly advisors who convince him that his brother was killed by a Demon king. The Demon king they speak of is in fact Leiarcho’s memory of himself.
Leiarchos is instructed to fight the Demon Army, kill the Demon king, and find Arius,who is called the Demon Child, and is instructed to eat him.
Emperor Leiarchos has now killed the Demon king, and at the same moment as Uranus is approaching the cave of Kronos, the Emperor Leiarchos is approaching Arius, who is alone in a dark chapel, waiting for the Emperor to consume him. While in this chapel, he is told a story by a woman at the door about how Uranus is near the cave of Kronos, and how Kronos hears the violence that Kronos does to his mother. Kronos clutches in the darkness a scythe until his hand begins to bleed. Arius is frightened beyond words as he hears this story, and also hears the approach of the Emperor. All the world is coming to an end, and the Island of the Serpent is invaded. In the Word-Realm, Arius is in a frenzy, and takes from the alter a spear, and kills the Emperor, at the same moment as Uranus opens the cave and is maimed by his son Kronos.
Uranus has been overthrown, and the Apocryphon is released from him, and it fills the world.
Kronos emerges from the darkness as the new High King, and is greeted by Eudaimonia, the incarnation of the Apocryphon. She speaks of the transfiguration of the world.”
Book One, Canto One
Oh you, you ninefold Goddess, how from the shadows of
The soul should I call your vivid form in luminous
Pearls of music, the countless colors of your vision.
How will I call your name in the gentle hopes that you
Will rain upon my lips the inverted dreams of art?
Dark daughter and daughters of memory, receive me,
For I am cloistered in your secret rites and have seen
Your mysteries fill meanings until the meanings broke
In the primal fires that are unspeakable. The pulse
Which is the seed is almost in its motion so soft
So pale as to be imperceptible, but in this
Is the first small spark of an ocean of your presence
The growing heartbeat of an oracle – how will I utter
What is ineffable? When it grows, when it consumes
How will I speak what has no language? Only echoes
To the ears of creatures, only fading resonance
Of flutes that are unearthly, only these then be my
Chanting, only this my art and i am drunk with joy
For the rising tides of promise crash against the cliffs
And i dance for you, my palms to the heavens are light
And vision fills me like a breaking cloud to waters
And all the world grows dark as death, and you pound within
To the countenance of beauty, vanishing in light.
“What is there?” It is the dance of formlessness in void,
And first in whispers of Being. She is the Chaos
Before the dawn of dreams. Outside her motion there is
No thing, for nothing beyond the void and memory
Exists, but her, birthing herself in clouds. Be silent,
For you who listen to your soul, and see this holy
Thing in the deeps of you, where you now look you are dust,
And the dust that is not yet you are, in a world to
Be, for in this realm is nothing but a stirring, void,
And memory. Be reverent then, reverence, and vanish
In to the wholeness of the primal One whose darkness
Of decent to the drained divisions begins with this,
The lonely dance of Chaos. And eons and eons
Passed like petals in the winds about her, and her heart
Was grieving for the void, pining to return to One
Where wholeness is, but no, she moved apart and motion
Tore all sequence from the source, and she was left in pain
Holding still what can not be in waves of suffering,
And the spring was far from Being. Out from her dance
In time emerged two notes of music, Silence and Sound,
The first in remembrance of the One, the next in grief
For parting. And the Silence and Sound themselves became
The vehicles of all creation, for form their weave
On the loom in the womb of eternity came out
The sacred six notes, the first of visible music
The eerie foundations of this universe– they were
the Goddess Gei, Uranus, Tartarus, Erebus,
and Love and Night, the six and ancient notes which haunt the
minds of immortals with memories of vanished
Order passed into a whisper. Each note of the strain
was an incarnation of the Silence or Sound which
fell from the dance of the formless mother clothed in void,
and the six as one were a chord of dissonance, but
each in pairs were fragrant to the ear, beautiful but
troubled to the soul. Love and Night in sacramental
dreams caressed the other in ethereal vision
mingling in the twilight of consciousness. Tartarus
and Erebus, far in the deep below were weighed
with the expectation of the world when Tartarus
Would be full, and Erebus remain the vesseled nest
Of emptiness, these two, primal heavy giants vast
And inanimate, harbors of shadowed wilderness
Lay in the darkness without themselves, and motionless.
And in the central realm between Love and Night and they
Was Gei, the earth, waiting in the darkness. And the Sky,
Uranus came, luring with Azure but punishing
With hints of dark foreboding clouds he came in tumults
Restrained to peace until the earth would love him and he
Would know this love was power. He ascended in himself
Fueled by the fires of his depths he uprose and screaming
That Gei would be his throne, monarch of all being he
Declared his realm as limitless, and she was now lost
In him assenting her passive power in secret streams
Of words, unwholesome and tragic adorations passed
Between them, impersonal and piercing, alien,
And fused as one in all the sufferings of life-blood
From this imbalance all things will come to be. Oh pain
That mimics the ripping of her soul, she birthed in blood
Their children. But who would come form such union? Is life
So precious in itself that it justifies a birth
In excrement, growing only to undo the wounds
Of the birth-home? This I would ask of everything that
Came from the parents of the world to the world they made
For their children, and sick, over-loved and abandoned
To the elements, her children, both ugly and fair
Survived, after her insidious example they
Unthinkingly painted all horrors with frail veneers
Of sweetness until such fast internal lies decayed
With all foundations of the world. Some of her children
Were horrible to see, many-armed and many-eyed,
Giants and smaller brutes that scattered the unfurling
Woods with appetites like fires. And there were Titans born
With limbs of perfect proportion, balance and brilliant
To look upon, and beasts and birds, and fish, infinite
Varieties of form, passing from dark nothingness
To existence through the suffering gate of the earth
To the tense and angered cries of the infant world.
from Book Four, Canto One
Metamethia and her companion Hedonei, (Who she met down in the Realms of Tartarus, filled with the imaginings of Eteius) Meet with the warrior Leiarchos. Here, They are surprised to hear of the mortality of leiarcho’s people.
“War for you must be so different” Metamethia
With intercepting speech replied, “For, mortality
To my people is not understood-we do not know.
And blood is terrible, yes, but never wounding bleeds
The trail to oblivion.” “You do not die?” He asked.
“We do not die. We are a people everlasting.
I hold you are the greater warriors in fighting
Between the margins of demise, like animal’s flesh
That rots with time, but with minds of Immortals. You
Fight between the twain, and I respect you deeply, friend,
In that you risk the world that is to you, for fighting.”
Hedonei speaks: “I too will never die, but I mourn
For my mortality.in this place, full of the parishings ,
Disease of mind, decay of flesh, I never new these.
How do you live such a war as this?” “ I live it full
Of meaning, but remember too I have no choosing,
And these chains I was born in may well be unlike
What you have known, but they themselves are all my knowing.
And you, Metamethia, Immortal as you are,
Please hear me in my speech of death, it is translucent
To the word, and unexpressed. In grieving states, can not
Be seen directly, or then perhaps the soul will crack.
There is in all of this, Hedonei, a wide wisdom
Expanding the breadth of the cosmos, deepening roots
Into the flesh with scorching pain sometimes, but leading
To something higher yet then mortal minds have mastered.
I must be like this, or else the lines of blood have made
A mockery of life. Do you hear how in my words
I do not assume that arts of war and a knowledge
Of truth are separate? But a deep intuition
Resounds in me that in my efforts at the sword-blade
Of introspection of the soul is one with the stroke.
This is the whole foundation of my struggle, finding
The meeting point of soul and limb perfection, in a world
So full of imperfection, the clouds releasing tears
Become in time, in sunlight, the ruby wounds of blood.”
From Book Five, Canto Four
Leiarchos has been recounting his life to Metamethia, and he remembers how when he and the Army of the Sky were training and receiving the ancient wisdom of fighting arts on the Island of the Serpent, how he had fallen passionately in love with the woman whom he believed was the servant to the Queen Eudaimonia, but who in fact was the Queen Eudaimonia herself.
He awakens from a dream of her beauty and awakens in her arms. But they know that, even as the experience of marriage comes upon them, they must part, for he must go to war.
“ I have never felt the waves
of the worlds existence as I do now. full, intense
in this adoration, every facet of your mind
redeems me, and in the purity of your laughter
I have more power to love all things, more than my fancies
could fathom, the embrace of the world collapse in
and has become a single point of the purest light
a rose of all eternity, for you, both mortal
and unending, perfect in imperfections have made
my world complete. I see you, dancing at the highest
point of earth, closest to the stars, and your fingers weave
a dance of music in a minor key of secrets
far among the branches of darkness is hung the rose
of eternity, which speaks of the world’s unending
life, revival perpetual, where beauty is peace.”
I stirred from my slumbering , the precious one sleeping
in my arms, and when I kissed her, she wakened. Oh soul,
how her eyes were filled with light, and with what looks of love
I never saw such beauty filled in such happiness,
the very look of her amazed me. “I do not know
your name, dear servant of the queen, but I have found you
and am found by you. In your eyes and your arms I am
complete. But as we dreaded, I must leave, for the arms
are prepared, the boats are mended, and the sea is firm
for sailing. the apprenticeship has ended, and these
the last few days of our island life are slipping fast
away. What does this mean for our recovery
of selves, the love that is no sooner born than passes
apart by force?” “Only love that is not holding
can be free of wanting can see our love survive
this parting, can be fulfilled by a single gazing
on your eyes. This wisdom, alone in this tragedy
can witness the completion of all that we have found,
then comes the waves of fast impending doom upon us,
we will be sanctified by a rich un greediness
of love. No past, no future, only the present moves
with this abundant adoration, even this made gentle
and tempered by the mean of contemplation, though love
will always rise up out of the limits, this we will call
our ritual of passion, lovingly cooling what
never can be cooled, I see therefor in this violent
parting of our selves which is unique to us
that forges salvation from the ruins of desire.”
“This way I will pass with you, though feeble is my will,
I will walk this peace with you through the flames of our passion,
I will be like prayer in a cloud of vast illusions,
and I will be full where we are at peace together,
as one contemplative, breathing, whole in he void of
dark reality.” “Something has passed over us, and
has changed us.” “This marriage vow, of of the silent deep
has fallen on our limbs. We are transformed in being.”
“And marriage has found us, and we have the other found.”
“We never more are two. You will find me in your soul
breathing the silence with you, holding the way in peace.”
We heard the calling of the crow which broke the morning’s
calm. With some inexpressible clarity, we saw
the world, so purely and so cleanly, in the stillness
of infant perception, the love we found for the loved
had found the loved one in all things real. Serenity
has calmed the tempests of the soul, and in this crystal
world, the sun was bright, and mixed with the chill of day.
From Book Six, Canto Ten
Leiarchos returned from the grave and has slain his brother Krato, the Emperor. And now the forces of the Army of the Sky and the forces of Krato have clashed in a final war down in the underworld. (the world which is made of the imaginings of Eteius, about Metamethia and the Beloved One, the Titan who had independently come down from the cave of imprisoned Titans.
Metamethia and leiarchos lead the Army of the Sky against the Army of the Emperor, and are pushed further and further back to the west. As they are pushed back, Leiarchos remembers more of the words of the Prophetess whom he heard in his death states. She spoke to him, and told him mysteriously how everything that he has ever known is from the imaginings of Eteius. And how in the farthest of the west, there is a gate of Erebus. If this is opened, all his known world will pass away, and Eteius will be overthrown.
….”But unless” and he paused, closing his eyes
“I Was mistaken. What if the gate is not the gate
Of Kroto’s kingdom, but another gate? Still the words
Of the woman in the death-sleep cling to my memory,
As she spoke so strangely of the Memory of Things,
‘Love and Night and Sky and Earth, primordial beings
Elusive in the memory of the memory of the soul. Beneath
Them were two underworlds, Tartarus and Erebus,
Tartarus a world of sound, Erebus of silence.’
I am drawn, deep, in tot he meanings of these words now.
The very name of Erebus seems to be calling,
Luring me to its purity, its gate in the west
The gate of Silence, where by itself and Tartarus
Are joined but unmingled, I feel the gate as a thing
That keeps a mighty silence from swallowing the sounds
Of conflicted Tartarus, I am drawn to the gate where
The silence longs for opening.” At that moment’s turn
The quiet ended, and the howling rush of war
Was on him, left and right and front and he smote the soldiers,
Looking for a moment on Metamethia who
Fast beside him screamed and slew the foe to the darkness.
They felt at once a new upsurge of force through Krato’s
Army, and saw as an ocean wave of unfathomed size
Come arching for their deaths as if his army were the
World entire, and they but fragments of a world eclipsed
Scrambling for refuge-”flee to the west” Leiarchos yelled,
“Best and ableist and strongest of my fighters, go far
Unto the western gate of Silence where this conflict
at last will end!” And they the best and ableist , fastest
Of the runners heard the cries of comrades behind them
Swallowed by the clouds of axe and sward and spear and teeth
Horrible in their screams, rapid in dispersement to
The fields of death, and there at last it was before them,
The mighty gate of Erebus, vast beyond their dreams,
And before it stood Eudaimonia in waiting.
“Open the gate!” Leiarchos canted, “Throw it open!”
And their hands were on its pulling chains with all their strength
And Leiarchos felt the tides of Erebus crashing
Behind its portal longing to consume the oceans
of Tartarus, and as the wailing and unused gate
Made moan in the darkness, they saw in the last dim lights
They saw the body of Eteius in a million
Screeching murderers of hate come funneling down
to their heart beat’s edge, and the gate was loosened
And was open and the howling silence quilted all
In the measureless reams of stillness. They lay in the
Darkness for what seemed like years, exhausted to their limbs
And minds and souls, so that they felt like floating autumn
Leaves on the surface of a pond. Metamethia
with a horse voice spoke out “and who is left among us?”
“ I Eudaimonia.” “And Leiarchos.” “Is that all?
What has become of this world?” “The world was Eteius
And Eteius is vanquished. What remains of him still
Is nothing but the empty vaults of the underworld.”
Where is the Spear of Axia? And where is my friend
Hedonei?” “They also were Eteius, and are gone.”
But you remain?” “WE have become Immortal. Listen…
I hear a distant singing.” “That I can account for.
It is the Titan who preceded me and met me
in this underworld. I remember. Let us find him
and he will lead us home.” “Home” spoke Eudaimonia,
“All that I knew I have woken from. All that I was
has perished. And what is left o me, but my being?”
Book Ten, Canto Ten
Metamethia, Leiarchos, Eudaimonia and the Beloved one returned to the surface of the earth. Metamethia is rejoined with the Titans. Eudaimonia recreates the Island of the Serpent and carries on the traditions of her people which existed before the creation of the world.
Her child, Arius, was stolen by the priests of Uranus. When the child ran from Uranus, Uranus became obsessed with retrieving the child from the Island of the Serpent, and forced his children, the , to invade the Island and bring the child back to him.
The king of the Titans, Kronos, at a certain point refuses to continue with the invasion. He is imprisoned in a cave, waiting for Uranus to come and devour him.
At the same time, Leiarchos, who is the father of Arius, has become lost in the Word-Realm, the World of Arius’ creation. And in this realm, he has become identified with his dead brother Krato, and has become the new Emperor. He now prepares to crash through the gates of the Word-Realm, and find Arius, who hides in the Word-Realm.
These two horrors are existing side by side. Kronos waits for his father to break through the cave, and devour him, and Arius waits for Leiarchos to break through the gates of the Word-Ream, and devour him. As all this occurs, the Apocryphon is dying in the flesh of Uranus, and is waiting to be released.
The world was now a nightmare dream. And all the ages
Of collapsing time moved into this ominous stream
Of the Drowning consciousness. Hedonei stood in awe
As the wall was pounded. The descending sun made gold
And orange in the arms of the west, and approaching
Night was not soothing. The people stood and stared with her,
Speechless, but trembling. If death must approach them, come
Then close to loved ones, hold such hands and embrace for fear
will not undo their love. In the chapel, in darkness
Knelt Arius. In his hands the infant blue bird cried.
The heart beat of Arius was hard and deep, and fear
Moved in his limbs like blood. But there was one candle light
On the alter, illuming the Spear of Axia
For people’s adoration, but Arius cringed
To see it. The Queen would whisper through the gates at him,
“Beware, the moments grow slow. He is coming. I fear
for you. I will tell you a tale to sooth you. There is
In a cave a knife , and his heart beat beats in terror
.He hears his father, who soon will come to hurt him, who
soon will come and tear him with his teeth, but first he lays
With the mother, and there are the sounds of violence heard
The frenzied weepings of the mother’s screams are fearful,
And the king in agony is clutching with his hand
A scythe beside him, and his hand is cut and bleeding.”
“The story frightens me” he said, “Why would you say it?
You the Warm Queen?” “But I tell you this for it is true,
But far the Queen, the Demon Queen, she is gone for you
must ready for the terror.” “But where is she?” He cried.
“Fear now, sweet child, the Emperor comes, and I am here
To sooth you.” “Where is Leilisia?” “The Empty world
Surrounds you, and soon the foot steps of an Emperor
Will come. Do not fear my little one. He will find you.”
“No” said Arius, “I do not want it! I do not want to feel
Alone. Where has the village gone? Why am I alone?”
“And the king in the cave is weeping, and with his hand
So bloody he wipes his tears and it burns and it smells
And he hears the cries of his mother, he hears her screams
In the darkness. He hears his father’s poisoned words call
For the death of his son. Even in the marriage bed
He curses his son and swears he will come and will eat
His flesh and the mother cries out and the king in pain
Is screaming in the tomb. And you sweet child with your bird
Are waiting. The wall of the kingdom is broken. Now
We hear his footsteps come, and footsteps of your father.”
“No! No I do not want it! I do not want it!” He cried,
“He has comes now child, just as in my tale the father comes
With phallus bloody with the foul crimes, unspeakable,
He comes for his son in the cave, he comes with his steps
Of wounded love betrayed by his son, he comes with steps
Of shadows which slip into the crevices of fear.”
And Arius, weeping screaming squeezed the infant bird
So tight it burst in his hands, disgust and terror came
In remorse, in shadow too black to fall through in screams
Of an empty world he wept at the footsteps coming,
“And now in the tale the father has come, and opens the tomb
and the son for all his force of ancient silent rage
comes up”…and as she spoke the footsteps came and the child
In heart beats racing screamed, and the king in the cave, blind
With the light, screamed and he took the scythe all wet with his blood
And the child as he heard the opening door in screams
Fled to the prayers of the alter, the King in the cave
In frenzy and rage cried out and the scythe came cutting
In his hands and the father bled and the child made mad
Made blood with the spear… and the world grew dark and silent.
Kronos, opening his eyes to the sunlit world felt
From the shadows of suffering come rising out the
Spring of a vast transforming power, flooding the world
In unearthly music. The severed phallus, bleeding
In the grass, and the due of the weepings of the earth
Were as signs, horrible beyond speech and all mind
Of the death of Winter. Eudaimonia stood there
Before him, luminous and smiling, and free. “Now
Is the Memory recovered” said she. “Now the world
Is ripe for birth. I have found my husband in the spring.
For he is the world, I am the mirror and meaning.
He is what passes, but I am what is and will be.
There is no language yet which will convey the beauty
Of this place. This is the heaven of the Gods, and I
Am the union of all things. Scarlets and ambers, greens
and the azure blue, and the gold of the sun and stars
of silver edge, and the whispers of the rivulets
And the textures of the moss are tapestries of music
That play in the imageless hues, on the fringe of the skirt
Of eternity. Now, monarch of the universe,
Enter your world. The reign of your people will flourish
In the sun. For the realm of the Titans is now come.
The island of the serpent has vanished like a sleep.
Will your people remember? The Apocryphon lives
Within them, but shrouded, like mist in mystery-veils,
Waiting at all times to be found. Soft forgetfulness
Can be in itself a blessing of innocents, bright
And open to the earth. So let the Titans find you,
Their hands made moist with the fruit from the trees, their tresses down
In the breeze of spring, billowing with the warmth of the sun,
Golden in the soul of memory. This is your earth
And sky, you creature of beginnings. The leaves of joy
Are bright in the day, the colors and fragrances fill
The vessels of your being, the found experience
Of the wholeness of the world which rose from a dream of pain.”
