The Devouring of Hesiod
Again and again I awaken, hungry. The echo of the thiasos-drum is distant in me, and none have come with torch by the river-shore to take and to give and to sing and to taste of my flesh. I smell the libations long since receded from the soil, and the forest is hardened by boundary-law, pillar-law, city-law.
So you have learned from us one flame-song which is tended in the hearth of your roads by the staff and the lyre of your wardens, yet now you have turned from us and made of the wood a dry thing and made of the face of the river a carved thing stood upon the heights of your houses and your temples and your war-stands, and you think you are enough,
and we are feared,
and we are slain.
I step behind sunset, six paws splayed wet upon the tile, claws clicking, tail sweeping, ears turning, eyes staring. I find you and know you by your laurel-song; I taste the dried spice upon your word, the salt upon your rhythm, the guilt upon your breast. I step from shadow and land among you and your companions and they tumble and they catch flame and are seared and flee or fall to ash or I catch them in my eyes and my claws and my teeth and make flesh of their flesh that my weight may press more firmly upon your belly oh doomed-man little song-carver little echo of a dream supped by root from forever.
I stand upon you, bone-crushing; I unbind you and sup upon your spine and my claws knead the flesh of your skull and my wings knead the light of your heart and my tail crushes the rind of your myth and I drink this. I listen to the music of your carving-song, your stitched-song, ink-stitched, fate-stitched, legend-stitched. I hear tale of light and dark and the human in you separates these and numbers them before and before and before like a fool like your walls are the distance and not the sky. I seek where you have bound your debt, your blushing ears, my feeble mouse-thing, and dig in where you faulted your soul six ways in the error of your tongue. Here I crack your pomander-heart and count the folly of your names.
In one you steep season upon season and layers chart the hour of your story,
In one you bind the rule of the loin to the pillar of the city,
Yet still in one you think you know, in the city where the masks laugh and cry,
Yet still all the broad shining sky and all the colors of the stars you call one,
And where your song drips wet upon your people’s soil and their sweat stains their backs and their lovers’ tongue, the river wends its way, stained in dream,
And in all this you call upon your world as one more thing, as if the city were to hatch for you, as if they were not each the world in kind.
My spit sweetens the rust of your chained words and your curses dissolve and I lick the honey from my jaw.
