The breezes stung his bleeding knees
as he hopped between his hoof and his foot.
A blue bar breached the black rock.
Whether the moon was a morning straggler
or a mask eager for an evening stage,
one thing was certain: the sea in the distance.
Relearning light’s language, the boy
studied the cave’s carved anteroom,
where rites had amassed mounds of bones
beneath a mural: a man or god,
whose bloody hair had blanched, was standing
on an unrigged boat or a brown boulder,
while grasses or waves were wagging green
above an etiolated brass rectangle.
Asterion stared at the image,
which reminded him of a man he hated.