she will have loved—let it be plain to see!
Her palms made crooked gamma when she prayed:
O master of the breezes that have played
across my bosom and between my thighs
each day I’ve climbed this tower, neutralize
the ground’s blunt force, and if I land intact
I’ll give your altars something they have lacked:
a fin whale, the fake fish who loots your air;
you’ll see its lungs sizzle in the sun’s glare.
Aeolus, let me flutter safely down:
even love is stifling in a doomed town.
Scylla climbed the parapets and scraped
a sandal-pick arpeggio and escaped
her father’s home the short hard way.
But Aeolus didn’t hear her pray:
his horses’ clopping clogged his gusty cave,
while a priestess purred fake prayers to save
his daughter from her would-be husband’s sire.
But olive boughs and apples weren’t a choir,
and though they blocked the sight they couldn’t thwart
the birthday boy’s inaugural report:
the scream elicited by light and air
from all who’ve only known one dark warm lair.
But undistracted by domestic woes,
Boreas heard, resenting that she chose
a senile porter while the air she breathed,
the air that cooled her as Megara seethed,
issued from Boreas, who normally
spent summer brooding on a frozen sea.
But now each noon he raced the sun to drink
the sweat that bubbled on her forehead’s brink—
a race he always lost but never spurned:
her hands recalled Euryonme’s. He yearned
to recreate his metamorphosis.
Though Helios monopolized her bliss,
he didn’t stop her fall. Discarding hair
and legs, the north wind caught her in midair
and soared away from Greece. She gripped his scales
and wept into a sea bereft of sails.
They landed on a foggy heath, whose folk
knelt mute before the serpent as he broke
her maidenhead. She should have memorized
each drooling face, whose wonder authorized
the rapist and his labors, but the pain
engrossed her mind, which stored a daisy chain
of yokels cheering as he spun his coils—
each hoping to enjoy his castoff spoils.
The serpent poured his hailstones and resumed
whistling north, while Scylla lay entombed
under a flagstone sky. To live, to exhume
herself, was mockery. She wiped her womb
on sering ferns that flourished where the sarsens
would’ve blocked the glare of day arc arsons.
The yokels wobbled toward the girl, intent
on celebrating her divine descent
with mortal molestations, but a boy
loomed over Scylla and forestalled their joy:
his lyre loosed a chord that drove them back,
and blame erupted from his tall hood’s black:
Buh bar buh bar buh bar buh bar buh BAR¹
Bar buh buh bar buh bar buh bar buh BAR¹.     The harvest moon!
Buh bar buh bar buh bar buh bar bay BAR²      No time to fuck!
Bar buh buh bar buh bar buh bar bay BAR².
The droolers recommenced their drudgery.
The bard’s hood dropped: a crusty filigree
composed the scalp above a woman’s face.
To curb the chill and mitigate disgrace,
they wrapped her in her mantle, took her hand,
and guided her across damp grazing land
where plum-capped orchids haunt the upright brome.
She led her to a place that passed for home:
an ash-thatched hovel windowed by the door.
Inside, the lyre lit the dark whose guest
wept while the bard’s grim chants deferred her rest:
Bar buh buh bar buh bar buh bar bay BAR².
Buh bar buh bar buh bar buh bar bay BAR²     Cock is the root.
Bar buh buh bar buh bar buh bar buh BAR¹     Every evil.
Buh bar buh bar buh bar buh bar buh BAR¹.
Her weeping was a footnote to the rain,
whose love of Britain matched the sun’s disdain.
She watched the broth until the bard came back,
their mantle muddied, from the day’s attack
on her neighbors’ ignorance and vice.
Though meter interfered with their sage advice,
nothing deterred the bard: their poor cognition
must gain the benefits of repetition.
A month of days, a menstrual syncope.
But this did not reduce her agony:
a gusty flail eclipsed her bloody flow
as that precocious thing began to blow.
From where she sat, the doorway’s side afforded
a glimpse of huddled sarsens, where the sordid
locals beheld her rape. Had some barbaric
Amphion raised them with a catgut derrick?
Or had they raised themselves to form a henge
and screen the torments they would not avenge
by crushing that snake or his worshippers?
The bard returned, their shoulders lofting furze
for fuel, and Scylla pointed out the door
while miming her demand to share his lore.
It took some time to figure out the exact
object of her curiosity: they lacked
a common tongue despite the bard’s desire
to merge with Scylla. An answer would deny her
what she wished to know, for ignorance
averts our indexed world of difference:
Bar buh buh bar buh bar buh bar buh BAR¹.
Buh bar buh bar buh bar buh bar buh BAR¹      No one knows
Bar buh buh bar buh bar buh bar bay BAR².     Why they’re there.
Buh bar buh bar buh bar buh bar bay BAR².
But luckily — that is, unluckily—
pain soon collapsed her curiosity:
her belly arced to give the wind some room,
which only spread the havoc in her womb.
Weeks amassed months, but Boreas’s bastard
wouldn’t relent his blasting till he plastered
the drafty walls with Scylla’s flesh and scored
the birthday weaker innocents abhorred.
When fiddleheads unfurled, the would-not-be
mother mimed an end to this misery:
her right hand grabbed a knife and skimmed her throat;
the left, in turn, prescribed an antidote
to violations yet-to-come. Her speech
murked what her pantomime could not unteach:
Oos awn oos awn oos awn oos awn oos awn
Awn oos awn oos awn oos awn oos awn oos.
Oon aws oon aws oon aws oon aws oon aws
Awn oos aws oon awn oos aws oon awn oos!