Strange Birds of Phlegra

(a play on Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Bk 10)

I drank from the pool in Delphi's silver temple, and this is what I saw:

Giant winged things, giants,
I mean larger than any palace you've ever seen or dreamed,
just surround yourself with animals, with fat thanksgiving turkeys,
or with small barnyard brood,
pigmey giants, or by Jove, surround yourself with moons,
Galloping Ganymede, Zeus rapes who Zeus wants to rape,
and I will still sing to you of giants! Giant minds, smaller than brains,
thoughts are like bolts of lightning on the Phlegraean plains.

"Drink blood and grow strong,
Kill to live long!"
that's the refrain of the giants' song.
It only gets worse from here,
because the only thing that really kills man is his fear,
and we love to wear that saffron veil
and sputter out like smoke,
the bloodless ghosts are left weeping, waiting.
But every serpent loves a soft ankle,
and every mortal stones and Styx,
and Sisyphus sits idly on his rock.

So Let me sing of gentler songs,
and I'll sing of boys because I favor them:
like the gods did. Let us fly on fictitious eagle wings, O trojan lad,
let us mingle our nectar, O trojan protector,
be my prophylaxis, and yet also my access,
so lovely are Trojans in the ass. But I loathe the donkey,
so I call upon Aries, and will ram you, make you immortal,
though you have died, and you will blossom again
on these Phlegraean turfs, and I will pluck you, twist my fingers
in your curls, discharge you from my army
into my arms, impaled on my spear,
pierced by my javelin, this is our private war,
decided with slacked-jawed grunts of victory.
The immortals obsessed on death,
because every death was only le petit mort, O O
O to kill in heaven is to love most passionately.

His zither and his bow no longer fill
his eager mind (though my arrows fill his behind),
and the grate of my song, fills him all day long.
He will carry my nets and dogs
Heedlessly, I say fuck his dignity,
I carry the leash like a titan,
and lead us into the feathered breast of night,
strange birds of the night, gizzards dissembling
and digesting every trace light.