1.
Cerberus
It seems officious
Guarding the living and the dead
Each from the other
And yet the passion
Has a fierce intensity
That lights the purpose
Those six wild eyes, those
Open sleepless mouths, that
Ever-vigilant
Living boundary
Keeps apart the somber realms
Their dark integrities
The dead are crowding
Shamans throw the poisoned meat
Orpheus sings, steps over
2.
Minotaur
I remember Mummy picking me up and tickling me
But all the servants afraid and none of the children they brought
wanting to play
I smashed the little dog cart they brought to amuse me
Even the dogs were frightened.
As I grew the palace was my playground
I ran the corridors like a desert wind
Howling, howling -
They roped me, tangled me, chained me
Mummy was sad, came to me, had my room moved near her quarters.
Some nights, when I was calm, she held and stroked me,
Sang to me so sweetly the shadows danced.
Those nights she opened the shutters and showed me the moon.
The moon was bright and lonely, and I loved her with all my heart.
When Mummy died I tore my chains
And wandered the palace, free, unchallenged.
They fed me uncooked meat as if I were a monster
I called for dates and wine, but they pretended not to understand me
I cannot remember the first taste of human flesh
They kept me starving but they did not want me weak.
I hated them with all my heart.
Someone left the little windows on the moon
That was their kindness
When I grew calm the shadows danced again.
The first time the boys and girls were left inside the palace
I was hungry they had starved me restless weeks
The children were frail, dying. I waited until they were lying still
I did not wish to kill them they were no sport for me
I was no ravenous monster
The years went by, and the princess grew.
Mummy had died when she was small and she was kept from me
But one night she crept to my windows
Reached through and touched my face.
And then she learned my speech
We talked all night my heart was kindled she was sweet and bright.
She was my sister my third true love.
Then he came.
It was the season the ships arrived,
The time of hunger.
She came and begged me to spare him
So I told her the rules she did not understand
How the children were fated to die.
She wept
I had a vision made the shadows dance
How I could make her happy
How it was my time to die, and he could leave the palace in glory.
It was my time I said, in all the darkness I had been happy
With Mummy and the moon, and her.
She cried and thanked me as a sister.
She was a clever girl, she saw the opportunity.
A sword was what she gave him, no fabled ball of string
The labyrinth was the palace. corridors of destiny,
Our fates that ending, endless day.
He was the stuff of heroes, feeble man
And I the stuff of legend, I had seen the shining path
And left the trail of life.
3.
Dragon (a sequence)
Across the dark sky
Riding the turbulent winds
Atavistic fire
Deep in the earth
Long bones, gleaming scales, sinews
Eyelids half open
Asleep in the cave
His shining coils assembled
Dreaming intestines
Easy to forget
So much lethal weaponry
Those draconian claws
Impossible to see
The whole passionate being
In one complete scan
Transparent he waits
Still amid the winter woods
Profiled in the snow
Do we know it’s gone
Or is there still a deep lair
Somewhere on the Earth?
What is the treasure
Around which the dragon coils?
Gold? Jewels? Memory? Time?
A dragon unleashed
Is the terror of the Earth
A nightmare made flesh
Falling asleep I
Become the dragon’s prey, I,
The endgame of dreams
The dragon constant
Multiplies the worldly count
By the speed of light
I am the alpha
Roars the dispossessed dragon
Scorching the hatches of the ark
Like the polar bear
The dragon must swim the air
Till the dry land rises
The stroke of midnight
Signals the dragon’s coming
The end of silence
He always has it
The perpetual advantage:
Surprise never fails
Caught in dragon’s breath
Fevered air to freeze the will:
Coma, no escape
Reptilian wings: a dragon soars
Swims the clouds, wanders Earth and sky
Living world at play
He will rise again
Brilliant against the night
Brings back the old world
Conjuring dragons
From the storeroom of our fears
We mixed in raw power
Great wings flap slowly
Sounds of dry crackling paper
Shadowing the land
Across the whole world
Dragons haunt the narrow lanes
Where time and space meet
4.
Mermaid
I’m all washed up,
dumped by the tide
in a tangle of seaweed,
my hair matted and stiff with salt,
barnacles clinging to my bare breasts,
my tail entangled
in a fisherman’s line, his hook
embedded deep like a tick.
I’m bleeding, briny,
smelling of fish.
Wish I had a mirror and a comb
but there’s nothing in
the flotsam on this beach
but plastic bags and beer cans.
I’ll have to start singing,
lure me an old sea-dog
to come and rescue me,
though my voice is rusty
since I haven’t talked to a soul all day
and I’m thirsty, so thirsty.
I’ve lost my home.
My beautiful youth
faded a long time ago,
I’ve not even the inclination to go on,
battered by the sea,
which tries to drag me back
with every new tide.
It’s bleak, on my own on this rock.
Not a good time to be a mermaid.
I’m too old to be postmodern,
too wily to be Disneyland,
too tired to be ironic.
Please don’t put me
in a zoo,
in your phone,
in the papers,
my hair’s all thin and grey,
I’ve lost my teeth,
my breasts flap like deflated balloons,
my tail is dried out and sore,
and it’s spread, and spread, and spread.
Rosemary McLeish
5.
The Kraken
Shapeless the kraken
Lies in the darkness, down deep
Waits to rise again
Unimaginable
In our own minds’ recesses
The power gathers
It cannot be yet
Here on the surface the waters
Are calm, unruffled
But we know, we know
In the back of our mindings
Our moments will pass
5.
The Kraken
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - 1809-1892
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
7.
Transparent Tigers
Deep in the jungle
The far Tibet of the mind
Transparent tigers
Prowl through the darkness
Their massive paw prints
Tracking through the mud
8.
Yeti
In the frozen wastes
The yeti comes, disappears,
Appears, disappears
9.
The Yaks of Heaven
The Yaks of Heaven
Crossing the high pass quietly
Seek the sweetest grass
10.
St. Mark
by D. H. Lawrence
THERE was a lion in Judah
Which whelped, and was Mark.
But winged.
A lion with wings.
At least at Venice.
Even as late as Daniele Manin.
Why should he have wings?
Is he to be a bird also?
Or a spirit?
Or a winged thought?
Or a soaring consciousness?
Evidently he is all that
The lion of the spirit.
Ah, Lamb of God
Would a wingless lion lie down before Thee, as this
winged lion lies?
The lion of the spirit.
Once he lay in the mouth of a cave
And sunned his whiskers,
And lashed his tail slowly, slowly
Thinking of voluptuousness
Even of blood.
But later, in the sun of the afternoon
Having tasted all there was to taste, and having slept his fill
He fell to frowning, as he lay with his head on his paws
And the sun coming in through the narrowest fibril of a
slit in his eyes.
So, nine-tenths asleep, motionless, bored, and statically
angry.
He saw in a shaft of light a lamb on a pinnacle, balancing a
flag on its paw.
And he was thoroughly startled.
Going out to investigate
He found the lamb beyond him, on the inaccessible pinnacle
of light.
So he put his paw to his nose, and pondered.
"Guard my sheep," came the silvery voice from the
pinnacle,
"And I will give thee the wings of the morning."
So the lion of the senses thought it was worth it.
Hence he became a curly sheep-dog with dangerous pro-
pensities
As Carpaccio will tell you:
Ramping round, guarding the flock of mankind,
Sharpening his teeth on the wolves,
Ramping up through the air like a kestrel
And lashing his tail above the world
And enjoying the sensation of heaven and righteousness and
voluptuous wrath.
There is a new sweetness in his voluptuously licking his paw
Now that it is a weapon of heaven.
There is a new ecstasy in his roar of desirous love
Now that it sounds self-conscious through the unlimited sky.
He is well aware of himself
And he cherishes voluptuous delights, and thinks about
them
And ceases to be a blood-thirsty king of beasts
And becomes the faithful sheep-dog of the Shepherd, think-
ing of his voluptuous pleasures of chasing the sheep to
the fold
And increasing the flock, and perhaps giving a real nip here
and there, a real pinch, but always well meant.
And somewhere there is a lioness
The she-mate.
Whelps play between the paws of the lion
The she-mate purrs
Their castle is impregnable, their cave,
The sun comes in their lair, they are well-off
A well-to-do family.
Then the proud lion stalks abroad, alone
And roars to announce himself to the wolves
And also to encourage the red-cross Lamb
And also to ensure a goodly increase in the world.
Look at him, with his paw on the world
At Venice and elsewhere.
Going blind at last.
11.
Who is the Basilisk?
I, a basiliskComposed of single mammal
Stare out at the world
12.
The Chimera
The Chimera stalksThrough the forest wanderings
Weaving its tight net
Searching the darkness
Ark of our understanding
Eternally alone
A pace so even
It freezes the timelessness
Numbs the sense of loss
Follows the echoing footsteps
Through the pool's reflection
Into the gelid humour
The closing eye of the world.
13.
Cloud Horses
Cloud-strewn, the sky paths
Of the cantering horses
Are muffled with starlight
Riders of the night
Silently passing over
The sleeping humans
14.
Peryton
The human shadow
Cast by a winged stag:
Murder exorcized
15.
The Night Swimmer
Waits frozen in place
As the glow of sunset embers
Deepens into dark
Then slips quietly
Into the great pool of sky
Holds the breath of ages
Unfurls its wing-acres
Launches from the quietening
From the woods the plains the prairies
Into the waters round the world
16.
The Phoenix
Pure resurrection:Rising from the blank darkness,
Vital being aflame
Suttee for the world
Brilliant immolation
Defying the night
Time itself reverses
Look, look there ! Ashes ignite
What cannot be, is
The laws of causes
Go up in smoke, burning cold
Their words glittering .
17.
Manticore
A lion seems enough
To threaten in anger, red
With a scorpion tail::
But beasts of darkness
Rarely have human faces
With multiple teeth
So whence comes this one
From our deepest memories,
From the nightmare past?
Is this an image
Of ourselves retrieved from scraps
Of hard-fought insight,
Or stemming from dreams,
Profound reflections,or
Light before new hope?
Down in the circles
Peering in the swirling night,
We can't resolve it.
18.
Fire Dragons
The fire dragons' wings
Glow with pure iridescence
Need no photonic light.
In the deepest caves
Down in the profoundest seas
The chemistry burns
The millions set to rise
Their shadows plunging upwards
From anaerobic bliss
19.
Echidna
Typhon, her lover
Enters the cave of darkness
Ruptures the silence
In her rage of birth
She will utter forth monsters
A chain forever
In the throes of life
You'll never encounter her:
In death you'll join her.
20.
Nine-tailed foxes
The nine-tailed foxes
Running spirals through the night
Appear, disappear -
The collapsing mists
Sift tantalizing glimpses
Bewildering sight
Hunters and hunted
Multiplying images
Mirroring lost paths
Weave ancient patterns
From the wisps of landscape
Foreshadowing worlds
Where time is held suspended
21.
Caladrius
When I am lying sick
And my loved ones are wondering
Bring me the white bird
And see, does it turn away?
Then all the world will turn away.
Or will it face me out
And take from me death's failing breath
And rise to cleanse it in full sun
Above the clouds of Earth, in brilliant sky?
22.
Wyvern
Very challenging
To be a mid-stage dragon
When so strong and fierce
When justice rears up
On twin unbalanced pillars
Endangering the world
When change is rapid,
Heat rising sudden, intense
From calm birth at sea
