The Cambion's Tale
The north wind is in the wildwood
tonight, calling the last
specklings of summer’s regret
from the moondripping trees,
fragmented friable tongues of
henna and ochre lost to a dusty haze
that blots future and past, dead voices
rustling the song that calls me to you
my hell born babe, heart’s delight
soul’s inquistor.
Changeling and woodwose
furred with frosted moss and mist
horned with bone, poised always
to run; you regard me blinkless,
hermetic as a wild thing, gaze of
opals burning through the veil where
I pretend to be protected invisible
as Niniane, everlost instead
fate-tangled and resistless to
the beckon of that blue unicorn eye.
So I come out of the night
for your lichen'd kiss, rain
cold, full of the taste of rust
yet sweeter than any vintage
pressed from the sun's full flaunt. We're
as fallen as Rome remembered, love,
all my smooth green weight leaning
on the colonnade of whispers
you unbury from the
heart’s shallow grave.
My breath is gone again.
You’ve whistled for it; obedient
hound of my hollowed lungs it lopes,
leashed in your brimstone binding
tighter than the chest that
knows the next gasp is last.
The night wind blows hellfire
around us where the idol burns,
fading sandalwood smoke
bolted with blood, spiced with loss.
O there’s nothing wrong with us
that reincarnation won’t cure.
*The last two lines are extrapolated from an old saying passed around in the 60's.
Image: Tamara and the Demon, by Mikhail Vrubel, watercolor, 1891
Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org
