The Cambion's Tale
The wind rolls in the wildwood
tonight, teasing the last
specklings of summer’s regret
from the moon-dripping trees,
fragmented friable tongues of
henna and ochre milled to a dusty haze
that blots future and past, dead voices
rustling the leafsong that calls me to you
my hell born babe, heart’s delight
soul’s inquisitor.
Changeling and demiurge,
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, a drenching draft 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 pull from some pocket in
the heart’s shallow grave.
the heart’s shallow grave.
My breath is gone again;
you’ve whistled for it. Lost
dog of my hollowed lungs,
it lopes at your heel, leashed
it lopes at your heel, leashed
tighter than the strangled chest
that knows its next gasp for last.
The night wind blows brimstone
around us, where the idol burns a
fading sandalwood smoke
bolted with blood, spiced with loss.
O there’s nothing wrong with us, love
that reincarnation won’t cure.
~October 2011
revised, February 2016
cambion: According to the Malleus Maleficarum, the offspring of a human male and a succubus, or a human female and an incubus. Caliban and Merlin are both assigned this dubious distinction.
*The last two lines are extrapolated from an anonymous saying passed around in the 60's.
Image: The Bathers, 1904, by Odillon Redon Public domain. Manipulated.
