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[2much-estrogen.livejournal.com]

Philoctetes On the Island
Michael Ondaatje

Sun moves broken in the trees
drops like a paw
turns sea to red leopard

I trap sharks and drown them
stuffing gills with sand
cut them with coral till
the blurred grey runs
red designs.

And kill to fool myself alive
to leave all pity on the staggering body
in order not to shoot an arrow up
and let it hurl
down through my petalling skull
or neck vein, and lie
heaving round the wood in my lung.
That the end of thinking.
Shoot either eye of bird instead
and run and catch it in your hand.

One day a bird went mad
flew blind along the beach
smashed into a dropping wave
out again and plummeted.
Later knocked along the shore.

To slow an animal
break its foot with a stone
so two run wounded
reel in the bush, flap
bodies at each other
till free of forest
it gallops broken in the sand,
then use a bow
and pin the tongue back down its throat.

With wind the rain wheels like a circus hoof,
aims at my eyes, rakes up the smell of animals
of stone moss, cleans me.
Branches fall like nightmares in the dark
till sun breaks up
and spreads wound fire at my feet

then they smell me,
the beautiful animals


**In case, like me, your Greek mythology sucks:

Philoctetes in Greek mythology, son of Poias. He acquired, by gift, the bow and arrow of Hercules by lighting the pyre on which the hero was consumed alive. On his way to the Trojan War, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. Because the smell of his wound and his cries made him offensive, his companions left him on the desolate island of Lemnos. When an oracle declared that Troy could not be taken without the weapons of Hercules, Philoctetes was brought to Troy by Neoptolemus (or Diomedes) and Odysseus. Sophocles’ drama Philoctetes is based on the efforts of Neoptolemus and Odysseus to bring Philoctetes to Troy.

Comments

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Please edit your post to include the author's name! Thanks.

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Danke! I adore Ondaatje -- especially The English Patient and "To A Sad Daughter."