Content Warning: death, dark themes
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Kit Ingram – The Dark One of Strophades
‘…no crueller plague, ever rose from
the waters of Styx, at the gods’ anger.’
—Virgil, The Aeneid, Book III: 215-216
Follow the stones of a
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tumbledown wall to where
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they crumble into a question.
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Dusk or another disaster beats fire at
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the silhouettes of the far tombs.
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What do you suppose these
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dark piles are, all glint and menace?
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We stitch between answers.
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A shriek on the wind!
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We’re getting deeper into a
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state we can’t easily return from.
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You hum a lullaby
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while I stumble over lines
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from an epic poem.
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The ancients wrote of
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a bird that sizzles into ash and
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rises anew. You scoop a handful of
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feathers, lustred as onyx.
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Raven? Crow? One escapes and
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whisks onto the head of a shadow.
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It turns to speak in a gale of whispers,
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cracking its wings on the air.
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Do you know what I am?
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Come closer! And I see a monster
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gentled by a human face.
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The last of the harpies,
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a lonely storm.