I Did Try to Eat Arthur Dewson
At the corner of the rubbish bin where I left my crying heart
I turned to the gate to hell where I was transformed into male, and bull
This time around there aren’t two poets. I, the beast met in dark forest
Because loneliness altered to anger, and hunger
there in the forest I jumped the poet Arthur, on his way to circular voyages
But my lids were suddenly sealed together, and I fell onto musky rocks
shattering all memories of my life before.
Vailed, and chewing on my thumb I felt the hand of the poet reaching for my hand, and his voice:
“Come, Asterion. It is your time for hell, as there is no heaven.”
When all was dark, the biggest of beast welcomed us.
Big, elephant-like, there stood a misconceived Lucifer.
On his back we dived head down in water
and all I knew was all I had left:
memories of my mother
of tenderness
But Arthur’s hands fell on my shoulder carefully
like dew on river flowers
and again I could see from the eyes and mind of all of my lives
Again, there were birds
again, there were colours in an everlasting light casted
by a sky in flames
We are under now, we are somewhere else.
Angels are bald men and bald women
dressed in teared up robes of crows’ feathers
and crows’ skin
We are where never there were
we are where always they’ll be
I could see now the poet, dressed in turquoise and jade
I could see the golden dragon, lying on the earth in leu of a fallen sun
“Here we are, Asterion, where if you’re lucky one day you’ll be.
There is pain, but you won’t suffer”.
The dragon has hands, and it raises two fingers and speaks
in an ancient tongue I comprehend:
You are my daughter, Minotaur, and not the son of a woman and a bull
You are my daughter too, Arthur, and not a body from the realms above
As sisters you come now to be
As your journey the poet-daughter will sing
You look, Asterion
as your horns will have to lead, and your bulky frame will conceive
the poet from the ancient Dante, who jealously holds both the parchment and the tapestry of dance:
were in light and darkness nouns and verbs meet.
Arthur takes time to sing,
but I am a just a bull, and will not re-read.
Hi, everyone! This prose/poem was in honour of the masterful work of Arthur Dewson who conceived so beautifully his Cantos. Here you’ll find the first “chapter”, Averno:
