Even when the sky is full of disaster, <br />Tell me, what can they take from you- <br />When you have hidden the hungry mouths <br />Scattered in the silken forest, <br />Tossed into the hyperactive rivers, <br />Furrowed with the serpent’s fang <br />In an opulent blanket provided by the needing moon: <br />So early in the morning from this <br />Your friends up sprang, bellicose and frightened <br />Born decorated in the instruments of their careers <br />Already they began maiming their old fellows <br />The clanging, persistent greetings killers give, <br />Until like a woman unjustly wed, <br />They fell back to slumber pell-mell <br />In all parts the catastrophe <br />All this the red lizard watched <br />Tasting the act on his budded tongue <br />Not far in the forest, curled about <br />The top most coned bows of a fur tree <br />Like smoldering garland draped there <br />By a wicked woman who sang nakedly <br />The promises which whisper in wells <br />To little doe-eyed children who bend over <br />To give their ears a listen <br />Further and further <br />Until down and down they fell.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cadmus-amnesia/
