Typhaon the terrible, outrageous and lawless, was joined in love to her,
the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce
offspring. . . . And in a hollow cave she bore another monster, irresistible.
Hesiod, Theogony
The eyes of bats accuse her. No one else
is there. You did this they’d say if they
could care or speak. We don’t choose
our evil, our evil chooses us, a calling
like any other. Let us pray, she tells
the bats and dripping walls, let us pray,
& bow our heads to whatever made us,
whatever left us this way.
Those who create give us meaning but
only their own, is-ness being is-ness
whatever we might want. For their needs
they build us to need. They build us
to love and then let go and none of it
is sacred because none of it is really
ever ours.
Echidna, mother of monsters, made
to bear what she bore, love what she loved.
Who first gave life to Orthus the hound
of Geryones, and then to the famed Cerebus
limned in awe by Hesiod as the brazen-
voiced hound of Hades, a monster not to be
overcome that may not be described,
though she could enumerate its every hair,
describe each of its mouths content at her
all-too-human breasts, because nothing
is lost if it’s remembered, the cruelest gift
that’s given by the gods who give us nothing
for free. Some serpents whisper in gardens.
Some serpents wait in caves to hear
the news, how the children they birthed
in horror died in horror on the glittering
swords of the greatest of men. She pours
the salt of sacrifice, breaks the unleavened
bread of time on the scales of her own belly,
in which rests the scorched and abandoned
cavern of her womb.
From where she lies she can see the light of day
that never touches, the eyes of bats like pearls,
the blind eggs of insects waiting patiently to hatch.
Amnion of desire cold as stone and so damned
hard. All that lives dies, even here. What she longs
for is not mercy. Not forgiveness. Deeper in the cave,
Lethe purls itself into the cradle called forgetting,
the one and only god worth ever dying for.
John Blair has published seven books, including the winner of the Iowa Prize for Poetry, “Playful Song Called Beautiful,” as well as poems & stories in magazines including The Colorado Review, Poetry, and The Georgia Review.