Poem: 'Terror On Tethys / The Stone God Of Saturn'

TERROR ON TETHYS /

THE

STONE GOD OF SATURN

grown different, we destroy them,
the parents, as we must,
in the ruins of ship we devour them,
the parents, as we must, yet
voices persist from eaten flesh
to stalk sleeptime to echo lies
of worlds beyond world
a home beyond home and
a life without statue

grows different each brood,
limbs imitate stone tentacles, now
sleek-beaked, scale-warted skin with
ichor-green gleam of Saturn light

I’ve seen beyond
the statue’s jewelled jungle
that grows as broods multiply, seen
the incandescent configuration of Saturn
rise over mile-high methane mountains
and know there’s nowhere but here

grown different, we destroy them,
the parents, as we must, in the
ruins of their ship we eat flesh
to feed the statue as it feeds us,
yet voices stalk sleeptime
and whisper lies

of this dead moon they hit, dead but
for billion-year artefact, alien, vile,
statue vaster than ship itself, octopoid,
triggered by, reacting to, feeding on
human warmth, and lives: exhaling air,
and new life - of a kind, speeding
metabolism, scrambling gene-codes
into otherness, while
returning Tethys
to... what?

growing different,
as we must




Published in:
‘GRUE no.13’ (USA - October 1991)
‘THE 1992 RHYSLING ANTHOLOGY’ (USA - August 1992)
and the collection:
‘EUROSHIMA MON AMOUR’ Hilltop Press (UK-Oct 2000)