Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

2
THE SIBYL AT DIDYMOS
It is a place of spiders, a floor
of sodden earth wriggling with lizards,
a moil of rodents, riddled with serpent holes,
a cavern shunned by the cleansing daylight
where the Sibyl’s rising and sleeping obey
the urge and orbit of the moon and stars.
Her bed — a wooden casket gray and damp.
Her throne — a niche carved out of limestone.
Her food — a cauldron hung like a brazen bell
over the steam of a sulfur spring.
Tros stands his ground in the brimstone cave,
ignores the smell of mould, the nitre veins,
repeats his request to the shadowed crone,
“Sibyl, I come to eat of your mushrooms.”
Her bony hands move to dismiss him,
the sleeves of her robe as stiff as stalactites.
Instead, he moves closer, until he can see
her prominent nose, her browless eyes,
the single hair on the end of her chin,
the tight lips framing her toothless jaws,
the knotted locks of her snow-white hair,
her Stygian complexion. “Do not persist.
Back to your hillsides, chieftain, go back
and do not meddle with the Olympians.”
“Sibyl, I come to eat of your mushrooms.
I am your guest until my eyes perceive
the gods and what they have done to my son.”
Her eyelids, stained blue to the semblance
of watchfulness, lift up to vacant sockets.
“Draw near, then, mortal, and be my eyes,
and I shall be your ears and speech.
We eat, and then we die and journey together.”