A cutting wind came screeching, like a bird
Of prey, from heaven down on the deterred
Elected and their island home. It blew
So hard, so judge's gavel hard, it threw
Up waves, now foamy white, throughout the black
Surrounding sea, which set down with a smack
Each ploios of the famed Elector's Fleet
They lifted up into the air. Their neat
Arrangement, pointing to, with artfulness,
The temple at the island's heart, was now mere mess.
—
The congregation cowered as it left
The temple's portal—doubled by the heft
The heaven's current heaped on ever head;
Upset by how it cut through every thread
To bite into the human skin beneath—
It pulled on hair, stung eyes, and rattled teeth.
Despite their individuality
All felt the wind's superiority—
The teary-eyed cried harder from the blast;
The dry-eyed wept to join them as a single caste.
—
Sophia Sophos felt this stinging too—
Eventually. But first, what jolted through
Her body, what had kept her senselessly
In motion was the wretchedness to see
Her son again, to see him safe and sound.
No other stimulus could reach her downed
Capacities, not while she ran. It took
A gust which pulled her, like a bishop's hook
Around her neck, down to the ground to shift
Her overactive mind, too long adrift
In its maternal dreams, to what she felt
Just then, there in the dirt path where she knelt:
Fatigue within—a torturer without.
She could not stand again, so plagued throughout
Her body by the ache of overuse—
So she collapsed. Her stirred-up gut let loose
Its contents—her head lowered—her eyes closed.
Completely emptied, she was now disposed
To feel the power of the wind and view
Its dominance in action as it blew
Above her in the rooftops' reeds, before
Her in the swaying shrubs. Do they implore
Me with their suffering? Are they in pain?
Is this a mundane buffeting for them?
Have they been mired on a pilgrimage
To somewhere far more beautiful than we
Have ever found or lost or been lead to?
Are they thus animated to be free?
Are these attempts to flag us down for help?
Are these the gestures of a warning friend?
Or random mayhem set off by the wind?
The others walked, not paying any mind
To her or to the plants' abuse, divorced,
First off, from one another through the forced
Withdrawal they each effected; secondly,
If every eye that stared straight emptily
Was any sign, they found themselves detached,
Too, from the truths their minds abortively dispatched.
—
Still trembling, Sophia stood. She braced
Herself against the whipping wind that chased
All tenderness and tolerance away—
The world was in a startling array,
One new and altogether out of joint
From her preceding, swirling vantage point.
She saw, in one direction, narrowing
Her eyes, the true size of their tiny ring
Of land which bounded the Elected, like
A fettering, unfinished truth. A dike
To bar us from the oceanic most—
To keep a greater truth from flooding in
And burying this meager coast of ours.
A glimpse into a further-reaching world
And access to expanding knowledge are
Beyond our reach—we've been cut off from these!
We have been slashed and hacked!—the victims of
A soulful vivisection! Nature is
The cancer which the sharpened scalpel called
Modernity has bloodily removed;
While war has purified our love for man;
And fear has checked the epidemic self.
We ought to thank our masters for this health!
She turned, and faced the temple, without stealth—
Her knees unbent, her chin thrown back, her gaze
Now wide and chilled into an icy blaze.
How can one single structure shrink our scope
And harm the soul? she thought, and now could cope
With her religion's building tyrannies
By delving deep within herself—past pleas
Her weaker, learned, forgiving thoughts invoked—
Deep down into an unrest which revoked
The chance to bridge the ever-swelling sea
Between that building's deathly love and she.
It is a solitary edifice,
A tree amongst a world-expanded wood
Presenting one acidic fruit while more—
Some sweeter, some far more sustaining, some
More quickening—are always set before
One at the banquet of humanity.
And yet we're taught it is the only source
Of life and that which fuels it to endure—
Of safety in a terror-stricken world—
Of the key template mapping out our lives.
A fear of losing life has satisfied
Us this is so, for we have held our tongues
While it assumed the power it now holds.
It is the temple's broadcasts which dictate
Our living's every action—chooses who
We are and who we're not to marry—and
Decides what we should give up to its cause.
And why have we agreed to this for years
On years?—The temple dwellers know in which
Direction Eudemonia is reached!
But why assume that happiness is there
Somewhere, a goal, from where the holy call
Us home? Why can't it be the path that leads
Us back upon itself repeatedly?—
The tides and currents of an active life
Which carry on by forces all their own,
Designing only forms their energies
Erratically and honestly produce—
Why can't it be our independent course?
There is a second lesson taught behind
Those unassuming walls. If fear of death
And of a joyless life were not enough—
For some might risk a gloomy walk to try
The forking, virgin path—they also press
Guilt onto every heart the instant it
Diverges from the dusty norm. Each step,
Endorsed by nature and necessity,
We take becomes the next day's sermon's theme,
Until, at last, an independent act
Is rendered purely nominal—as now!
But unlike ghostly worry, guilt's effect
Can't be dismissed. It is a working plough,
And in its wake we see a desert stretch
Till sight breaks off; we dip our hands into
A pool, but throw the water back as sand
Before it can relieve our blistered lips;
The unforgiving sun intrudes on us,
Although we're poised and cool within the shade.
No life is safe from this induced waste's heat.
Those few who see through its illusions are
Uncommonly imaginative, for
Most have assumed its actuality
And burn. The thoughtful's cherished ones
Are these—thus overlooking their distress
Constructs the phantom desert solidly—
And so through sympathy, he burns as well.
The other route that could elude guilt's snare
Is no less perilous—perhaps its traps
Are hungrier. It is a path down which
A salted earth consumes the fertile soul,
And hate—through looks, without an acting hand—
Kills every thriving bud of life in sight.
Where is the route to freedom which does not
Detour through cynicism nor through hate?
She then repeated Where? till, quite sedate
Again, she stumbled on.
—
But whereas numbness drove
Her heavy slanting steps before, she strove
Preoccupied now with a groggy hope
That she could apprehend the hazy slope
That slept before her—that provoking Thought-
Shape which possessed the power that she sought
To reestablish beauty in a hard,
Dogmatic world, and which could be unbarred,
Could only be unbarred, by forging the
Unheralded direction to which she
Flowed naturally, obeying the demands
Of her heart's compass's recondite hands.
As how to live the life that would wake such
A shape was still beyond her mind's numbed touch,
However, she walked clumsily, as if
Relearning how to walk, with those as blind, as stiff.
—
Without her knowing it, a pair of eyes
Did seek and follow her without disguise—
Uncaught, not criticized, allowed to leer
Without a legal check or a social jeer,
For these were times that lacked community.
Thus through the islanders' disunity,
The eyes of Nomos Rilla closely stalked
Sophia's movements. She had always balked
His love's advances, sending back his heart
That struck out with his words—a hunter's dart
That came back clean and empty of its meat.
His mantelpiece remained, thus, incomplete
Without a wife, and such a glaring blank,
A blow against his manhood, made it rank
Among the most frustrating obstacles
He faced. His life was free of refusals
Which would explain why, in spite of his fame,
His prowess and his wealth, the haunting shame
Of this one spurning couldn't be dismissed.
He often vented: Why does she insist
On wearing out her beauty as a maid,
When she could be an Archon's worshipped wife?
What is it she denies me for?—Not means,
Not property, and not security!
Through a passed window's sleek obscurity
He saw his features murkily thrown back,
And froze there for a moment to attack
The foolish, startled face that met his gaze
By lowering his brow to mask the daze,
By tautening the slackened lower jaw,
And, to allow the upper's horsey flaw
To disappear, by clenching closed his lips.
Now, with the force with which a canine grips
His quarry's throat, he rapidly pursued
Her steps, as rapidly as his mind cued
The truly humbling procession of
Sophia's calm rejections of his love.
What blew his anger into blustering,
However—what took all his mustering
To keep the barking hate she bred at bay—
Was her—so unlike the Elected's way!—
Politeness, her composure, her serene
Expression, as if half within a dream,
She donned to simply speak that single word,
And nothing further: —No. It was absurd
To Rilla. No, she said, just no—without
The public reprimand of character
Before the congregation? I deserve
That much, at least. For then I'd know, I'd know
With certainty, why she is obdurate
Enough to stay a working girl. But she
Forgoes all of our customs, it would seem.
Tonight she scarcely comes across as an
Elected. Never would a wife of mine
Be authorized to leave our home without
Her hair bound, resting to one side—
Sophia's free locks looked as though they tried
To reach the night whose inky shade they shared—
Nor would she walk about, as she has dared,
In fabrics other than our island's own.
Here Rilla's stodgy orthodoxy shown
More candidly, for many, if not most,
Had fully borrowed from the Trues the ghost-
White robes Sophia wore. Their influence
On the Elected was far more immense
Than Rilla, taking it for granted, thought.
But still it isn't right! I know we're taught
That celebrating decaversaries
In imitation of the Trues is fine—
But now, in wartime, to be casual
About such things seems blasphemous to me!
It's sick that anyone would willingly
Appear more like the enemy, in looks,
In actions, and in thought, than one's own kind!
Thus as a doctor tracks the signs to find
The source of the disease, he—resolute,
As long as his lungs functioned, to uproot
Her plague—pursued her to the island's suburb's sprawl.
—
Sophia found herself behind a wall
Of homes, which twisted with the snaking lanes,
Where she no longer bore the tempest's pains
But could observe its work above her head.
She felt a first-born sympathetic dread
For those still bullied by the ruthless blast,
Yet felt, a younger sibling of that last,
Relief as well—a troubled sweetness known
To those who, while her siblings suffer, prone
To loss, survive the selfsame agony.
Still living as she watched the reeds, the designee
Of the maltreatment of the wind, she filled
Her heart with self-earned hope, distilled
By life-awareness, which dissolved the bars
Religion's worries built, a jail that mars
The flowing of the mind. Its waters now
Had no such dam. It almost stunned her how
Intensely keen her thinking had become.
She realized that: Happiness is dumb,
A thoughtless state in which I may exist
But in which I could never truly live.
It's studied suffering which speaks the heart's
Vernacular, which focuses my lust,
Which sharpens, like a pencil's lead, my thoughts.
This means that happiness alone can't be
My destiny, nor suffering alone
The target of my rage. My goal must be
A self-created living only bound
By my own boundless mind. And what about
My mighter-than-sword? What ink will slake
Its thirst? Not solely guilt, for it would still
Desire to swallow guilt, its brother hate,
And still their father God. My pen, if it
Is to subdue the whole, it must be poised upon
A something-else, a hydra-headed lord
That I will christen Mitheosochi—
A wound whose pain is constantly relearned;
A labor shorn of its reward; a book
Deprived of print; a child without his soul!
He is the sentence passed down to us from
On high—the winds that the Elector sends
To bend us forward into kneeling, while
The Papas burns our bodies with his heat
He kindles in our minds and in our soul.
So…freedom then is what? Rebellion? No!
Uncultured revolution leads around
To that same state it means to rectify—
It's bloodshed paving bloodshed's path. Our kings
Are those who benefit the most because
Of revolutionary violence.
It reinforces the authority
They long to hold, for now they're justified
In executing their disastrous
Agendas in the name of specious peace.
Throw stones and you'll have built a monument
To further glory Mitheosochi—
But live the life which does not fit into
Your lord's agendas, spread your novel life
To others like a hail of rounds, and you
Will have created something worthier
To man than any of his cities full
Of towers and of spires—you will have
Created Chaos! Not the lawlessness
That those in power relish, savoring
The punishments that follow, but a new
Primordial, a new abstraction—one
From which a better portrait of mankind,
No matter how beyond the skill of live
Producers of such artworks it might be,
Could possibly be done and treasured by
A loving audience who would not let
It leave its side till death undid the bond.
But what can we do when that violence
Is perpetrated first, with weapons whose
Harm no amount of paint can beautify?
Can we create more than can be destroyed?
What monstrous energy would that require?
A thatch of grasses, as if dried by fire,
Descended from a battered roof to touch
Down at Sophia's feet, she fancied: much
In the same way a bride's bouquet would land.
She, disinclined to, raised her eyes and scanned
The roof from which her flowers had be ripped—
Reversing death, a new hope from a crypt—
Then tried to further probe the sky. But while
She did so she could feel, again, the vile
Igniting stinging of the wind. She dropped
Her much-exploited eyes before they stopped
To value or anatomize a star,
And there beheld—her pain recalled but far,
Now, from her mind—the writings of the night,
In letters which she knew—if not by sight
Than by their energy—as all her own,
Upon the flowing substance which alone
Can birth, can animate, can soothe, can render life—!—
—
…
—
Her thinking trespassed on by any strife,
No matter how inconsequential, meant
The fading of that text and what it leant
To her and her infusing soul. When she
Had reached her dwelling's door, she naturally
Forgot the message, as it was too true
For all known words. Its monstrous size outgrew
Her apprehension, simply, leaving in
Its pregnant passing—not the stale chagrin
Of having been abandoned by a truth
And greyly facing greyer death in youth—
But phosphorescence through the touch of its
Sublimity. Thus she—until her wits
Were nearly scolded clean white by the blaze
The hearth-fire harshly threw out, which waylays
Her gaseous thoughts the moment foot meets floor.
She charged against that rival light before
Addressing Cauda Nor, her spouse—a weak-
Chinned man with sandy, parted hair, a cheek
Devoid of blood, and eyes too wide to hide
His pliant soul—before she curled beside
The crib where Skaios slumbered even, she
Concealed that rude light, now a detainee
Behind a heavy, decorated screen.
As the fire's tyranny was neither seen
Nor felt, it was forgotten. In its place
A pageantry of shadows, at the pace
Of celebration, danced throughout the room,
Projected from the figures in costume
Artistically engraved upon the black
Metallic screen's façade. These charms brought back
A vestige of that dumb, sagacious calm
The night's report, which acted like a balm
To sooth Sophia's drying mind, had drenched
Her with. She felt relief, and so unclenched
Her teeth and hands, and, bending down to sing
A verse to Skaios, kissed his eyelids smiling.
—
Through this new darkness, Cauda's paleness glowed
In spectral ostentation, which bestowed
A hint of otherworldly reprimand
Upon the practiced panic he had planned
Expressing, answering Sophia's swift crusade
Against the light. He swallowed loudly, made
His preparations to instruct, upraised
A reassuring hand—but then was phased
Into inaction when Sophia sank
Into a chair beside the crib. He shrank
A little from this snubbing, with his arm
Still raised, his eyes now widened in alarm,
His breath caught in his throat—suspended till
Sophia spoke:
—
—I know its name now: What could kill
The sacred spirit of this cherished life.
I know its name: The power fierce enough
To damage the potential of a soul
Who's all potential. It is not a flock
Of enemies, with beaks and talons crossed.
It is a name…this: Mitheosochi.
It rules us so long as its name is called.
And there are two obnoxious voices who
Forever broadcast: MITHEOSOCHI!
Forever? Who are they to talk about
Forever? Nothing will endure that long—
How grateful to my soul I'm of that fact!
I know the temple cannot last that long…
We give all bricks their purpose—we could swop
The Papas' fires for a soothing spring.
I know too the Elector cannot last—
I predict his death in ten-years' time.
A name without a voice to speak it fades.
And at that nearing time the channel to
The universe will flow again, and two
Great seas will reconnect, and bounds will fall.
The one beyond our own will illustrate
Expansiveness (our fenced-in minds will reel!)—
While ours, with rallied love for brevity,
Will paint the weight of the essential NOW!
What better guard against the killing name?
What better guard could keep this child's soul?
What better guard is there than future art
Against the damaging Elector?—if
There ever was this being after all.
—
—What? Sophie, said her husband with a drawl,
You must be tired…Do you even know
What you just said?
—
Sophia carried on as though
She had not heard her husband's whining doubt.
—If he is real—not he, but it (I'll flout
All customs making God more like a man!)—
If it is real than it is ruthlessness
Itself. Can any living body slip
Away from its monarchical control?
Can babes? Can Skaios? Can the mass of man?
Can one…has one…will anyone evade
The fate of being earthly built; the fate
Of being humanly at fault; the fate
Of being heavenly rebuked? We all—
The saddest family!—we all are taught
To venerate its hidden glory, and
To shun this glory of an earth before
Us; taught to hate the physical, the clay
That makes the self as much as we are taught
To hate clay that makes all other selves.
Taught to perfect knee-wounding penitence;
Taught patience toward the Papas, lunatics
Dissecting flesh from souls in order to
Prevent eternal pains, and taught to greet
Destruction at their hands, taught worship of
Untimely death, which, unlike mortal sleep,
Is deviate and no much-needed rest.
—
As Cauda gasped, he clutched his ghostly-wounded chest.
—
—If it is not as real as we were taught,
What of it then? Then it's a breeze which blew
And blows and someday will have blown its fill.
The Papas gives the breeze its bearing, like
The billows in a sail. What of it when
Its blowing ceases, and oppression's sails
Go limp? What of it then? What of our world
Then? What will change? Will it grow prone to shame?
Will it grow prone to degradation? It can't be
More prone to degradation than it is
Under the breeze's nominal control.
Its nominal control allows campaigns
Of endless war, where innocents are killed
(the lucky ones!) or else they're put through hell.
Its nominal control allows the fear
Of other races, sexes, creeds, or selves
To run as freely wild as the wind.
Its nominal control—is anarchy!
If such misrule were thanks to God, then we
Are doomed—out-powered by a stronger arm.
If such misrule were thanks to chance, then we
Could fend annihilation off ourselves
Intelligently—we could sort out faith
From inactivity, from suicide!
We can reject it—what's a breeze to we
Who live? We can ignore it—like the name
Of Mitheosochi, unechoed, weak
And fading fast. We can outlive it—like
A trend. We can have hope beyond it—think
Of how a godless freedom could improve
Our sight—how many unseen beauties we
Could focus on without its glaring truths!
All this is some day's commonplace when we
Imagine it is so—imagine with
The unskilled deftness of a dreaming child.
Sleep on, my Beautiful, and dream of sights,
Of beauties, sweetness, of compassions not
Yet understood amongst us. For the worlds
Your mind imagines now, though nothing real
For us, will be your time's reality.
—
She watched the boy with the totality
Of her attention, resting, to one side,
Her heavy head. A smile broadened wide
Across her face, admiring the view
It seemed she had of sketches Skaios drew
Within his dreams of the tomorrows she
Could never know, could ever greet, could ever see.
—
There was a single knock, then, on the door.
Sophia rose. She slid across the floor
To answer it, not seeing Cauda's wave
Of warning—stiffly moving like a slave
To her unconscious actions, swimming still
Upon the sea-dream streamed from her son's will.
Such waters were drained instantly away
When she saw Rilla's eyes. These went astray
Around the room, and did not stop their hunt
Until they latched on Cauda—the affront
Of whose appearance knifed a gruesome smile,
Into the Archon's cheeks. Beyond the bile
Her spurning bred, he felt himself now filled
With an avenging second wind that stilled
All mercy for the faithless enemies
Who weakly stand against, like a disease
That stands against good health, his fatherland,
His temple and his Lord! His hate was fanned—
And he sprung into action with far more
Ferocity than ever had had felt before.
—
Sophia stained against the door she drove
At Rilla's face. His feet and hands both strove
And triumphed, hindering the door's lame latch—
It clicked like clacking teeth but failed to catch.
Meanwhile, in her lithe hands, the wild wood
Was as loose as those ships outside that stood
Against the winds and thus were tossed like toys.
She begged, between her breathlessness and noise
Of effort, Cauda to remove their son
To somewhere safer—if he couldn't run,
Than secret him behind the bedroom door.
These two were out of sight when, with a roar,
The Archon kicked the door Sophia then
Released—she knew she couldn't quell it when
She was so overwhelmed and terrified.
She cried out—pinned flat on the underside
Of the pushed-over door that shattered, in
Its course, a nearby pot—then checked her din,
When Rilla freed her with his foot, at what
Revenge was stabbing from his eyes to cut
Her to her heart! Tears came. That future hurt
Was felt as she lay there amongst the shards and dirt.
—
As Rilla pressed on toward his fallen prey,
He built himself into a tall display
Of confidence—his shoulders gracefully
Thrown back; his hard-set chin raised forcefully;
His droughty eyes emitting blinding spite;
His bloodless lips screwed up in vile delight.
His voice was equally commanding as
He spoke: —For crimes against our Lord, who has
Invested in me his retributive
Might, I— Sophia then began to give
His feet and shins a wave of stamps and kicks,
The suddenness of which forced him to mix
His ceremonial arrest address
With wordless feral bellows of distress.
These waned while his resistance hardened. Soon
Her frantic blows went wild—time opportune
For him to apprehend her. With his long
Arms locked outstretched he followed her along
The crawling route she took to shun his hold,
Which brought them, first, to where her son was holed
Up—but, as having lured the hunter to
The guarded chest where her heart's revenue
Was lovingly stored made Sophia sweat,
She floundered on, to where the screen was set,
And there, before the hearth, she finally
Ceased her escape, for, there, she luckily
Found arms to fend off her attacker—wood
Now spared the fire. Still confident, his good
Demonic mood unfazed, the Archon grinned
Away these makeshift clubs. He was chagrinned,
However, when the pointed end of one
Made contact with his temple. Like the sun
Turned black, his vision was encroached with dots—
The mold blown from a body as it rots—
Imparting chaos to the awkward fight
To seize then talon both her wrists as tight
As possible. These crashing bodies hit
The fire-panel that, whenever it
Had dropped, barraged the room with hellish heat
And light too rampant for Sophia's fleet
Evasions to avoid. In deadening
All-whiteness, she was captured—worsening
Her anguish, till the calming dark returned
With the closing of her eyes. She learned,
In that instructing black, to put her trust
In what she felt, to subtly adjust
Her arms so she could fish herself out of
His grip. By giving a full-body shove
To Cauda's kitchen table—crafting so
It fell artistically between her foe
And her own frantic self—Sophia, next,
Created the most daunting block that vexed
The Archon yet. She added, too, to this
The chairs—all four were thrown—they did not miss.
The last downed Rilla, who cried with a curse,
Allowing her the seconds to traverse
The floor's full length and gain again the gap
Where no door swung. This house was, thus, no trap
For her, and from it she, unshrinking, sought
Her freedom—gained through optimistic thought,
But lost in negative reality.
Mad, Rilla leapt up with finality,
Then tackling Sophia to her knees
Onto the floorboard's border—painful tease!—
Fought viciously to keep her from her goal
By pulling on her hair until a hole
Revealing scalp was made, by slapping closed
Her eyes, by banging shut her teeth. She nosed
Her shallow fits of breath while flailing one
Small arm and then the next—but both were won
By Rilla, who pinned them so palm kissed palm
Before her chest. By spreading—like a clam
Spread over demonstrating freedom fighters—
His body over, round hers with a spider's
Composure, he could ease her supine on
The ground. A freshened boldness was the spawn
Of this new mastery, with which he blocked
Her random, weak convulsions—she was locked
Within his unrelenting carnal jail.
The purpose of those dud blows did not fail
However—for they served well to distract
The would-be victor, ready to enact
Her punishment by tightening his grip
Around her—all but one arm she let slip
And snake away. He thrust—and this aligned
Their hips. He made a harder thrust—designed
To join their lips, which foundered when she jerked
Hers speedily away—but he reworked
His hold, which hollow dimples in her cheeks
And disallowed the sickened eye that seeks
Relief the chance to witness any sight
Except his stare, sufficient to excite
Her deepest waves of nausea, which spewed
Now from between her puckered lips and glued
The Archon's hand in place. He thrust again—
But this time she, with the same strength as men,
Had matched his thrust, these two disparate zeals
Colliding midway with a pause. No peals
Of laughter, cries of triumph, nor was breath
Then heard—if it was not for trembling, death
Would have been any judge's common call.
Sophia was the first to break this stall,
Drawing back a potshard's dripping barb
From where his legs converged. His garb,
His hands, the floor, were all anointed by
The pouring wound he gravely cupped—but try
As he might couldn't dam. Sophia rose
Alert, emerging from her fetal pose
To view the damage she inflicted. Such
A sight of self-made horror was enough
To stir up her self-loathing, which now sent
A fire through her limbs without a vent
And made the shard still in her hand
Too hot with shame-heat for her to withstand.
She dropped it to the floor—her gaze came hard
Behind, for Rilla's bleeding torment jarred
Her heart. This was no escape from guilt,
However—there were eyes there that could wilt
The soul; a pair of grim eyes looking back,
Reflected in intense red, not quite black,
Upon the pool collected at her feet
From drops, like acid from a poisoned teat,
Descending from her still warm hands—her own!
Fear-sickness turned her fluid sense to stone
Again, resulting in her humbling
Herself by tripping, crashing, crying, fumbling!
—
As Cauda rocked the frightened Skaios in
His arms, he, first, perceived the fighting din
Subside, then, louder still, Sophia slam
Into the door. As such a violent ram
Was not repeated, but instead a weird
Peace followed, Cauda clicked the lock and peered
Outside. There was Sophia, dispossessed
Of self, her knees pulled tightly to her chest,
Emitting a low moan and swaying to
And fro. She gave no outward show she knew
Her husband when he softly called her name—
But after coaxing her, he overcame
Her passiveness and blanking memory,
Conducting her into the bedroom, free
Of any sign of fighting or of blood.
Instead, she saw her child—then the flood
Of happiness his smile brought. This healed
Her so astoundingly, as if revealed
In Scripture, so abruptly, like a flash
Of magic, so completely that the clash
Of who she was mere seconds passed and who
She had since been reorganized into
Wreaked havoc throughout Cauda's reasoning.
The workings of her ever deepening
Mind, shown in her eyes; the way she held
Her head, the proof that she let her heart meld
Profoundly with another's; and the way
Her cheeks, as if her artist added clay,
Were now filled with a plumpness they, in truth,
Could not claim even in her tender youth—
All settled Cauda's judgment that before
Him stood a different person to her core,
Evolved in aura, spirit, body, and in mind.
—
She then passed into what appeared a trance
For several beats. Her features and her stance
Were statued—even while she ordered: —Take
The baby to your people. For his sake
I'll stay behind. That voice, ventriloquized
From where or whom he left unverbalized,
Froze Cauda, now a copy of his wife's
Inanimate physique. That she was life's
Container still was evident from how
She rolled her earnest eyes to him, her brow,
That very instant, worry-lined again
As it had been throughout the Lord's campaign.
Although he wore a hurt-dog look, he knew
That she was wise. But how to leave she who
Was his support and mother of his joy?
He vacillated lavishly, the boy
Still in his arms, between the window, their
Escape hatch, and Sophia—with despair
Felt and revealed with either choice he dwelt
Upon. —Go, she said, as a blow was dealt
Against the door, one altogether weak
But ringing with suspense, enough to pique
One into flinching, for a stronger strike
To sound and jostle their protection, like
Their thumping hearts. —Go, or we all will die.
Resignedly he laid the child by
His wife upon their bed, while he, without
A sound, unlocked the window. As a stout
Blow thundered, she undid the clasp behind
Her neck, then locked it once more when it lined
Her infant's throat. Her hand, as if placed there
To swear on oath, was hovering mid-air
Before the chained blue opal, resting on
Her child's heart. She told him, looking wan
And speaking weakly, —This will be your star,
Your conscience, your confessor. I will be
In it, forever with you here and nowhere else,
Forever guiding, aiding, loving you—
Look for me there, when you're in need of me.
She kissed his lolling head, then, tenderly—
And froze in that inclining pose of prayer.
The top door-hinges splinter off from their
Support as soon her lips left her son's
Flesh. Like a peace-lover, before the guns
Begin their thundering, puts space between
Himself and war, so Cauda Nor. Unseen
By Rilla, he flew through the opened pane
With Skaios, as serene as if he lain
Within his crib, enveloped in his arms.
The door crashed roughly with the might that harms
Who ever is nearby—it failed to shake
Sophia's catatonia, though. Its wake
Brought Rilla, storming in to seize her by
Her throat. He forced her, chair and all—as spry
As his sore wound permitted—to the floor.
No matter how ferociously he bore
His thumbs into her windpipe, she still moved
As limberly as water, loose, unmoved
Completely by his murderous intent.
Incredulous, with all the might he spent,
That she had not succumbed, he turned her neck
To catch the fire's borrowed light and check
Her vitals signs—to see his victory
Reflected in her eyes, he hoped. What he
Was greeted with instead were two blank spheres
Like milky moons, in which he saw his fears
Cast back—and nothing else. In time, he ripped
His eyes away to where the husband slipped
From custody into an alleyway.
He hauled is captive, who did not betray
A hint of animation, to the sill
And listened, neither making out an ill
Attempt to bate one's breath while lying low
Close by, nor thuds that running feet bestow
Upon the road as one flees at a space.
He yielded to that prey who won the chase.
Was there a bastard with him too? he thought,
Then grinned, for he had gained the prize he sought,
Whom he now heaved to wear her like a stole
As he limped onward, with the temple as his goal.