The Sleepwalker’s Corral
In the distance, I caught the hoof of darkness
Splintering and re-gathering like black foam,
Edging the wave of an angry sea –
And what was it at this hour
Which fretted me so?
The languid limpet spurled up
From the spent sea –
And was there a dream
Or Mermaid and Merman
In that foaming lather?
Oh! Come now, and listen
To the Muse and the complaint
Of the Siren – she who lures
The mariner to his death;
And are those river nymphs
Carrolling about the ocean,
Having been swept by the lure
Of Poseidon, to be down on the shore?
Dark tendrils of seaweed
Those mer creatures use,
And into the gloom
The doom of ships is heard.
Dying gannet’s voice on a hinterland
Of spectral ship-shapes –
Now these stallions and mares
Rise again
And bring their Eleuthian nails
To bleed black ink
On the rolling, twisted, white columns
Of Age, Race – race you now
To the far-off Nirvana,
And bring wares and tributes
To the everlasting, eternal
Lord of the Seas.
Rest not easy in the feast
Of scuttled crab and fish;
The octopus bows and folds
His everlasting salute –
So to a distant memory
Of peaceful slumber
Poseidon -- Darko Topalski
In the distance, I caught the hoof of darkness
Splintering and re-gathering like black foam,
Edging the wave of an angry sea –
And what was it at this hour
Which fretted me so?
The languid limpet spurled up
From the spent sea –
And was there a dream
Or Mermaid and Merman
In that foaming lather?
Oh! Come now, and listen
To the Muse and the complaint
Of the Siren – she who lures
The mariner to his death;
And are those river nymphs
Carrolling about the ocean,
Having been swept by the lure
Of Poseidon, to be down on the shore?
Dark tendrils of seaweed
Those mer creatures use,
And into the gloom
The doom of ships is heard.
Dying gannet’s voice on a hinterland
Of spectral ship-shapes –
Now these stallions and mares
Rise again
And bring their Eleuthian nails
To bleed black ink
On the rolling, twisted, white columns
Of Age, Race – race you now
To the far-off Nirvana,
And bring wares and tributes
To the everlasting, eternal
Lord of the Seas.
Rest not easy in the feast
Of scuttled crab and fish;
The octopus bows and folds
His everlasting salute –
So to a distant memory
Of peaceful slumber
Poseidon -- Darko Topalski
In some accounts Rhea saved Poseidon was spared from the wrath of his father Kronus by concealing him among a flock of lambs and then feeding her husband a colt in his place. When his younger brother Zeus overthrew Kronus, Poseidon was given lordship over the waters. He was the god of earthquakes and horses, the creator of new islands, the bringer of mental illness and epilepsy, and the giver of calm waters as well as storms. He fathered the 1st horse either by mating with a pre-equine creature or by spilling his sperm on the rocks, and he fathered the talking horse Arion and the flying horse Pegasus, as well as various monsters such as Charybdis and the cyclops Polyphemus and heroes including Theseus, Orion, Bellerophon, and Atlas the 1st king of Atlantis.
ReplyDeleteEleuthia was the goddess of childbirth and the personification of liberty, whose cult was connected with Poseidon (as Enesidaon "the earth shaker"). She was the midwife in the annual birth of the Divine Child, identified as Zeus. According to an early poet, Olen, she was "the clever spinner" and thus an early identification of Fate; he claimed she was older than Kronus.
A gannet is a seabird which can pursue fish underwater after diving from heights of 30 m (98 ft), hitting the water at 62 mph (100 kph). Because of their consumption of large quantities of fish, anyone with a voracious appetite is referred to as a "gannet."