melittabenu

A getting to know you poem for Hermes.

An ancient coin depicting Hermes, source unknown.

Ulysses by Dead Can Dance

Cover for Dexter Jones’ Circus Orchestra album of the same name

You can’t know me unless you see me,

you can’t see me unless you look in the dark,

you can’t look in the dark unless your eyes are burnished

to a brightness that shines on its own.

You have to break away from the herd

and follow the paths the mighty quake to consider-

you have to be willing to do what it takes

(giving all you have, taking all you can, sewing and cutting down

in temples and dark allies)

and suspend what you think you know

because *I* know

more than what you hear me whisper,

though I whisper with the tongues of the kingdoms of the dead.

The Souls of Acheron by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl

To *me* Brimo laid her virginity on the banks of the infernal river,

and for me she refused to leave-

it was no impurity or blood-crime, simply the natural mating

of ceremony and witchery, the moon and the rushing, restless air.

Would I lie?

To *me* the dead flock and we fly like wasps to the halls of hell,

and for me the Empress (married to the Raging Fires, blue-black tears

carving caverns on her face)

spares her smiles and laughter as we share gallows humor

and mirth in the black comedies of life.

Would I lie?

I wait for you at the crossroads,

for bloo-wine, for bon-stone, for fles-coins,

for the Herm to be built of the rugged blocks of devotion:

the essence of sacrifice will give you all my gifts,

for I can bestow upon you all the blessings of the realms in which I run.

Would I lie?

Relief of Hermes Psychopompous, possibly with Orpheus and Eurydice, source unknown

There is beauty you haven’t yet experienced, lonely seeker,

but the absence of it eats you alive,

and you are incomplete

without a trickster’s airy and indulgent guidance,

without a liar’s truth,

without the joker’s liberating laugh,

without the silver-tongued oracle

and the ability to communicate what is trapped within you

and awaits eruption:

divine volcanic catastrophe, honey-gold and terrible!

Like the light of the sun in a black and obscured sky:

If the legends of Pompeii evoke horror

I warn you that is only your beginning.

Death carrying off Alcestis by John Duncan

I will open your eyes for the peeling away of what occludes your sight,

and lull you into the veil of restful sleep.

I will teach you to run with the dead and the dogs in the samashan,

and ensure your sacred purity to duly serve the gods.

I will carry you down every road

even if I have to drag you like a spoiled child and tear the arm from your socket.

I will lure you with the music of the trees and whistling breezes

which will rival the strains of the most demented and sublime genius.

I will protect you, and give you agony,

and teach you to await the pain as a sword yearns again

for fire and hammer.

You will learn,

I am impatient.

Follow.

Anywhere Out of the World by Dead Can Dance