Saturday 11 August 2012

The Minotaur dreams



In his dreams the Minotaur saw his many-mirrored reflection
in the beads of sweat that gathered on the foreheads
of the girls who fed him and found himself crying out
to his Father without understanding if it was to the King
or the God Bull that he sent his pleas towards.

Each morning the guards reported to the King
his nightly pleas and the torment they witnessed
as they girls drew close and fed him.
They noted his horns almost bent towards the girls
as if their tips hungered for the touch of flesh.

Each girl found that moment when she could not
touch Androgeus again, the fear, like lava, dissolving
all of her and then she would be dragged, dead,
yet still breathing, to the King’s bed, ruined for a time,
she mute and vacant, then sent home in a casket.

The monster was blamed for each maiden’s death
and so the Minotaur’s legend grew, all while the monster
was unaware of his crimes, unaware of the deaths or
of the hatred his name now instilled in lands; his name
filled the ears of children as warning that evil existed.

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