Your mainland split
Surges within me
With Pythian ecstasy
And antediluvian recall
Of the Oracle at Delphi.
Erupting from the wrath
Of Jehovah, you, oh
Umbilicus orbis terrarum, who
Simulated the atomic splitting,
Spasmodically vulcanizing,
As if you had continentally imbibed
A lethal dose of heptyl.
Since the first high priestesses
Of Hera from Argos, I have been doomed
To declaim in hexameter the contents
Of theogonies, catalogues of ships,
Goddesses, and inventories
Of Poseidon’s antebellum.
And to remember how between
The pillars of Hercules would slide
Scythian and Phoenician vessels,
Smoothly floating from Tauria
To Peru and the Mississippi valley
Kurgans, and back along Iberia.
Cypress and tree resin.
Myrtle, cane, and cedar smoke
In burners on board the ark.
The half gods, having shared
Food and lodging
With the gods, desecrated demos,
The ten Atlantic kingdoms,
And have sunken you into the depths.
Mud hailed from the nethers
Across the heavens, overthrowing
Semiramida’s gardens, Hesperides apples,
With the help of all four elements.
Your seven rivers changed their courses,
Mare tenebrosum swallowed the land,
Minting itself in metallurgical shreds.
The marbles of Patros, eddas,
Cuneiform writings of the Chaldeans,
The Aztec codex of Chimalpopoc
All testify to the crack
Of your splitting backbone
Along sea cliffs to the ridges
Of the Appalachian mountains.
In the mysteries, the golden age’s defeat
Flames in the blushes of maidens
From Samiya who sacrifice
Their hair to Hera’s temple,
Dreaming at night of Chronos.
They often attribute to me
A hyperborean provenance.
My predictions from time
Immemorial have been copied
By five scribes, direct descendants
Of Deukalion. Bathing
In Castalian waters, with laurel
Leaves in my mouth, I predict
The future to the past, the past
To the future over the burning
Pyres of Python, who emerged
Out of your flood slime,
Until I myself will be consumed
By the flames of my own prognosis
Of the erupting Vesuvius in 1737.
Translated by the author