THE WOLF MOON SIGHED FULL IN THE DARK EASTERN SKY. In the night’s breath just before dawn, under the sea-goat of Babylon, she could be seen with her consorts, godly Saturn and the blue giant Spica.

I saw them in the cold black before morning light, on my way to the gym. The one thing the gym lacked was a heavy bag. On some mornings, I went instead with my old sparring gloves to the old boxing gym, a few blocks farther south, on Park Place. I loved striking out at the heavy bag. Ducking, circling, left, right; hitting, hitting, hitting, and hitting, hitting, hitting again; harder, harder, harder, and harder, harder, harder again.

The winds grew ever more bitter, the whistlings of their siren songs ever more strange, more rapturous in their deceit. Soon the Year of the Dragon would begin.

I did not call it that. I called it the year of the nine gods, because these gods whose names I did not know were now no longer to be loved and now no longer to be feared. They were to be slain. For I myself had looked within me, and I myself had found and let loose the light, had found and given light to the dead parts of me.

The change in the winds was as nothing compared to the change in me, and the songs of their sirens were as nothing compared to the songs with which I lulled myself to sleep, and the Year of the Dragon was as nothing compared to the seasons I claim for and unto myself. May the slaughter of the gods begin.