Poseidon

In the dream of the blood-sea,
slowly, slowly, Poseidon
pulling the strands within the ocean night,

Webbing all together
in a dance of lunar light
through the streaks of stars reflected.

Then at dawn Poseidon emerges, ravaged by the oceans,
his hair striated with sticking sands,
the once-proud trident warped and rusted.

His night-blind charioteering through the depths,
their onslaught of saline wet,
has left Poseidon shrivelled, shell-brittle, bloody.

Aye, tis true: he bleeds...

Not even the oceans could whittle such stagnant gore away,
and letting lifeblood was misery for a once unscratchable god;
now glimpsing mortality, crying blood from the eyes...

These eyes had been a miniature for the dance
of his domain across the earth, and the water
through which Olympia was dreamt;

Now even these spectres of memory had deserted -
and only the haul of death remained,
to clutch Poseidon to his final bed.