The Oracle at Delphi

By Rebecca Tamás

Rebecca Támas

The Oracle at Delphi

they call me a bitch   and I am a bitch
frosty and wayward    hungry and strange

I lie with my bloody hands   in the mud and say
look to your bacteria! run into the brightness! take flight!
but the smoke is shushing my energy

you know what?    

I’m going to give up prophesies that make ‘sense’ and segue to the
prophesies you need

sorry if you wanted to know        about your war campaign      sandra

sorry if you wanted to                learn about the  health of your business
prospects       alexi

/

turn around
you are staring at the frozen soil  as it crackles and bites
across limitless  space you   see moths     licking the    sugary   sunset
gazelles whose   eyes are so good      that they can make out the glitching
rings of Saturn

there is a tidal wave of blood rising behind all of them
that cannot be captured
a ringing in the ears
an effervescence 
as out in the forests     fire  mashes the earth
and apollo    crosses     and    uncrosses         his legs

do you think it will be pretty?     do you think it will be easy?  
no no no no no no no   like all necessary  learning  it will involve you
snivelling like a slapped dog
you opening  up and    seeing all the beings  crawling   in your wet insides
the vehement microbes       the gooey world   that is  nothing like   what
you tell yourself it is  but is
blue and black and green  and shuddering   
fanciful and reverent 

/

I’m afraid that you don’t get   to have     the end of the world   
all to yourself
caramel ice cream self pity     long lingering shots
of lion cubs    curled  in the lap of  pink sticky death
sybil of cumae hanging in a jar     for you to poke at
ugly crying  as   marshes choke   with seawater  

you are not making the right enquiries
mortal wound     weeping pus
lake  frozen over
sperm   an expelled  web    
and nothing growing
your own guts
spilling from windows like  crushed flags

/

turn around      

apollo deigns to look you in the face       as green light slides across the
mountains

he deigns to observe   your tender   awful features

he deigns to come out from    the heart  of burning
to return to time       hot in the frame of it
to show his   shining   body   
his   silver glossy breathing        his genitals glinting    like a brace of
swords

how lucky you are!   the entire world twisting    and lurching    for his  
becoming!

acid dissolves the former understanding of your eyes   grease and tallow
line your tongue
dogs barking       owls fucking       daytime tv on mute     lizards shifting
their tails     

in the brightness    is this  burst of  light      stronger than the brightness is
apollo  ready to prophesy to you now        through my   impossible  
mouth :

find the terrible love      that you felt  in your pit      when the sun  woke you
love vulnerable        and shivering          body  parts   frozen  and chapped
this   mess        trees   escaping you like smoke   which you must    love as they
disappear
which you must want          with no end    no end ever  of the wanting

forgive   yourself    for  being a dirty animal  collapsing in  wet feelings   
complex arrangements! majesty of what is not you! what can never be! the wound
that has been waiting!
wanting to be   held  by strangeness    knowing      that this   foreign beam against
your    eye    is telling you
the truth    filthy truth  nourishing   ugly   independent   truth        truth  coming
like gases   from the   splitting ground    truth  in the spinning planets   truth   in
the mud  the calling  truth  the ghost of your  many bodies
the question  of where it hurts  your brothers and sisters  out there in the dirty
fields  

get up!   get up and go to them!  leave behind the old and broken things! run! go!

the   world            today                begins