Utu Man (14) Centaurs

My father
tells me how after
a few years
of no rains
and bad harvest

the Centaurs
of the hills
grew restless
and were seen
lurking in the plum-coloured mist
outside the village,

their elongated claret faces
warped
with beastly rage
of hunger
to the fretful stomping
of their massive hairy hooves.

Once before
morning,
they showered
the straw roofs
with fire-tipped arrows.

Half-men, half-horses
screamed, galloped
into the gaping wounds
of houses –
that metamorphosed
into huge,
mortally wounded
flamingos
gracelessly flapping
their tattered wings –

and then emerged,
with their blinding
breast-plates
and serrated blades,
like frenzied stars
of a new blood-brewed universe.

"I stood
on the cracked ashen ground,
dumbfounded,
encircled by the hoard
of the dear dead,
holding
a nibbled ruby apple
in my hand."

My father stops.
Tears are standing
in his wrinkled umber face.

We sit and listen
to the amorous pigeons
cooing
in that apple's children,
two hugging lissom trees.

Вланес, 2008

Сертификат Поэзия.ру: серия 790 № 63341 от 25.07.2008

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