The rocks moved or shifted as if the change

was made by his eyes and perception by

the Earth's rolling revolving movement;
and down he went deep into it: Darkness
below vegetation and soil so lifeless
and shafts so bottomless as not to be
that, stones and rock walls in the tunnel,
they were not by light no longer able,
perceivable to the steps of ordinary men,
seen ably other than by some other Sight.
He trusted to his feet the solid floor,
and his head to the sharp ceiling so dark
it scraped the hawk feathers in his hair
tied with a sinew of soft otter fur.
Uneven boulder fields made him stumble
and often fall to his knees, and grunt
in pain as he twisted an ankle or wrist;
crawling sometimes in the black void
over cold marble wet and dampening
in the close air, steady air at temperature
56 degrees coming in the shaft from
he knew not where nor how or why.
It was not long before he sat to rest
and questioned his whole hare-brained scheme,
and longed to go back to the blessed sky,
lovely day, on the surface of the world.
He was glad he brought a bladder of water
fashioned from a gourd, and drank anxiously.
"I can't see a damn thing. It's ridiculous.
You might as well not even be here, Fool."
He marveled he couldn't even see his nose
or his hands in front of his face. Why? Why not?
He got up and stumbled along some more,
telling himself it was bravery to keep going
on into what would always be dark,
dangerous, with pits, scorpions, no food,
alone forever like a tomb in a Mine.
"That's it," he thought idly aloud (or not,
unsure, unoriented, if he was thinking)
"maybe this was once a silver or gold mine
and not some old unused lava-tube
left over from the Mountain's exploded past,
when magma flowed in molten rock."
He wished he could see to know it some more.
He was tired and thought about a sleep
he was only half-remembering after a while,
and, maybe, a light that was only his
mind, an idea or two a light imagined;
living like crystals rocks ideas too.
"Icy crystals," he muttered desperately,
fingering wet dirt and icicles hard
with every passing hour, "crystal ice.
Water dripping from the walls up and down,
freezing and thawing,, I can tell, licking
clear and clean on my tongue. Whew."
Realistic glimpses of the Mythic
conclusion, the end of the tunnel, birth,
a canal lit like an allegory reached
impressively out of Time and Space
into his head and down to the bottom;
whole Epochs flashing before him.
Mercury and Hercules sat down there
in their storklike and leonine forms
as easy as you please, lit, metaphors,
by temperate climes embedded in strata
as slender as Thoth's downward-curving bill,
shining, figures of speech, slivers of limestone
layered in glowing comparisons of
transference, designated companions.
"Hello Boss," his brother-sons joked aloud,
"what are you doing way down here?"
The Chief smiled well enough at them to see
the metaphysics that more illustrious made
the Underworld better by improvement.
"Growing," he replied. "Photosynthesis.
Light's coming down through the dirt
through the sweet roots of Persephone's bulbs.
I don't need animal eyes anymore to see.
What's up with you two? Looking for trouble?"
Seriously they nodded as equals
to portions and buds of organs that mammals
and birds afforded respect to the worms.
"And we found it, or rather him, or It.
Grown as well or perhaps as unwell
depending on the size or immoderacy
of the tunnels running underneath the world
He's Argus, the python of Goddess so huge
Giants are diminished to mere dinosaurs.
Interminably stretching all over
volcanic chambers thousands of miles long
do not describe the cavities of his home.
Where is he? Rather, where isn't he, Lord?
This very slough where you've been for ages,
thousands of years down here relative
to tribes and herds above, evolving, waxing
to the centuries and millenia of the Sun,
You, however, have been ceremonially
missing. Where have you been all this time?"
Sweet Root stared at them impassive as grass.
"In crystal, locked in crystals, of water.
Don't you see the lodgings of ice all around
protecting rivers and the flow of energy?
Inseparable I've maintained men
with animals and plants unidentifiably.
Now of course I've been expecting you two
to return to me with news of old foes.
The substance of the world's not unmemorably
feeble or neglectful of weeds and seeds
unchecked, immoderate, which abuse this.
Always I've known some day some night
I'd have to face at last myself at the last,
and finish Creation. Now's The End again
to begin anew another phase of the chore.
Great Mercury, my valiant Michael, angels,
with Hercules my son by the sad Hera
I know my wife neglected all over again
on the surface above, White Cow Io
stalked in the harmony repetitious by Set
necessary in the seasons beget by this Cave,
hunt for the Crown of the worldwide Snake.
There I'll do battle with it with you two
beside me, inside me, valiant Tripod
of warriors of poets, the sphinx, and I!
Come Brothers, let's to our Father compete."
Deeper along in darker passageways
brighter by life than the furnaces of stars
th'heroic champions sought terminal
Intelligence dangerous, so far and so near
they could smell his breath in carbon sulfide
in heat Danger so high and so low
It had almost no face and no name anymore.
Zeos wished for the briefest of moments
to be back in Io's prehistoric green meadows
before men from Europe in machines with guns
had once again with barbaric notions
massacred her white herds of succulent buffalo.
They'd protected the wolves of heaven
for ages upon ages with his Arrows and
the Pipe from his sacrificed leg bone,
which he'd brought back from his Black Lodge
back into the sunshine of hallowed Bear Butte.
But now once again men had ruined it;
in the twinkling of an eye in cosmic time.
Their stink threatened in the cave up ahead
exposure to his dreaded Opponent and
Friend - his Father nobler than all men.
(What could now be the face of True Death?)
Mercury, Hercules, and His Son Zeos
banded together in one trinity of war.
Around the last, fieryest bend of Hell
they came at last face to face with It!
Argus indescribable under Flagstaff
stretched heads threefold a hundredfold
as far as Arizona from South Dakota
and under the third portion of New Mexico
in caves of crystal so mountainous
they inverted the tipis triangular
glittering with diamonds and emeralds.
God's temple of fire and serpentine
blazed openly in a Palace the size of the Moon!
"Almighty Zeos, at last you have come,"
His Highness invincible AMORTAL said quietly,
unexpectedly familiar and gracious in tone,
especially given his ferocious demeanor.
"Disrespectful, Father, I've never been,"
Zeos replied, equally unhappy about their fate,
"I honor your work, you've done much good,
but you must die, and be slain fraternally.
You know that. We both know our Goddess.
Your mother you've venged, and so have I.
You're the Christ these people have worshipped
in Flagstaff now so unholy and mean,
slaughterers of everything pure and wise.
You are Christ who cannot supplant gods
age-old and families of noble divinity.
We're brothers and sons unknowable to them.
Come, let us make of it a good climax,
and farewell. I love you with all my heart."
The beast of many identities old
before his and her time parentless
stared skeptically at the small man.
"Neither god nor mortal am I," It said,
"made unmade as my own THIRD ENTITY.
Sleep's the best clue I can give you of
Typhoeus Hesiod recorded of Set;
and Typhaon protected under Delphi as
the beasts who're by Homer in his hymns
similarly chanted by the blind rhapsodes.
Slain unslain I'm Amortality beyond Death
outside of Argus and the Python both
Protector of the same Typhon, she-dragon
you've come at last to slay your parents:
they who've abducted you all your life.
But do not mistake Typhoeus for Christ.
You are the loving redeemer God, not I.
Slay me as the Dragoness by all means,
but do not yet hope to discover that THIRD
ENTITY that's neither divine or deadly."
In a breath, in a gasp, the Deed was done.
Outside of and beyond Death It was
the rocks and the winds and Black Space.
Zeos was back on the surface, in light,
smelling in the creekbed dry and barren
the rotten flesh of Pytho cooking in the Sun;
and all around him its unhappy children
crashed into each other in automobiles,
banks, hospitals frantic with worry.
Everything they made was ugly to him.
Apollo and Artemis joined him at his side,
beautiful teenagers strong and wise, with
their mother his sister Queen Persephone.
In the traffic and noise turmoil and false
oracular Their Family shook their heads
at the Song of the Dead Age, not theirs;
and walked away to join with Buffalo
grazing underneath the Mountain so clean
it towered white in the Sun and the Moon.

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Part Two of THE CREATION MYTH ---- Stonewall

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Part Three of THE CREATION MYTH ------- Oswald Antagonistes