Under the Volcano*

At gallows crossroads a ghost accompanies a ghost to its home.
A creaking tavern sign swinging to & fro in the rain mist.
When the light is on the rabbit does it know death´s near it´s neck!?
Daybreak binds an interrupted interval into memory.
The hand is worn that holds a lifeless form surrendered to dawn.
In the rain still uncertain which way to go dawn is creaking.
Bounded in the frame ghost at home swings, to & fro in the rain.
The other goes off into Picaresque scenario.

Bucholic landscape, gaunt on the skyline, lean, hungry & mean.
The valley people exclaim he has gone to the volcano.
The world spirals into a twin, the tavern sign grins, dawn creaks.
To & fro, under the volacano, the people come & go.
A phantom on the summit without a conjuring trick, lo,
what will he do, but out of the volacano give them his shoe.

* Empedocles disappeared in flames on Mount Aetna to confirm the report he had become a God: the volcano threw up one of his bronze slippers: perhaps a sacrifice to the fraternity of philosophers through incendiary, to conserve state in the Polis after the Pythagorean exile, temples were sometimes burnt down etc.,

* Hephaistos Greek, Fire & forge God, Vulcanus by the Romans who held he had his forge on Mount Etna, hence volcano, one story he is cuckold & nets the adulterous couple for the Gods to witness, hence each has contributed a form of his or her name to the English vocabulary.

Copyright Robin Ouzman Hislop 2003
Shades of Hades