Prometheus

1. His Liver

 

It is not the eternal unravelling

of the viscera, so much as regeneration

which agonises: all that homogenous

flesh, flaccid as a blood-clot,

swelling and re-swelling to fit

the ribcage, while the gaunt birds

look sideways with jaundiced eyes,

cock their heads, stoop, wreck

and rend – and all the while

that sickly refilling, like a tide

of sanguine jelly – the hideous

sucking sound of the abdomen

glutting. Manacled, maimed, unstrung,

I retch, press harder into stone.

 

 

2.The Stone

 

The stone wears his torso like a carbuncle –

a weeping sore – the rusted taint of iron ore

seeps out of it and into him, fills his liver

with a slick of blood that bleeds forever,

 

and the stone is never drained, plumbed

to his innards by a vein of darker rock:

it sputters from the molten centre, wells

up unstaunchable, a cold, congealing lava.

 

 

3.The Eagles

 

At first, there was great clamour in the sky.

 

The supply was endless; the ancient wind

was black with eagles silhouetted – only

their eyes gleamed with sulphur. They thrust

their whole heads into the heinous rend

in his abdomen, their bills unravelling

grey intestines, tearing connective tissue

with a guileless blunt dissection, spilling

out the whole package, like opening a sluice.

The liver exposed, they grouped and gorged,

 

and grew bored with having to gullet

the same slippery offal day after day –

got sick of the stench of it, wearied

of preening off the drying gunk, sneezing

it from their nostrils, yawning great red

spit-bridges of the stuff. They thought

they would rather starve. There was a rush

of pinions. The liver, uneaten, pulsed,

 

began to spread.

 

 

Poem and picture by Giles Watson, 2012.

 

Done