Ethusel

ETHUSEL
Sandv Denny

I saw a dark star against the black sky
Of a night thirteen hundred years long
It cast shrouding shadows upon the desert
Of the dark moons that formed in her eyes.

"On the ... of her back the sun never smiled
And the noon of the day was in shadow
And the sky left its beard on the black barren earth
And the ... was found in her eyes.

On a shrine of black flowers Ethusel lay dead
As he had for thirteen centuries
At his feet five crows stood and watched to his keep
And the whisper of time sighed around the hills.

Panasowna has tried fair wind for a steed
Though the sky's in search of the star
And the serpent entwined about the stag's head
Tried to reach out and poison her hair.

"O no, Panasowna, you will not go far
Ethusel has only one hour
And if you do not reach him before it is over
Then the other falls into the ocean.

"Panasowna took her pen and she stabbed the serpent's eye
And he fell through the clouds to the land.
As she rode on and on full of laden stones
With horizons of life in her unsung.

"It was then that the daylight became the dark night
She recalled what the farmer had said:
When the night becomes black and no sound can be heard,
You have come to the land of the night.

"And she found the dark star hanging low in the sky
And she gathered it up in her arms
And she rode to the shrine where Ethusel lay dead
And she placed the dark star in her hair.

And the star became bright and it shone on the land
And the shrouds of darkness were gone
And Ethusel was standing before Panasowna
And the light came to bear in her hair.