SACRED TO APOLLO

The dolphin and the wolf
Are sacred to Apollo
They search the sea of wilderness
Where solitary souls find home

Far from man
His tribes and tribulations
His cult of coat and family
Coerced by flag and gun

His binding-net
No longer ‘stick-and-carrot’ to his kind
But simplified as ‘stick’
A joyless life more brutally he sticks it

The dolphin sings to cipher
Sea-currents in the timeless
Sonor of aesthetics   –
That burbled chirp of babies
Precious to the ear of procreative
Mediterranean Poseidon

Corfu at first light
Following the wake of fishers
Beneath a creaking hull until
Exuberance of sun
Invites a leaping run (out-run!)
Of motorised mankind

So they rescued Arion
The poet robbed and thrown
Overboard to drown
Some say they soared
Upward from pre-conscious mind
That wilderness of origin
Where universal consciousness
Informs the individual

Human beings rise and rise
But when their wax wings melt
There follows an immersion
Often only then
Authentic self emerges

When the wolf assumes the mountain
Nature colours him
Bark-silver striped in forest-shade
Camouflaged to have no business with us
Neither to require our folk-tale fear

But what of the wolf within mankind?
Unified in units tailored grey
They are only obeying orders
They little know how they came to be
Utilised assembling
A death-squad 

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Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

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