A legend: two warrior-brothers put slaughter
Behind them; live (with their sister) in a rough hut
— and here the tale, passed from mother to daughter,
From father to child, moves into myth — where a rutt-
ing cervo arrives from the east, with a bough of golden
Fruit in its antlers. At dusk a wolf carries wood:
The men burn great fires (“O remember the olden
Times of blood; let us pray as we once stood,
Together.”) Its gist I do not comprehend,
But its truth I have literally seen, carved in granite,
At The Stones of the Gods show, in Bergamo.
The image of a stag, a man’s head blend-
ing with the disk of the rising sun — that story: can it
Not be from five thousand years ago?
Behind them; live (with their sister) in a rough hut
— and here the tale, passed from mother to daughter,
From father to child, moves into myth — where a rutt-
ing cervo arrives from the east, with a bough of golden
Fruit in its antlers. At dusk a wolf carries wood:
The men burn great fires (“O remember the olden
Times of blood; let us pray as we once stood,
Together.”) Its gist I do not comprehend,
But its truth I have literally seen, carved in granite,
At The Stones of the Gods show, in Bergamo.
The image of a stag, a man’s head blend-
ing with the disk of the rising sun — that story: can it
Not be from five thousand years ago?
(3.4.1997)
