They move in hunt around the central pot
of rat's brains, frog's bellies, teeth of mice,
skins of snakes. Three beastly bodies,
which surge
like one great, foul river, twisting all around
the great
axis of their cauldron's void.
Long untamed hair and nails, bending
like yellow,
husk-hued paper, rise up
into one dank, animal, polluted dance. Likewise,
their purple-red tonguespeech,
which bucks and pitches
through violent tones, can form no sweetnesses;
the noises of the shrill and hollowed language
resist every human instinct to understand,
grate the mind's taste, assault the eardrum
and will betray neither sense nor meaning.
Sick and feeble, the three hags paw aimlessly,
open-jawed, at the cold air before them,
which
barks and bites back with its windy force.
Six unwashed feet, then, wild with hair,
arhythmically landing, crunching tawny-pined earth,
forming the surging thump of one tribal dance
into limp orbit round a center tub of black.
--2/11/02