Upon Olympus, where the nectar curdles into brine, The weavers drop the spindle and ignore the ancient line. Poseidon strikes the southern gate where narrow currents weep— The Gate of Grief, the Mandeb straits, awoken from their sleep. A barren rock, an altar claimed by phantoms clad in dust, To choke the belly of the sea and rot the merchant's trust. Across the dunes of sand and tar, Hephaestus turns the key; The iron veins that fed the west run dry as any sea. No black ambrosia courses through the serpent in the sand, Lest flying sparks of bronze and oil ignite the scorched land. Wings of Prometheus gone mad—small shadows carved of wire— Have taught the subterranean flow to dread the falling fire. At Hormuz, where the chasm breathes, the sea-god’s trident turns; A wooden beast of modern iron shudders, breaks, and burns. The water churns with heavy tears, a sacrifice unnamed, While Persian murmurs stir the deep where trident-heads are aimed. Far north, where old Euphrates coils around a broken plain, Ares detects the hidden forge that spits the stinging rain; A wooden perch, a sling of steel, abandoned in the marsh, Torn by the hounds of Babylon beneath a midday harsh. Yet half the swarm has flown already, scattered in the blue, And neither Zeus nor mortal man can pull the arrows true. And near the coast where olive boughs were broken long ago, The pale Erinyes sweep the dusk and string the archer's bow. Two shades slip down to Acheron beneath the flash of light, Their blood a drop into the cup of unappeased night. The gods look down from velvet thrones, their faces veiled in smoke: The sea a snare, the land a pyre, the iron pipeline broke. No prophecy will mend the thread, no oracle explain— Only the murmur of the tide, the choking of the vein.
