The Legend in Andromeda

Two hundred million years that galaxy

Has nested on the brilliant bough

Of chained Andromeda. My infancy

Diminishing; a patch of melting snow;

I stand so far from it a billion stars

Are nothing but a smudge of smokey light.

That Whale? Its skeleton still hulls the shore;

I heard it suffocate one winter night.

My father left for easier excalibars;

My mother looked in all the local bars.

I keep repeating: What's a father for?

Can anybody recollect his face?

Perseus is almost at meridian;

I constellate its stars, and try to trace

The features of what must have been a man.

Hero holds a woman's severed head,

Algol, Demon star, Medusa, Ghoul;

Had she vipers in her hair, a living mop?

I've known too many women used like fuel,

Their warmth is life, their light is bread,

The planets sleep at the foot of their bed.

How then can her eclipse have cursed the crop?

My father rushed to rescue women on the rocks

As heroes must. Do other sons look up tonight,

Fierce blood of crippled hawks

He cast from that high nest of light?-

I too was banished from my father's eyes,

And tore at life as at my father's liver.

Hands that pitied me still bear the scars.

Now break those chains! Set free the fire-giver!

Prometheus must Perseus revise;

I come to power in forbidden skies

By rearranging all my father's stars.