Okeanos

And a tenth part of Okeanos
is given to dark night
a tithe of the pure water under earth
so the clear fountains pour from the rock face
stream from the caverns and clefts

down-running, carving wondrous ways
basalt resistance, cutting deep as they go

gaia where she sleeps
the cold water, the black rushing gleam,
the moving, down-rush, Wash, gush out
over bed-rock,toiling the boulders in flood,
purling in deeps, broad flashing in falls.

and a tenth part of bright clear Okeanos
his circulations - mists, rains, sheets, sheathes

black water - poisonous depths -

Styx this carver of caverns beneath us is.

the well is deep. from it's stillness
the words our voices speak
echo
resonance follows resonance
waves of this sounding come up to us

we draw the black water pure and cold
the light of day is not as bright

three thousand years
we have recited its virture out of Hesiod

Styx this black water, this down-pouring

is it twenty-five thousand years
since the ice withdrew
from the lands and we came forth
from the realm of caverns
where the river beneath the earth we knew
we go back to.

fifty million years
from the beginning of what we are-
we knew the depth of this well to be

fifty million years deep
but our knowing deepends
time deepens
this still water

styx pouring down in the spring
from it's glacial remove
from the black ice

we thirst for in dreams we dread.