The Raven and the Scorpion

The fable of the Raven and the Scorpion, in the Bruges edition of Waarachtingen Fabulen (1567)

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Archias, The Greek Anthology, ix, 339

The Raven, to its prey,
is black death from a clear
blue sky. One, high aloft
with keen eye, spied a stir
from under a crevice
and swooped to catch
the young, red Scorpion.

But, ever alert to threat
from the deceptive sky,
the Scorpion jabbed out
and up into the Raven’s heart.
The beak that had just seized
its tender carapace
went slack. Out slid
the sly invertebrate
as the raptor went
belly up, and died.

Thus Nature works and churns.
Sometimes the killer is killed
by his own intended victim.

 

What Does the Raven Eat Today?

 

by Brett Rutherford

    After a ballad by Kreuznach

Over the parched field one raven flew.
Keen was his eye, but nothing he found.
One comrade comes from the flock to join him.
“My coal-black friend, a word I pray.
What man shall give us our food this day?”

Quoth he: “Beyond the wood in Elfindale,
a lordly feast awaits us all.
Come follow me, to the gallow-tree
where the smell  of blood I keen,
the blood of a hero, once brave and kind.”

“Ah!” cried his friend. “I will alert the host.
Who was the wretched man, and how his fall?” —
“Ask the knight’s falcon, who knew him well,
or ask the grieving charger on which he rode,
or better yet, ask of the wife at home alone

what name shall the tombstone call him.
The hawk speaks now, for he has flown
beyond the hunt and its dainty reward.
The horse now serves the murderer,
who rides and rides to the humble abode

where he will play with his enemy’s child,
and take the woman and lift her up
from weeping widow to his armor’d kiss.
Come, ravens wild! The feast is ours,
another banquet from human-kind!”

 

The Were-Raven, Part 1

by Brett Rutherford

    Adapted from an ancient Danish Ballad

1

The Raven began his journey at dusk;
by day he never flew. By rise of moon
in fullest orb he traveled far; by dark
of moon he fled to the bats’ company

in cave and belfry and the mountain pine.
So wide of wing was he, so baleful-eyed,
it was an ill-fortune to come upon
his perch, his roost or his dark sleeping place.

Time and again to one spot he fluttered —
a terror to lark and dove, a terror
to all who sang vespers and prayed Amens —
he came to where, in one lonely bower
the lady Ermeline was wont to weep.

She saw him not, although his shadow long
cast double penumbrae in moon and star-
light, tall as a man, so deep in mourning
was the lady whose eyes ne’er upward glanced.

And so, ill-omened, un-noted, he flew
away, South to the dread desert’s sand-verge,
North, to the last ice-pack of the Boreal Pole,
up, to the place above cloud-tops where snow

sings crystal anthems and the air is thin,
and still, from everywhere, his corvid eye
followed the downward glance of Ermeline
as she embroidered, sighed, and put aside
her day-time’s dull handiwork. Her hands shook;
she touched for forehead for signs of fever,
and finding none, turned to her lonely bed.

She slept, and as he watched her distantly,
another hovered, reached out a strangling
hand, and snapped it back, self-stung with conscience.
Whatever it was, it watched him watching
her, and slithered off, a serpent of mist.

One night, when moon was full, and stars were right,
and the garden was diamond-bright with night’s
aurora of fireflies and Northern lights,
and Ermeline walked alone as ever,
he found the courage to speak: “Tell me true,
fair and alone, my Lady Ermeline,
why do you linger in the chill garden
to shed so many tears? Compete with dew,
or a raincloud to water these flagstones?”

Fair Ermeline started, but saw not him.
“Who are you, Stranger, to dare address me
so from darkness? Two eyes I see, but all
the rest of you is shrouded in shadow.” —

“Fear not,” the Raven stepped now forth. “I asked
why to the world’s weeping you add the more,
when one so fair is made for life and joying.
Who have you lost?” he paused. “A brother dear?
Or mother or father, or some beloved?” —

“Raven, dire friend, thou messenger of Death,
have you of all the feathered host come now
to mock me, or to hear my tale of woe,
because a maiden’s sorrows fill thy beak?”

“Admit me to thy side a while,” he said,
but let me perch upon yon pediment
so that your whisperings and my coarse caw
shall be as solemn as confessional.” —

“Am I thus doomed, wild Raven! If thou art
my confidant and confessor, who next
have I to counsel with but crow and kite,
and the malevolent sea cormorant?” —

“I will remain till thou hast told thy tale.
More than night-bird am I, but less than man.
I mean to know your sorrow’s own story.” —
Her eyes met his. — “I will tell all to you.”

-- to be continued --

The Ravens Are Waiting, The Crows Have Arrived

by Brett Rutherford

1

Ravens are waiting. The crows have arrived.
Brown oaks darken with their spread wings, fanned tails.
Shrill calls from inside the chapel belfry
echo from the building fronts — a census
might count a thousand; how many make up
one "murder" is anyone's guess, but this,
at edge of college campus, counts as
a university already robed,
their corvine dissertations defended,
their gaudeamus anthems sunset-sung
as they spatter the bus-shelter's rooftops
and huddle all night in their unseen nests,
where they are nurturing tomorrow's crows
for their ancient calling. Ravens are waiting,
edged out, biding their time in ones and twos,
but they, too, are about their business,
hatching as many eggs as possible,
for they, afloat the white tide of Europe
onto this new continent, remember.

2

     Adapted from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 937 CE

Here at Brunanburh, hosts
killed by King Athelstan,
lord of long-armed earls,
boon-giver of bracelets
to kneeling nobles,
killed he countless ones,
and with his brother also
Edmund, Elder, the aetheling —
how many killed? Too many
to count! Down the dead fell
as they destroyed the dread Scots
and burned their fair-sailed ships.
Loud the field resounded, bright
as gold the sweat on their armor!

Glad the sun rose, giving
light, the great star's morning
merry over the field of blood.
Dead soldiers lay, with lance
and dart struck down,
Norsemen prostrate
their brazen shields behind,
from arrows overshot.
Or Viking, or Scot,
or trait'rous Briton ally,
died they all dead
beneath the same bright sky!

Though some escaped,
Norsemen fleet in their nailed ships,
dragged off with our darts
inside them, sailed off
on the stormy sea
to fight a better day —
let them flee to Dublin,
sad city in Viking thrall!

But bellowing berserkers
they left behind.
Let them enjoy the crows,
and keening for their kind,
the dismal, starving kite
to entrail feast invite,
and let their last sight
be the black raven
with his horned beak
descending wide-winged.
And they, of armor stripped,
invite the white worm,
the voiceless toad,
the maggot-bearing fly.
By mid-day sun, the blood-
feast will draw the eagle,
and the greedy after-feast
of the falcon, battle-hawk.
At dusk, the gray beast comes.
Let but one live lamenting
the jaws of the wood-wolf.

Never in all the world's war
had there been a greater
slaughter, nor more destroyed
by the sharpened sword!

3

These are not bombs or arrows, yet.
Those who walk vertical are not yet
horizontal and motionless.
Not javelins, but hurled epithets,
anonymous death threats
are their weapons of choice.

Passive, unvaccinated idiots,
four to a pram, wheel to the park,
pushed by unlettered parents
whose only book celebrates
eyes plucked for eyes unopened.

The earth beneath them weeps,
the methane-pocketed soil shrugs,
Swiss-cheese sink-holed hollowed:
whose house will it swallow next?

The water, oil-slicked, rills bright
in rainbow glitterings, but no one
minds. The bees, too weak to pollinate
the trees, can only buzz protest.
The shrinking bird host
has no elected legislators.

The armies are everywhere.
More bullets in stock than ever
babies can be made. One with
your name on it awaits you!
Just one emergency more,
and troops tip-toe
across this border, that
river declared as mine
and not yours, the oil there
for the taking, loot's prime
directive! A subtle lead-up,
dueling conspiracies of complicit
foreigners, expert at poisoning
from village well to townhouse
door-knob, gas-death for all,
warehouses are ready, germs known
and unknown pocketed
for easy distribution. War-mongers
worse than war-hawks, with
mercenary wink, a profit
pocketed, the rich secured
in their walled manors —
oh, they are almost ready!

Led by a drooling madman,
and weasel sniveling, a nation rots.
No need for foreign enemies
when enemies of the people
are among us already. Take arms!
The National Guard will help.
Your local police are militarized
and know who the secret Muslims are!

Park and field, tent city
and commandeered stadium,
vast open spaces sky-spread
await the arrival of carrion.
The ground will groan
with the bodies of the dead.
Serves them right: journalists
the scum of Karl Marx, the host
of homeless what business theirs
to clog our cities, those bearded
zealots with their hairy Protocols,
off with you, o everything but white!

Athelstan's heirs, they cannot wait
for this. They were born to see
this thing through at last.
Sheets off, gentlemen, it's
Armageddon among us.

Ravens are waiting.
The crows have arrived.