/pɪθ/

 

At the close sits Pyth the Suggester, erect.

A seat on the bridge which

Begins at a fixed point

And ends at nowhere in particular.

 

By any other name he is La Petite Voix,

And hissing, whispered soft certainties

On the benefits of fruit to one who welcomed

Persuasion.

It was on Pyth’s request that she begat Cain,

Who begat War,

Who begat Pain,

Who begat Fear and her brother Doubt,

Who together begat boredom,

Who begat the Pen,

The Violin, and the dying Left Hand,

Who begat Hope,

Who eventually was lost in a bed of flowers –

Snowdrops encircling a single white lily.

 

Pyth sat behind the judges,

Offering them hemlock to quell the

Outspoken mind.

He ripped the quill from the Bard’s decrepit claw,

And with the other hand , forced his famed face down into the

Two-tiered chocolate birthday cake.

The little red sweets, I’ve heard, were delectable.

 

Pyth the Defiler;

He loaded the bullet into Oswald’s gun.

He found the rocks for Mrs Woolf’s pockets.

He turned the dials on Sylvia’s furnace,

The eternal kiln for her Earthenware Head.

 

I pad silently towards the place where he sits,

Lily in hand.

My heart is hardened to this creature,

This Mercury who leads his quarry to death.

The lily drops over the rail,

Echo of a whisper.

 

Pyth turns; my eyes meet the space where his should be,

And I push,

He topples.

 

As the stool follows him over the edge

It becomes obvious to me:

 

Today I have killed nothing.

 

Published in the 2014 University of Reading Creative Arts Anthology – ‘Origami Warriors’