04-22-2017, 06:50 AM
The Elder’s Warning
Hunger is tradition
some can’t bear in winter.
Protuberant eyes
of children follow ravished
flames.
Hunger is tradition,
and tradition says
more fretful spirits blow on winter’s wind.
Woe should one catch you
when far from your long house.
Like a tick in the firewood
you’ll bring it in
to feed.
You’ll grow impossibly thin.
Impossibly limbed,
you’ll shiver like boughs without leaves.
Your skin will become
like a fire burnt out.
And dreams will insist…
Though hunger is tradition,
this is something else.
The protuberant eyes of
your children will pop in your teeth.
Ravished
you’ll lay your wife’s thighs in the flames.
You’ll see that your longhouse
is but storehouse.
You’ll relish their cries,
you’ll lap as they bleed,
you’ll burrow
through their skulls with your teeth.
The love of family
will be of roasting meat.
For this is something more than need,
no mere hunger of tradition.
You’ll be windigo greed.
Hunger is tradition
some can’t bear in winter.
Protuberant eyes
of children follow ravished
flames.
Hunger is tradition,
and tradition says
more fretful spirits blow on winter’s wind.
Woe should one catch you
when far from your long house.
Like a tick in the firewood
you’ll bring it in
to feed.
You’ll grow impossibly thin.
Impossibly limbed,
you’ll shiver like boughs without leaves.
Your skin will become
like a fire burnt out.
And dreams will insist…
Though hunger is tradition,
this is something else.
The protuberant eyes of
your children will pop in your teeth.
Ravished
you’ll lay your wife’s thighs in the flames.
You’ll see that your longhouse
is but storehouse.
You’ll relish their cries,
you’ll lap as they bleed,
you’ll burrow
through their skulls with your teeth.
The love of family
will be of roasting meat.
For this is something more than need,
no mere hunger of tradition.
You’ll be windigo greed.