THE PAIN OF DREAMING, The bliss of pain is the touch of truth Options

[JaxMyth]

Hidden from the grip of mangrove roots
my song was born. I gave her breath
and she woke to the slap of the making tide.
The men heard her and they became shadows
on the face of the moon with their hands on fire.
We ran from the rocks and the roar and the crack
but the fingers of the lightning men found us.
She fled from my mouth on a frantic wing
and keened to the gorge where the river chuckles
and the echoes tell sweet lies.

The men called on the sun to wake and find her but the sun would not, so the men grew angry and swallowed him. They twitched long spears onto their arms and legs and twirled through clouds of dust to change into birds; and as birds they went hunting. The sea-birds found her and the kingfishers caught her and the song-birds took her and the lyre-birds sang her to the crows and ravens; but the crows and ravens hated beauty and the eagle ripped her leaving little for the butcher-birds to hang in the thorns of a tree.

The women caught me, crying on the ebb,
drifting back on the falling water.
They pulled me out and beat me hard.
“Your song wasn’t true, she needed death
We know truth and truth is pain.
Women have wept the ocean’s water.”