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Arion stroked the harp and began, his white hair
cascading across the gold arm of the harp
as though he were falling through song into sleep
and the winter stilled at the touch of the string,
and he sang the last verses as hidden Orestes
reclined and remembered and listened:
DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE:
PYRRHUS ALECTO, THE KNIGHT OF THE NIGHT OF BETRAYALS
FIREBRAND OF BURNING THAT CLOUDED THE STRAITS OF
HYLO,
THE OIL AND ASH ON THE WATER, IGNITED COUNTRY.
FOREVER AND EVER THE VILLAGES BURN IN HIS PASSAGE,
AND THE GRAIN OF THE PEASANTRY, LIFE OF THE RAGGED ARMIES
THAT HARRIED HIM BACK TO THE KEEP OF THE CASTLE
WHERE PYRRHUS THE FIREBRINGER CANCELED THE WORLD
BENEATH THE DENIAL OF BATTLEMENTS,
WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE WITH HIS COVERING ARMIES.
FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS THE COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH
HAS BURNED AND BURNED WITH HIS EFFACING HAND,
A BARREN OF SHIRES AND HAMLETS,
AND Firebringer HISTORY HANGS ON THE PATH OF HIS NAME.
Orestes listened, as honor and song,
as blood and adoption warred in the cell of his thoughts,
his father redeemed by poison, by blade
by the song of the harp string rendered a garrotte,
closing the eloquent throat of Arion
silencing song, reclaiming his father,
and transforming Caergoth from desert to garden:
yet the hand of Orestes stilled in the arc of reprisal,
and into the night he warred and remembered,
and as I tell you this, memory wars with him still
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