At the gathering of ash,

the Sea of Reeds—Yam Suph.

Here, Lilith is cast in exile.

The first of women

lies in her stillness;

blood flows as the tide,curses roll like wheels

Day upon day,

she moves in the gyre of birth and falling.

The sea-wind is the wound of the old Gods;

shattered bones uprear into reefs.

Daughters born of the scarlet

huddle the strand in a ring.

Their faces are new,their souls ancient,

their eyes coeval with mankind—

the Sirens.

Once they stood in the mist;

their hair webbed upon the wind;

talons bit into stone.

Within their singing—an oracle missing,an epic broken into leaves.

Here the ships are unmade.

“The nearer to truth, the farther from shore.”

Their painted phantasms burn like beacons,

and civilization yields, again and again, to the rites of the tide.

One day a homesick young sailor dreamed:

the mast goes down, and tongues of fire entwine.