At the Vent at Delphi

Stop with me here.
The footholds that you see,
the rotting ladder down–
no one climbs back.

The air has a green taste.
It tells what people want to know,
what you will ask to know,
things no one should know.

Cities form here, children and gold,
the blood of battle on the stones.
Strangeness past telling–
the half-born, malformed,
godlings, beasts who struggle and fall.
Here all issues and is strange.

I have answered? And you do not understand?
It makes no matter.
We cannot open the box words make.

Walk with me, if you will.

The walls of the village gleam.
Limbs stir the moon.
The plastered stones speak.
The leaves speak.
Here too all issues and is strange.