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> Member Pages > Dimitri Rimsky > The Night Caller
The Night Caller
If Prometheus were Unbound
Where would he go?
Would he return to the lover
to whose hearth he first brought the fire?
Would she be there waiting for him?
Not likely.
Oh, at first She stayed close to him,
till the screams drove her Mad with despair,
till the flapping wings haunted her sleep,
till she could not face another day
of tending an endless wound.
So she took the embers
And left him on his rock.
left him chained in the shadow of the bird
left him to suffer alone.
He understood.
He forgave her.
What else could he do?
And she walked away
till she couldn't hear him screaming
till the sun cast no shadows over her
till she broke the chains of love
and found a home in a distant world
and after some years she learned to sleep without dreaming
So she was completely unprepared
When the knocking in the night called her from the hearthside,
called her from her lover's bed
Imagine her horror opening the door
to find him, collapsed on the threshold
Gaping wound in his side
The dust swirling up in the wind of the beating wings.
Imagine her horror standing there
when he looked up at her
imploring to be taken in.
Safe from the reach of the bloody beak.
What would you do?
Oh certainly Your first instinct would be to drag him in
to place him by the fire he suffered for
to clean his wounds, to hold him, to cry over him
to rock him in your arms
But what of her life ....Now?
What of the Man calling to her from a distant room?
What of the terror of the screaming, flapping shadows
What of a future forever pursued by relentless talons
What of that!
No you think. No one could be that cruel.
But isn't it crueler still to ask her,
to expect her
to suffer forever with him?
Is the cost of love that high?
Is that the price she must pay for caring,
must she go on paying forever?
Isn't it fair that she too be unbound?
After all wasn't it he who defied the law?
Wasn't this really his punishment and his alone?
She had only complained of being cold!
She would have been as warm if he had stayed and held her.
Wasn't it he Who betrayed Her!
Wasn't his grand defiance really only an act of vain glory?
Wasn't her heart broken, Wasn't once enough?
She done what she could
But the screaming
The black wings,
the blood and anguish was too much.
He called to her again from a distant room
and she closed the door.
She would tell him
"It was only the wind."
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