WITH MEDUSA

WITH MEDUSA

I had tea
with Medusa

on Solaris (was
hell striving to convince
her I had
been invited)

joke being
that he who fathered me
swore I could
never grow man enough
to be turned
into stone

and then,
of course, so much
snake myself that she
could not but
feel comfortable
dialing down the ancient wrath
to what
barely rose above
a frown

and thus enough frissance,
and indeed camaraderie,
to sustain
this sudden
turn to ceremony, leading
to the pouring
and imbibing of (obviously)
milkless green tea

and thus
taking time out to wonder
which of us
might be real, unless both,
or even neither

or as
the planet itself might
elect to determine
constructed exclusively
from
memories
or producr of
the dialogue, dialectic, between
the snakes
in both our systems
and the alien intellect rooted
in Solaris itself

(such a bugbear, and liberation,
how the human
brain
finds itself shaped to
divine and interpret)