And this one is cold, heartless and amoral...

and is almost certainly the coda to at least the narrative part of the sequence.


Aristaeus A double sonnet, after Virgil

He was part god, part beast; he knew no guilt.
All gods do as they will, beasts as they must.
In both, it is their nature; never trust
a god or beast, That isn't how they're built.

He chased Eurydice with rape in mind.
He killed the snake. He watched her burn to ash.
Orpheus looked daggers at him, was not rash
enough to fight him.Satyrs are quite blind

To consequences. When his bees all died,
his cattle dried, his cheeses turned to mush,
he had to ask why. Asked without a blush.
Shapeshifter Proteus, who's never lied,

told him his victim's friend Queen Prosperin
had cursed him. Then he understood his sin.
Not as a man would. When you whip a beast
it learns to fear the whip at very least

A god who loses purpose is the same.
He has his tasks to do; his worshippers
if he does not perform, will soon disperse
He risks losing their prayers, and his name.

He could learn, not to feel guilt, but perform
those actions that a guilty man would do.
No matter that his feelings were not true.
He wanted to get back a living swarm.

And so he sacrificed four fierce young bulls,
one for his victim, one to Hades' queen,
one for the man he'd doomed to death obscene
and one to Zeus, who lays down all these rules