Chapter 30 Other
Other
the mind of a man is difficult to lose:
it whispers human, whispers I,
first person, self-absorbed, tangled up
with the gut instinct that pinpoints revenge.
farm animals are a small casualty
and the cousin (human again, remembering family)
deserves worse than the loss, but the wolf
pushes aside those parts of the mind that recall
– hands – lacing a shoe, a tunic, a mantle,
and in their place a simpler need:
RUN
no room left for abstract, no time for wondering.
but even now there are echoes
– I will be like this forever I think –
of a human kind of dread.
sometimes I cannot bear it
knowledge of forever is a dark thing,
drives a wolf into the shadowed forest
to howl heartbreak at the ancient trees
(if they hear it, the depth of longing,
they have no tongues to answer)
but it’s a freedom, too, from the temporary,
from the loss of change,
and when there’s nothing left to be mourned
maybe there’s a peace in that.
maybe there’s a surrender.
but it hurts
it tastes like betrayal
my clothes stolen my life stolen my wife stolen
I was made wolf by them on purpose
abandoned to live feral in the forest like I’m nothing
but I loved her
love is another human lie and close kin
to hate, easily sharpened to a ruinous edge.
I see her sometimes on the edge of the forest
she looks afraid as if she knows I’m watching
guilt makes prey of a hunter, makes haunted a ruin
– I would be the ghost that trails her –
it steals her softness, gives edges to her beauty
until like rock the cruelty becomes apparent.
I wonder what she told the king
whether he knows that I am wolf
how can I know when he hunts so rarely
but if he thought I was wolf he would he would he would –
what would he do, Bisclavret?
(see I still have my name)
(this is how I know I am more than this)
can the king move mountains?
upturn the natural order?
remake worlds in a kinder image?
more likely a quick death,
a head mounted like a trophy on the wall,
if he bothers at all.
I do not believe that
then once again this is a story about lying
lies are better than
HUNT
and
RUN
and
SLEEP
when I have hunted and run and slept
for what feels like a thousand years
even a wolf has a sense of its prey.
this is just wandering, just wild, just chasing moonlight
– I’ll know it when I see it –
what is ‘it’ but ‘something other than this’
– in the end that’s all I want –
more time lurking on the boundary-lines,
more time watching from a distance.
more time to live
more time to laugh
more time to watch the king grow
from an exiled prince into a king who knows his people
who cares for them
his grief has aged him already.
see him emerge, gwyllt, wild, half-dead and shattered with it.
if the saints would stop tormenting him they might make a king
– they say he is a good ruler –
they say a lot of things
– a wife
they’re looking to find him a wife –
no rumour spreads as fast as one of love.
the kingdom burns with it, the taste of the story
on the wind and on the wing.
the daughters of kings and counts, the hope
of a kingdom and its people.
perhaps I should be happy for him.
if a wolf can feel that kind of happiness.
at the very least I wish them the best of luck.
a sly remark and no mistake.
I suspect they don’t know the king the way I do
but perhaps I’m wrong about him
perhaps I have misunderstood him
I am only a wolf after all and what do wolves know of these things