Five riddles for psychoanalysts
(In honor of the Sphynx whose code was cracked When Sophocles and Freud the myth attacked)
1.
What looks up
But sees below
The surface
Of all human show,
By wording all the things
In flight
From reason
And the rhymes of night?
2.
I run off
At the mouth
Into mind.
Like Aeneas
Under the known
I go
To find Anchises,
Word after word
My staircase;
Down, down
I go
Where speechless words
And spit and image
And mouth-milk
Nurse me
And only a dream
Can lead me home.
3.
In dark I see
What light of day
Has never known.
What I can be
There is no way
For you to own
Unless you ’gree
No coin to pay
And you’ll be shown
The past to see
In light of day
When dark has flown.
4.
Without a tooth
I bite again
Invisibly.
There is no truth
Or brawn of men
Can stay me;
For without ruth
I gnaw mind’s den
Invincibly.
5.
In me the dead
Can live again
In casket not
But in the head
Where thoughts of men
Are all begot.
When all is said
In now or then
I right the rot
By tears shed,
Heart pried open,
Nor life, nor death forgot.
Eugene Mahon August 2009