Okay, Idun?

It was pointed out to me that I am overlooking an obvious mate.

Not one I am aware of yet, but one from a mythological aspect...seeing as in some works I am identified with or as Bragi, the Norse God of Poetry and Eloquence...the logical mate for me would be Bragi's wife, Idun, the Goddess of Youth.

Now, just to find an eternally young woman with nice apples... (but I am NOT growing my beard out as in the picture above...)

Oh, my Bragi works...here's two of them:

Bragi bleeds

the serpent and the succubus
are baring polished fang for you.
I caught the faintest glimmer
of greylight off their
ruby-blue metal surfaces.
I heard the sheaths' whispering
to me again last night
as I dreamed memory.

slow cuts the quickslitter
that drives home venom angry
and opaque. take this phial
and drink warm wine tonight
when they come for you, as I do.
no less breathes a riddle than I.
no more to dream
the clocks' mockery.

---

Bragi, awakening in his tomb

cracked and battered escarpments of my heart,
running crimson and gold with blood and amber
from my faulted, vaulted passions. rodents clamber
up the thorny roses grown on that decay. part
predator. part prey. part symbiote and parasite.
grandiose and pathetic. the warm wine runs away,
spilled by careless hands and hearts, every day.
I pluck cithara strings to wake the flower of night.
I play for you the melodies.
I pray for you the memories.
I cry for you the threnodies.
and barter still the remedies.
cold and wasted thoughts I would know no more,
a monument to lovers' kiss and merg'd minds.
as Odysseus bore the stick that finally blinds
the sleeping giant. barren bones and paramour.
epic tales of love and lies and truths unflown.
love: an addiction and a venom I use and sell.
thumbscrewed to the walls in my dungeon cell.
murmuring mad words and dreams outgrown.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

---

The first was written in 1981, it came to me out of the blue one day as I sat in my office in Washington, DC. It was the first time I identified my totem as Bragi, and it was my first reference to the colour ruby-blue...which recurs in some later works.

The latter was written a few years ago, after my second marriage, it invoked the Panther (roses), barren bones and paramour (Goldenheart), cithara (Alisha) and threnodies (Alabaster)...talk about self-referencing. The metaphysical and confessional tones of both always please me, immensely.