"No invocation smooths this path now, neither to god nor muse, and any summoned must be angered by the warped words confused by wailing that spit from that wormwood-stuffed pit that she names 'mouth.'
Let me be bold then, and warn you, King: you bad me speak the exact words she use, but their sad and windy path howls loud now, not as before is her abhorred speech the whispered wash of waters lapping but, hot caustic rapid uprising from her god-raped gorge, lifts until her screaming fills the air with discord, noise that were your ceiling lesser stone it might crack and crush them and her both with its falling. Yet I fear even that collapse could not crush this voice which yet affrights and affronts even these ears, slave's ears, which are nothing.
I bid you then, in dread, hear the labyrinth resound to the hammer of her tongue. Hear, then, and bring to bear thereto your strength, your wisdom, that you may discern what semblance of truth might spin through these words, which I fear repeating, as one lost behind the cave-mouth might see the smallest span of light -- to which I am blind -- before that treacherous step that meets no ground, only gulf and gape and fear and ever falling.
Tithonus your brother, other-mothered, had cut the cords and with the oarsmen, calm-weathered, loosened bonds that in worn furrows had lain furled in spiral curls, oversleeping serpents stirred by Pegasus' bright-winged dawn, drawn fast, light hurled high over Phegion. So too those beautiful prows, surf-white many-armed machine-maidens slicing Thetis' smooth skin that is death to virgins, unfolding bright wings, driven by oar-legs with the ice-winds of Thrace tautening the bellies of sail-cloth, flames over Calydnae, stern-faced stern-carvings staring home, racing as millipedes race to the weakened fallen in battle. Phalacran daughters thus were freed, so too on Fate's fatal peak, founded by the she-cow straying, were freed the fetters which had stitched straight the lips of Alexandra the Second Beauty and the rope breaking set the wine-raped speech on its flying. Thus:"
Tithonus your brother, other-mothered, had cut the cords and with the oarsmen, calm-weathered, loosened bonds that in worn furrows had lain furled in spiral curls, oversleeping serpents stirred by Pegasus' bright-winged dawn, drawn fast, light hurled high over Phegion. So too those beautiful prows, surf-white many-armed machine-maidens slicing Thetis' smooth skin that is death to virgins, unfolding bright wings, driven by oar-legs with the ice-winds of Thrace tautening the bellies of sail-cloth, flames over Calydnae, stern-faced stern-carvings staring home, racing as millipedes race to the weakened fallen in battle. Phalacran daughters thus were freed, so too on Fate's fatal peak, founded by the she-cow straying, were freed the fetters which had stitched straight the lips of Alexandra the Second Beauty and the rope breaking set the wine-raped speech on its flying. Thus:"
