Divination 2

“I come here, O haruspex, to know

What you can foretell from the entrails

 Of my sacrificed white lamb

Which  now steams on your stone.

I know the future is fixed and fated.

I know I am doomed to cross 

Time’s hall from past to future.

I know your power is prediction 

While mine is merely planning.

It is the not knowing that halts me.

What auspicious omens can you see

As you bend and tend?”

“I see at  a marble bench a future haruspex.

In her nail-less blue handsI see 

A drowned brown fledgeling 

of our huge-winged white bellied seabirds,

In whose entrails are preposterously 

shiny net, beads, tiny cups, cubes, 

lurid red, orange, blue, purple, pink colours.

I cannot interpret this sign. 

But certainly it is a sacrifice,

A gift to mollify the gods.

“Now I see  another haruspex, bending, tending,

knife clenched in smooth green hand,

Another  marble bench

On which slithers and quivers 

The monstrous entrails of a whale. 

The knife slashes.

A gelid pile of objects  

indescribable, undigested, inedible,

And all the unachievable colours;

The red, orange, blue, purple, pink colours.”

“O , haruspex! What future is that?

How can I plan my life?

And that of my child?”