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Destroyer

by Aaron Blair

I have become death
and the eater of worlds.
The stars are candles
on my banquet table
where I gorge myself on mysteries,
snatching at anything
eight arms could hold.

Oh, the light of the universe
is as bright as it is cold,
pressing into dark places
and piercing them with truth,
but in the sweet black nothing,
I will cradle you, swallowed whole.

The greatest act of love is to consume.

10/08/2009

Posted on 10/08/2009
Copyright © 2024 Aaron Blair

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Richard Paez on 12/14/09 at 12:22 PM

I find myself mesmerized by this piece. Even though I'm missing the allusion (I get the feeling that you're referencing Lovecraft? I even thought Galactus at first, but he doesn't have eight arms. Then again, I could be totally off and there be no allusion there.), I find the construction of this piece to be tight and exact. (My one question is if there's a reason for the switch in tense in the last line of the second stanza: cradle/swallowed as opposed to cradle/swallow or have cradled/swallowed?). The very last line -- "The greatest act of love is to consume." -- resonates with me particularly. The set-up for it is perfect: the speaker is presented as a being of universal power, some kind of god or cosmic archetype, both in the description ("The stars are candles/on my banquet table" -- perfect) and in the sheer confidence of the voice (reinforced by exact word-choice, the concision of the piece, it's matter-of-fact observations of stellar phenomena), and then the final line comes. What sadness this creature that speaks embodies, that it has such power and perspective and realizes that the greatest act of love is one that is ultimately destructive to its object: to consume it. Yes, doing so preserves it in time, integrates it into oneself, but removes it from reality at the same time: must we kill and consume the ones we love to keep them from changing? Thank you for sharing this, Aaron.

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