You have to look resolutely behind

the masks and the many names,

take off the veneer of subtleties

and polish away all those centuries

of misinformation and superstition—

what you’re left with, though,

for all its authenticity, is even scarier,

 

His wolves watch you knowingly.

The croaks from the two dark ravens,

keenly aware of your expressions and

sitting on either of his cloaked shoulders,

only underscore the weirdness, or maybe

wyrdness, the absolute fact that even

with one steel-gray eye, he can still

see right through you, behind your eyes

and out the other side of your mind.

Or at least, that’s the impression

he likes to give, when he’s treating

with those of us whose feelings

about him are mostly ambiguous—

which is practically everyone.

 

I confess, first seeing him there, alive

and vital on his throne, the vaulting

roof of his hall of warriors overhead,

I was torn between admiration and

that respect I owe to such as he,

and a stone-cold fury that floated,

like Mimir’s dreaming head in the well,

between my heart and my loins.

I remember, my anger whispered softly

burning too hot for me to speak.

 

There is the image in my mind of Loki,

chained to three rocks and covered in ichors,

but also the image of my beloved

walking slowly towards a perfectly still,

hanging shadow beneath spreading boughs.

 

Another image, the two of them

lying under night’s secret dark,

tangled in bliss, bloodstained arms twined

and splashed with moonlight and sweat,

very far away from the shining halls,

undiscovered by those who would have slain

both of them, if they had known.

 

And there is the knowledge that although

we truly never met before, he knows me

for what I really am, and seething anger

that comes from an old wound, a grudge

reflected against his calm, one-eyed gaze

long before these many years had fallen

to reveal the one which held my birth.

 

If I were to ask everyone who knows him

what they think, I’d get so many answers

that no single judgment could be made.

This pleases him the most, I think—

the ability to let no one, not even those

who love him most of all, understand

the fullness and depth of his mysteries.

 

He is the flint and his brother, the spark.

He is the sword and his wife, the key.

He is battle-madness, breathing death

while others stand ranged there and here

to carry his bidding and his words out,

out into the Nine Worlds, like those lost

drops of the poet’s draught, for better

or for what may be infinitely worse.

He is sacrifice, and what lies trembling,

waiting on the altar to be made headless

and to have its blood emptied away.

 

And while I cannot, will not, will never

embrace him wholeheartedly, while I can’t

ignore the marks left upon my raw heart

and those left on the heart of my love,

while I do, indeed, presume to say

you cannot always be right, Old Man,

neither can I wholly turn my back on him,

and not merely for a lack of trust.

 

Just because the storm may kill you

with its winds and raging power,

its bolts of lightning and its flooding

in no way removes the terrible awe

whipped into your awareness by its might,

nor does the danger and fear erase

that wild ecstasy that infects the soul,

even when it’s held at arm’s length.

 

Artwork by Sarah Shaw.

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