Double trouble

Artemis

Whatever. Yep, there were two of us,
me and my little bruvver, Paian then – Apollo
only later, when he’d become the darling
of the foreigners: a swerver and a traitor.

But two weeks prem, we were sorry
specimens back then, clinging to each other
in the clammy cave that saved us
from a baptism of red-hot pumice.

We’d been shucked into the darkest dark
the world has ever known,
just missing the biggest fireworks ever seen.
Labour induced by shock: the roar

like Earth herself in labour.
I always suffered from tinnitus,
especially when arguments started.
And girl, did they rage!

I wouldn’t let go of him, so he survived
and wouldn’t let go of me. Original
co-dependency. Start and end of story.
Could neither split nor live in harmony.

The rest is history. Well, Greek mythology,
actually: original spin. Before they invented
philosophy and democracy,
they had to pull the plug on the back story.

Millennia of so-called pre-history
almost lost without trace that night
as our mother Leto staggered and slogged
through a sick-making fog,

clinging to her two pack of brats,
howling from hunger and cold.
Vultures were bloated from the rotting bodies
of the drowned, or we’d likely not have made it.

Cora Greenhill launches her new book, Artemis, The People’s Priestess, at Grindleford Bishop Pavilion, Main Rd, Grindleford, S32 2JN, on Saturday 27 May. Click here for further information.