The Old One of the Sea

"It was told that Nereus used similar tricks of metamorphoses ((to Proteus)). These tails were told also by our ancient painters, sculptors, vase-painters and goldsmiths. They created for us men with the bodies of fish, and this at a far earlier time than they created women with such bodies: which is evidence that the power of the great goddessess of the sea was not confined to the watery element, whereas the "Old Ones of the Sea" was always associated with the depths.

"The pictures also show him with a lion, a buck, and a serpent thrusting their heads out from his fishlike body. These were the creatures into which Nereus changed himself when advised by the goddesses of fate, and thus questioned him. This happened much earlier than Menelaos's adventure with Proteus, and earlier on than Herakles's wrestling match with the Triton who in our mythology is one of the younger sea-gods. We will come across him as the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite. The "Old One of the Sea" was, however, also a spectator at that wedding match, in threefold shape, as he is shown on one of the earliest pinnacles of the Acropolis in Athens, where he is most often referred to mistakenly as Typhon.

"Under one name or another the "Old Ones" ruled our seas before Poseidon. Unlike that still earlier figure, the hundred-armed Briareos, he was famed for his wisdom and truthfulness. In the words of Hesiod: "The eldest son of Pontos was Nereus, who never lies, but always tells the truth. For this reason he is called the Old One, because he is truthful and kind. He never departs from what is seemly, but is always full of justice and kindness." Doris the Okeanine bore him 50 daughters, all of them sea-goddesses ..."

-- Carl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks



OLD ONE OF THE SEA

Oct. 16


Do I age down to him
as I read and write
his name over and again,
the gospel of him
my years assemble
sounding down
to full magnitude and
resonance, so easily
the first whale my
oldest father named
and rode? Beyond the
frothy nereids,
further out beyond
the sound of my
mother's voice,
there the pure echo
of his blue womb.
There my totem tribe
resides, blue mood
my big night music,
a Cape of awful
swells where all
the churches spires
point downward
like the masts
of doomed ships,
dowsing my
sounding sense
from head to heart
to balls to feet
into a domicile
of green to blue
to blacker truths.
Manannan ebbs
back to Lir who
dives into the
hallows of Poseidon's
shadow where
the Old Ones
still carouse
and sing.
My tongue's clabber
rings stronger
notes as it
beats against
an old and older
bell, grown
unafraid of
culture's device,
free to vault all
depths which
salt my singing ear.
He knows
the spectre of
my sex is blind
and wild and loves
him anyway;
Prospero kept
Caliban after freeing
Ariel, which tells
me there's more
fairy gleam
insdie the ugly
fish snout of
a naked pen.
Something here
has moved past
its prime,
rendering ambition's
booty moot,
making this
writing chair
a seat for
worthless salvage,
for diving
deep and sailing
far, for logging
a blue course through
the undersides of a
life. The naked man
astride the fish who
crests my father's
coat of arms
is St. Brendan free
on God's finned
coracle, a tongue
loosed up
from deep waters
which speaks
the truest names
of things. Each
poem measures
a spoonful of it,
a league, a sea
beneath the
sea's vicious
careens. I row
on home on
Queequeg's chair
as his spirit
hands me down
and down and down
to all the fathers
of our song, each
darker than the last,
freer too. The Old
One rules the winter
home of Delphi's
shining lord, a
palace of cold
dark dreams, the
male's own womb,
if you will,
where all the sperm
of summer is
tended in an
ancient building
uncorrupt at the
bottom of time's floor.
Thus I close my
eyes and lift the next
spoor through my loins
and heart and mind,
geysering a spirit's
spout off the bow
of 5 a.m., a pure
ripe exhalation
of the truth
as he would say it,
as I his son
translate truth
here on the Delphic
fish I ride. May
I honor him with
a song worth
rousing him
with a bass note
of a smile.