The Revenge of Kronos

(The following poetic fragment is a provisional re-integration of the last two millenium of the Christian era into Greek mythology. It will be interpreted as a unfolding strategem by the Titan Kronos in his ongoing war with Zeus and the Olympian Gods. In this way, the figure of Jesus and the trajectory of Western history becomes but a moment within the broader mythological tapestry of afro-asiatic and european culture. Christianity is no longer an independent revelation or religion, but a strand, a torn thread in the poiesis of mythological self-expression and interpretation. In this way, this fragment is a contribution to the ongoing revival of the practice of ancient mythological thinking.)

It has been said that Kronos

was exiled to the abyssal depths

in the wake of his double defeat

at the hands of his son and his allies

His first defeat occurred from the wrath

of his wife Rhea, at the site of his

ingestion of her children

She saved her youngest, Zeus,

by giving Kronos a stone, wrapped

in swaddling clothes

After his unbringing by nymphs

& goddesses, Zeus returned with

their arts, and giving Kronos a poison,

made the god of time vomit up his

children, who being gods, though

unhurt, were from thence on quite wary of

any attempt to mingle time & eternity

The second defeat of Kronos took place

when he and the other Titans arose

in an insurrection against the Olympians

This attempt was narrowly suppressed,

& the Titans were returned to the abyssal depths

Yet, it is with this defeat, at the greatest

moment of darkness that Kronos concocted

his most dire plan for revenge,

he withdrew time from eternity

letting the idea (eidos, ‘the look’) of a new divinity

float off into the sterile purity

of beauty, truth and goodness

In this illusory state of harmony, the younger gods,

Apollo, Dionysus, and Artemis ensconced themselves

into the world, joyously blurring the divide

between time and eternity, mortality and immortality -

until a magical bridge seemed to have been built

that one could hope to cross this divided line,

from time to eternity – the threshold, ramparts

seductively breached, there is no Prometheus

to suffer the punishment for transgression

Kronos bides his time, witnessing the

implosion and transmutation of realms,

he is certain of his revenge as time has

again swallowed life, power, creativity

Time went on and the old tension was

repressed in the realm of the gods,

but without this tension of life,

the gods slowly went to sleep &

Kronos hid behind a new narrative of a saviour

which fell upon the old stories just as the leaves

which fall into a blanket upon the leaves of grass

the story of a god made flesh, of eternity

descending into time, of being swallowed by time

the god become man is killed, only some believe

the tales that he lived again, already the

particularity of his homely, man-ly existence

recedes into the sea, as the dignity of the

ancient stories of the gods have themselves

been destroyed by the latest god-man

all belief in stories old and new are

swept to the wind, now merely products

of time, eternity no longer descends

into time, it is itself an aspect of time

itself, a nunc stans, a moment, a mere

feeling of an ineffable in-finite

the god made flesh is a talisman, a golem

serving the god of time, Kronos in his final revenge.

He again castrates Eternity, repeating

his first godlike act, giving to man

the terrestrial love of a tainted beauty

There shall be no other gods but me.

I am I

Yet, the repose of Saturn (Shelley, ‘The World Ages’) and Love that burst

became the age of resignation in the facelessness

of an infinite striving that was merely ironic

God lives, God is dead

there is no difference

in the Absolute

Who will feed the new Kronos poison?

Do we not already smell and taste the vomit?