The faithless
come at night to make
their offerings of piss,
aiming clumsily
at the emerald water
plastic bottles dot
the water’s surface
like candles
in their wake.
In the day
the sun calls the old people and tourists
who line the steep banks
they wait through the heat
they watch through the heat
they watch—
the old god surfaces
blowing green water
from her porcine nostrils
like a Marian apparition,
she parts the water
and displays her
scarred, gleaming shell
This is my body, which I have maintained for you, though the city has poisoned me
This is my blood, pooling on the green, shed for you
This is the sword and the arrow
distracted
from her servants’ reverence,
the old god opens her mouth
and begins to dine
on a dead cat.
(First image of a crowd gathered to watch the turtle from this website; the second one, depicting the turtle gnawing on some garbage that was thrown in the lake, comes from this website. The reference to the turtle eating a dead cat comes from this YouTube video (previously linked in another post). The video not only shows how polluted the lake has become, but also a few glimpses of the turtle eating the corpse of a cat that had somehow gotten into the water with it. I anticipate someone wondering why I've chosen to identify the turtle, now known to be female, as a god rather than a goddess. I'm sure most will agree that, unfortunately, the two words have different connotations in Western society, and I'd prefer to acknowledge the turtle's mythological origin as a warlike deity who defeated whole armies, which, again unfortunately, is an attribute rarely accorded to female deities.)
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