If syphons and illegible deceit
Take place behind the curtain, hereabouts,
I cannot know the future; ah, but if
The time to come revokes the furtive past
And draws a veil on such as may desist
From honour or from vagrancy: from truth
I shrink. I shun the adolescent kettle!
But lo! 'Tis Carybd!

                           (in blue) Sire, my swollen head
Reports the boiling of our neighbour's sons
In fetid gore; the slaying of an ox
And spawning of the sheeted dead in streets
A hail of red-hot owls above the temple
Has been heard. What auguries are these
I know not, nor do care. Pray, what's for tea?

I shall eat a bun. But as for you,
You'll not be sated by such meagre fare
As in this town is found – and so, methinks,
If syphons and illegible deceits
Take place behind the curtain hereabout
I cannot know the future; ah, but I
Can tell you all that happened in the past.

I am your past Antipodes. I am.
I bring the bun you wish to chew. Betimes,
I shall not come again.

                           Remarkable!
I had not thought to see another self
These eighty years – but since he's come, no doubt
I shall dissemble, as a father might
Before his hapless wife that on him dotes
I'feeble admiration; as his son
The truth of his ill-deeds from all conceals.
And yet I linger long – I must away
To greet the spawning of the Phoeban day.