Emil Brägg is a poet, a playwright, an erstwhile director of avant-garde theatre and a self-confessed dilettante. He is the author of a chapbook of literary miniatures, titled Felicitations. His work has been anthologized in Rhubarb-O-Rama and Globale Heimat.ch: Transnational Encounters in Contemporary Literature and has appeared in literary magazines in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. His newest collection of short-short fiction, The Ovation & Other Conundrums, Convolutions, Circumambulations & Peregrinations, is forthcoming from Guernica Editions.
“… time if you are Prometheus” Anne Carson
If you are Prometheus, chained to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the gods, time is waiting.
You mark the circadian rhythm by the eagle’s visits and, because pleasure is the absence of pain, you gradually learn to live for that moment when the eagle takes flight and the searing pain of having your liver gnawed begins to subside.
With time, you learn to anticipate this pleasure and you yearn for the eagle to appear in the distant sky. You know exactly what to expect, and yet, you watch on tenterhooks as the eagle approaches.
Before long, that moment when the eagle appears in a far sky of cloudless blue becomes the best, the happiest moment of your day.
And you, between the eagle’s last and next visit, will relive this moment many times in your dreams.
One day in a distant future, you, Prometheus, are set free. And, because time heals all wounds, your wound is healed. After centuries of waiting, you are feeling restless. The world is bigger than you remember it. Reasoning that a change of scenery will do you good, you decide to get away from it all.
You find yourself in midtown Manhattan admiring the gold-plated sterling silver Swiss Deco wristwatch on display in Saks Fifth Avenue.
The cobalt blue sunray dial reminds you of home.
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Poetry in this post: © Emil Brägg
Published with the permission of Emil Brägg