My mother was hot. My father was cold. The scalding heat and the blue cold rushing alongside but not mingling--- I could not live in such extremities, boiled and frozen. I folded a ship, navigated, capsized into the dizzy throat of a dog. " To greener waters--to the ocean---", roared my captain, " to the exact depth of your soul." The ship swerved the Infernal isles and landed in sunny Crete. I was told to get off; the back entrance of the palace stood blank, desolate. My mother was hot with shame, fanning herself with a bull pizzle. My father was a king of an island, drunk, unstraddled, idle. I was home.

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