Alchemisland

With Vodalus’ clique

Eating Thecla sticks

Gaining memories

Didn’t protect now

Chewing her neck

Like a dental stick

Besotted by exultants

In the tower, Master Ultan

New Sun, the Ultimate

Fealty from black brothers

Masks identity smothering

Claw in my hand burning

Lore through repetition earning

Second read, first time learning

Cloak made of fuligin, blackest black

I am a Lictor, bound for Thrax

Where structures windows lacking

Prisoners are kept in, unpaid taxi

I find the taller woman relaxing

Losing mam made that fantasy

Hearing rumours

About who might be Malrubius

When I first saw Triskele

Ruined on the pile

Halfway ‘twixt heavenhell

It was like the casting of a spell

Which brought my heart’s hate

Made of ignorance

To the pale place, which is love itself

It’s all about the face

Whether it is hidden

Whether visages souls belie

I travel from the low places to the high

A citadel in the sky

Where my namesake is fried

And water seems to wake Typhon

To jungle villages, to Northron climes

Where I met and potentially healed Miles

Where armigers and pillagers

Battle, dying in their millions

Anpiels lengthily pinioned

The sky their vast dominion

I am a torturer, not an assassin

Errand boy, Kurtz is laughing

I brandish a glaive, clip a sapling

But I’ve kicked some Ascian asses

The Autarch rescues me in his glider

I consume him, thence walk the corridors of time

Two of me at the end confessed

Throws the book upon its head

No less than two reads required

He uses the word for fear in Irish

Kept that quiet, moving island pirates

Forward to the alien test

For a new sun, are we ready

Backward then, to the Incan temples

Where I am their tentpole and plentiful benefactor

Whom thralls and zealots dub Apu Punchau

If you remember that puzzling chapter

Gene Wolfe final boss on Mike Tyson’s Punch Out

He says all the necessary clues are there, tease them out

Just think about it

It’s doubtless a thing to be proud of but

If it was obvious, there’d be more dialogue

About what the fuck was going on, dog

With three heads is not enough for Gene

He sends in the Alzabo, he sends in the Triskele dream

Gleaning insights by eating insides

Back at the beginning, realize what Vodalus was doing that night

Any hole’s a gyoll for this horny teenage boy torturer

A two-faced antient steel, a queer ceremony with a catherine wheel

Baldanders making off-planet deals to become gargantuan

We fight a Dark Souls battle I once dreamed of

On the crumbling walls of his stormed castle

My sword is broken in the battle, I roll backwards, bracing

To avoid the hacking blows of his magical mace, crazy

Movement, must have invested lots of points in Dex

Afterwards, realise the claw is not magic, one of many on a plant

Father Inire’s mirrors of the lab and not of the wizard

I killed Hathor’s fire lizard, fought with dog and ape men

Miss you, my gorillas

In the receding mist cloying the restoration of glory by order

Learning to love and lightbecoming, this once-exhorder.