Prayer to the Wolf

Christof Wahner 2009

http://knottsmurals.com/image/landscapes/moon_over_piney_woods John Knotts (2004): Moon over Piney Woods, 24" 36"

 Foreword
Now, once upon a time there was a roe-deer fawn. It felt so full of homesick wanderlust1 since dawn. At night, it met a wolf2 who went the final rounds and seemed to be appealingly beyond all bounds. To specify the sex and age of both is shallow. To ask for time and place is likewise rather fallow. These rimes are never meant to fill some stupid gaps, but to expose a hero's dream with all its traps. In vital parts, the lines show spiritual peaks from equally the Teutons and the Ancient Greeks. Here you can find so many deeper coalitions and an enormous lot of flexible transitions of death and life3, of fight and love4, of pain and zest5, of top and bottom6, soul and body7, sweat and thirst8. The threads of fate9 have many matters interwoven. Sometimes a knot becomes astonishingly cloven. The fawn told me explicitly and with good grace amazingly in classy rimes and face to face about the need to carry off distorted ties and to take care of clear relations with no lies.10 The hairy lines should never need to put on airs nor even once encourage violent affairs. No-one should take that in the literal sense too much. It has more an erotic11-allegoric touch.

 Rapture
With magic2 charm, in calm and nimble way, you stray through woods12 and meadows to survey. The space round you is silent as a guarded grave. The nightly loneliness requires to be brave. At once, heartbreakingly, you start to howl, accompanied by almost every owl. Then, step by step, you come so nicely close and cast an awe-inspiring spell2 in deathly dose. The pretty, pregnant moon12 lets brightly flare your wonderfully dense and long and glossy hair13. Your two predacious12 eyes radiate like diamonds. Your stunning beauty puts my eyes in buoyant bonds. For all bewilderment my face is open straight. Your whole appearance makes my mind inebriate. You easy-going, noble, wild, and lovely creature! You are so timeless and refined in any feature. I love each happening of your performing art. You are already locked up in my heart. I would like to attend to you at my expenses to let my bashful passion please your seven senses. The streaky haze around the pines and rocky towers is promising exciting shining hours by granting me to draw near anywhere you trod and to adore you like my greatest god.

 Fear
In secret, well, I wished you could not notice me, although I hope you reinforce my stalking spree.14 However, you will clearly smell my chilly sweat and maybe also how my limbs are trembling yet. With just a quiet whimper and despondent purr I answer your severe and ardent growl for stir. You are too beautiful that I could disappear. Do you not long for me to be your tasty dear? Now I feel sure: I meet15 you in this yawning glen16 here for the first and final time by then. My blood congeals in almost every vein. What should I argue with your royal reign? My fate was just the dusky outset of this night. The sunset was a very captivating sight. Then, suddenly, I lost my way back home17. So I chose you to rescue me from heaven's dome. I do not need to start bethinking anymore the meaning of my life to all its inmost core, the more alas! this meaning measures up to nothing but past history: to drain the cup. Not even once, I did await the nicest elf18 to bail me out. I like it more to help myself. I put my legs into a piece of grass to bow to you, the leader of the ruling class.

 Devotion
I turn my neck to you so as to courtly tease. Now you can kill your prey with greatest ease. You may feel free to scratch and bite19 my body's gown, to use me as a toy20, to toss me down21, to mercilessly tear my tender limbs, to bar all chances to evade your whims22, to hunt me back and forth23, just as an interlude. But I want to endure with deepest gratitude24. Then finally I want to feel your steamy tide25, before your teeth begin to grab my hide, to feel your mouth dismantling me with martial force and moistening my wounds with mild remorse26, last how your well-built jawbones crunch my neck27 and my carotid artery then goes to wreck27. Then take your time to wash your claws in innocence, before they lay me with due diligence! Now, dig in my delicious body28 for some treasure and use my vessels to indulge in bloody pleasure! Your mouth enmesh itself in my unblemished flesh, at best when all the innards29 are still oven-fresh! With unrestrained delight and furious tones you drool and nibble on my tendons30 and my bones31! Quite every part of me you should consider in order to not leave too much for any kidder.

 Transfiguration
Why do you let me wait between the spooky rocks32? They have already given me some nasty knocks! The pale blue on the edge of sky will blush! The morning star33 commands: You have to rush to help me pouring out my final breath34 and then to let me dive into the world of death35, into that world resembling a terrific womb, as fabulous as lime36 and elder37 trees abloom! In proper order to transform my bounded38 life you must not treat me with a lukewarm air of strife. You came into the world to conquer me this time. It is my destiny to bear your honest crime. Help me to overcome myself39 without ado to irreversibly attach myself to you! Can not you fathom from my moistened eyes my fondest wish to serve as much as in me lies? Excuse me now, come on and take your awesome paws and hit them rapidly into my tender flaws! Your Worship, lead my life to a fulfilling end in other words: into a cozy, blissful bend! Let me start living in your body's vibrant jail40 and let me elevate you to my holy grail! At least, let us exchange one soft, befriending shove! At every turn, my soul shall squire you in love.

Annotations
1 homesick wanderlust = drive to seek one's home in the distance 2 wolf, magic, owl, spell = Hekate: Greek goddess of transitions (birth, death, bifurcations) and transformations (magic art) and thus of metamorphosis (i.e.: change in the form of existence) and of "creative destruction" (Friedrich NIETZSCHE) 3 death and life = ratios of mixture between 'Eros' [drive for life] and 'Thanatos' [drive for death] (Sigmund F REUD) 4 fight and love = "loving fight" (Harald SCHULTZ-HENCKE) 5 pain and zest = also: pleasure of pain, "passion", "domanticism" 6 top and bottom = dominance and submission 7 soul and body = endpoints on a variable (material-spiritual) scale 8 sweat and thirst = also: fear and hope 9 threads of fate = the three Germanic and Greek goddesses of fate sitting at the roots of the world tree while spinning, weaving, measuring, and cutting the threads; cf. the "Mother Archetype" (Carl Gustav J UNG) 10 resolving and taking over identifications (Erik H. ERIKSON) 11 holistic erotics (with aspects of animality), that does far not confine to to the sexual organs 12 wood, pregnant moon, predacious = Artemis: Greek goddess of hunting, moon, woods, and of descendants 13 dense and long and glossy hair = strong naturalness / spirituality 14 feeling / attitude of maximum ambivalence (rapture & fear) = taboo (Polynesian = "awe") 15 to meet = 'to get in contact with' opposite: 'to attach oneself to' 16 yawning glen = circumstance to achieve profound self-awareness 17 the way back home = concept resp. meaning of life, shelteredness 18 elfs (shining lights, natural wraiths) = powers, that can take positive or negative effects or in both directions, so that possibly confuse or even make the life situation worse with good intents 19 to scratch, to bite = captative petting 20 to use as toy = for doctors and nurses games etc. 21 to toss down = to lay 22 to bar all chances to evade = to tie to oneself 23 to hunt back and forth = chase games 24 deepest gratitude = masochist "identification with the aggressor" (Anna F REUD), strong sensual arousal 25 steamy tide = breath as vital presence = spiritual basis for realization and transmission of identifications (Latin 'spiritus' = Greek 'pneuma' = breath, spirit) 26 teeth grabbing the hide, ... = contrast bath of fond and reckless treatment 27 to crunch neck and carotid artery = to make absolutely will-less 28 to dig in the body = to wallow in fleshly pleasure 29 innards = supplies of vital energy, verve 30 to drool on somebody's tendons = to exploit somebody's capacities 31 to nibble on somebody's bones = to take possession of somebody 32 spooky rocks = "thrownness" (Martin HEIDEGGER) 33 morning star = Aphrodite: Greek goddess of love, of lust, and of beauty As lady-love of Ares (Greek god of war), Aphrodite infused her rival Eos (Greek goddess of dawn) out of revenge an insatiable desire for young men, so that Eos was going red with shame ever since. 34 to help pouring out the final breath = to resolve all previous identifications resp. enmeshments 35 to dive into the world of death = to become ready to take over new identifications 36 lime = Freya (Icelandic = "mistress"): Germanic goddess of love, springtime, fertility and of luck 37 elder = symbol of Mother Holle resp. Hel: Germanic goddess of the "Otherworld" (cp. Holle hell) 38 refers to life as compound of "limit situations" (Martin HEIDEGGER) 39 overcome oneself = "to step beyond oneself" (Friedrich NIETZSCHE), transcendence, deliverance 40 to live in someone's body's vibrant jail = "genetical transcendence" (by reproduction)