Heleanor Feltham

Drinking the blood of the dog
Ref: Theophilacti Bulgariae archiepiscopi in Fontes Graeci Historiae
Bulgaricae, Sofia 1963, vol. 6, p. 31

When Leo V, Byzantine emperor,
Devious pragmatist, local boy made good,
Wary iconoclast,
Met with the young Khan Omurtag to sign
A treaty giving thirty years of peace,
They swore by Bulgar custom on each other’s gods
To seal the bargain.
Leo killed a dog,
And raising one hand filled with grass to heaven
He drank its blood. The chronicle does not say
What Christian oath Khan Omurtag declaimed.

Dogs, nomad people think, prefigure us.
They are the unborn human generations
Come here to sniff the landscape; fugitive,
They monitor our contracts.
And how they live with us comes back to haunt us
On the other side of a new incarnation.

A generation of the dispossessed,
Abandoned and abused
Darkens the sun.
Those who receive our love,
Fire suns to harvest.

Dogs who are valued, and whose lives are lived
Within the frame of mutual obligations
May be cut short when need is absolute.

Dogs, on the whole, deal honestly with us.

Out of a primal, bright-eyed innocence,
An honoured sacrifice will take our vow
Swiftly as wind through grass
And bring our words
To lie in the hands of God like a thrown stick.
And the dog within will see our treacheries.

Leo did not live long. His death
Was cinematic.

Skylitzes - Death of Leo V

In the shallow pre-dawn dark of a Christmas morning
With the rows of chanting monks and the incense rising,
And rings of lamps reflected off white walls
As clear of images as snow,
And even the emperor singing in a voice
More used to moving armies,
His assassins moved
Out from among the monks.

And Leo fell,
Wielding the abstract gold cross like a club
Against the sudden violence of death.
Cut down, his blood spilt over holy ground,
No sainted stony eyes to follow his,
No numinous shimmering surfaces to haunt
And echo in the night;
Only the betraying purple and the feral dog
At the heart of things.

We spin out empty words in the hollow air;
Sending a message to the yet unborn
Of doubt, mistrust and fear.

We lick our lips and lie through the blood of the dog.