Missing Letter Mondays – No “G”

“Mother Earth”

Born at the start of it all,
Mother to so many,
With so many.

Her first husbands,
Ouranos and Pontos.
Also her sons.
(Eeew.)
They had no fathers.

Nereus,
Thaumas,
Phorkys,
Eurybia,
Even monstrous Ceto;
Pontos fathered these few.

Titans,
Cyclopes,
Hundred-handers,
Ouranos fathered so many.

Mother Earth
Loved her children,
One and all.

But Ouranos
Was a terrible father.
He hated his hideous sons,
Those with only one eye,
And those with too many hands.

They were forced back,
Into their mother’s womb;
Mother Earth’s body
Became her sons’ prison.

Mother Earth wept
For her imprisoned sons,
And pleaded with her other sons
To save them.

Only Kronos answered her pleas,
But he did so in a crooked manner,
To take his father’s place
And rule over the cosmos.

Castrated and defeated,
Ouranos was exiled
To become the sky,
To touch
Mother Earth
Nevermore.

Mother Earth
Rejoiced,
But too soon.

Kronos was no better
Than his father.

The Cyclopes remained prisoners.
The Hundred-handers remained prisoners.
Mother Earth was still a jail.

She helped her son’s son,
Zeus, newborn and still weak,
To overthrow his father.

The Cyclopes were freed.
The Hundred-handers were freed.
But the Titans were imprisoned.
Mother Earth was still a jail,
And Zeus ruled supreme.

“Next time,
There shall be no new tyrant,”
Mother Earth swore.
“Next time,
There must be only defeat.”

Typhoeus.

A storm of destruction.

Monster of monsters.
Father of monsters.

But even he was defeated,
And Zeus still ruled supreme.

Mother Earth
Tried to console herself.
She took on new names,
And admitted new worshippers —
Those frail creatures called mortals —
And strove to find new love,
New respect,
In the distant lands,
Where Zeus was not known.

Cybele was revered
In holy Ilios,
But Troy fell to Achaian blades,
And Cybele became known in Hellas,
Mother Earth once more.

Mesopotamia was even worse for
Mother Earth.
They mistook her for terrible
Tiamat,
Mother Ocean.

Around the Nile Delta,
Mother Earth felt no connection,
And found not the love she wished.

Mother Earth wept,
And pitied her sons the Titans,
Eternally imprisoned in her womb.

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…that turned weird…

(For a somewhat more clear version of the first part of the story, click here.)