beowulf had the wrong idea
fighting grendel
he should have let the
monster clear heorot’s hall
of those small men
scrambling like rats
with their small worries
but he had gazed before
into the eyes of leviathans
had liked the taste of it
and knew what he was getting into
he must have stared long
and hard into grendel’s eyes
while he wrenched that arm free
of its socket
and longer still into the eyes
of grendel’s poor, grief-stricken
mother
he spent a lifetime
swallowing one abyss
after another
and as an old man
when it came to time to fight
his last monster
it was the biggest beast
he could muster from his own
soul
a dragon
but all beowulf wanted at the end
was a proper burial
and one last look at his wealth
if he had spent his youth
looking into the eyes of birds
would he have sprouted wings
and flown
—–
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Words and Feathers 