POEMS
Isabella Fey
PALINGENESIS
Eros, once winged and beaked and spurred
In the full regal panoply of bird,
Plunged out of heaven through unrestraining skies
(uttering such keen tumultuous cries)
He struck at earth with space-engendered shock,
Rutted the soil and crushed resistant rock,
Shattered great deeps that cleft the planet's core,
Furrowed new seas where lands had stretched before,
Clawed up whole forests, devastated plains,
Made deserts green with pinion-driven rains-
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Thus did the heavenly groom with swift, death-gaitered stride
Trample the
splendo~
of his own appointed bride.
Deafened and amazed
The old gods gazed:
'Is he of us? Is this the £lightsome beast
Through whom ourselves released
A secret, devious immortality?
Let us bind him with flesh and muffie him with sad banality.'
Behold now Eros as the midnight groom,
Prisoned in flesh and bound to the narrow room,
The licit cubicle, the lawful wife,
Skulking progenitor of rich-crawling life.
Yet what can
she
know of outer wings and space
Who takes the body, guessing not the face?
She, slumbering bride, the designated ground
Wherein new forms and wild new deaths abound?
She, the poor ea.rth, forbidden to behold
The countenance of her midnight lover bold?
Silence and darkness check his golden flight,
The bird of noon constrained to move in night.
So do they meet in dull cohabitation
To spawn a grovelling breed with each new visitation,
And all her many-chambered mansion teems
