Completed: 2024-12-15
With silken sheets and glist’ning stones adorned;
With those same marble lips a poor man mourned;
I see with that same awe, in drowsy sighs,
That dignity of corpses in your eyes.
Like Hellenistic sculpture you stand white
And stark as a full moon’s oppressing light,
Such that when I first saw you, small and thin,
I could not help but weep from deep within.
Like said our mother who ate from the tree,
So too “I yielded, and from that time see”
Not manly grace nor wisdom, but instead
That vacant empty beauty in your head.
As meek and unmarred as a newborn lamb,
As vast as seas through which great whales swam;
Like firmament your youth holds up the sky,
Like storied crimson glass it draws the eye.
Your innocence is plain for all who view
That pure divinity of your soft chest;
Most men would fall in reverence, but few
Would seek to plunge a hand into your breast.
Like Satan when he first in Eden finds
That happy goodness that so lively shined,
So too would men with base and brutal minds
With rough clawed arms and ropes your body bind.
And after, in depravity, they take
And satisfy their cruel consuming need,
They find your beauty sullied in the wake
Of their ripping and gnawing vicious deed.
Without a second thought they’d leave you there,
And cast aside your wretched form to die;
For in their eyes you’ve lost what made you fair,
And broken, full, and dirty you would lie.
But here you lie in dreams and your sweet head
Needs not explore these depths of greed and sin:
Rest deep in reverie and know your skin
Will live untouched until the day you’re dead.
Perpetually in that youthful bloom,
For ever childishly you’ll appear:
A drowsy child as I see you here,
A sleeping child when you’re in your tomb.
Your gentle hands, so pale, softly sway
Like flower petals on a windy day;
As you wander your massive churchly halls,
Your tiny footsteps echo off the walls.
Through grand windows that usher in the sky
Great flocks of paradisal birds do fly
And sing, in tune, ambrosial melodies
That lay the hearer’s soul to sublime ease.
Insects with varicolored glassy wings
Drink sweet nectar that each plump flow’r brings
In gardens that spill in from the outdoors,
Their verdant beauty covering the floors.
Such luxuries could bring a man to weep,
But you walk every day as if asleep
Through wonders so divine, so Heaven-kissed,
To make Herodotus throw out his list.
You’ve never heard of labor or seen toil,
Though endlessly, countless, but out of sight,
Men build those walls and plant those flow’rs in soil
That each day bring you soft subtle delight.
They work until their weary bones collapse,
Unthinking, grim, and mute for all their lives;
Never a day of rest, never a lapse;
They do their duty till their time arrives.
They’ve never seen your face nor heard your voice,
They work at night while you sleep in your bow’r;
They follow their commands without a choice
And to the Heavens elevate your tower.
And when day breaks they slumber under-ground
While you trample above them, unaware
Of how their unseen lives to yours are bound,
While you lazily saunter without care.
But I could never raise a fair outrage
Against what seems so cruel but strangely just;
Your noble blood stays pure while theirs does rust,
But you hold back the sickness of this age.
If men must perish in that noble goal
Of staying you exactly as you are,
Then let no hesitance this duty mar;
Let your beauty preside over each soul.
When you have settled and can walk no more
Along the arabesques that line the floor,
A book of verse may find to you its way
And hold you the rest of that waning day.
But let not prose disturb your airy state,
Let not those harsh modern works irritate;
Let your mind stay recluse in cent’ries past
In those sublime works that always surpassed
Those common foolish books of men that tried
To shock the idiom, and terrified
All those who read their ghastly monstrous prose,
That in pursuing progress reached new lows.
But may your sensitive tongue only taste
Those silk sheets, that in golden thread are laced,
Of works that keep your youthful mind as fair
As your soft limbs and flowing tender hair.
For how deeply your presence penetrates,
I’d fail given æons to recount!
I turn against the Lord and all his saints!
For you, even God’s wrath I would surmount!
You put me in a silent agony
As I watch you live, perfect as the air!
The more of you that every day I see,
The more I suffer, drowned in deep despair!
Your smooth and flawless skin taunts me the most!
Those glimpses I receive on days you stride
And when those silken fabrics part to boast
Patches of leg or stomach as they glide!
Oh, what I’d do to see that ribcage, taut
Against the contour of your flimsy breast,
And rip it open like an ancient knot
To feel the beating heart inside your chest!
Oh, how your innocence drives me to cry!
That strange longing that I can not surmount!
These feelings for which I can not account!
I feel that if I see you now I’ll die!
I know I could not stop what I would do!
Along your stomach I’d trace two long cuts!
I’d sink my head into your oily guts!
And in them, I’d pretend that I were you!