The world, like our shadows,
Skulks

What is this Her fragrance, dark,
Death to domesticity
By which the Widowmaker marks
Her prey?
 

What is this Her missive miasmic
That, remembered, wakes men from their sleep
And takes them to stand sighing
While the war-white moon rises
To those old songs of blood
Often heard upon a world never innocent
Even within its womb of creation?
 

What is this Her body music
That spreads forth from an almost dark Abyss -
Life's breath to a cosmos almost dying
Because of peace?
 

What is this, alive, like the whore's gentle words
Who once, perhaps many times, forgetting her self spoke
With her naked body and perfumed hair
A nine-fold story of bliss eternal beneath a starry sky
Within a room always tawdry?
 
 

Now, one hears only the sadness
Arising from a premature old age
Unlike those leaves one duelling Autumn
That once I alive beyond myself
Left soaked by another's blood
To fructify the womb with creation
Bringing thus a Spring

Now, one is tuned almost from birth
To hear only the sighs
From the deeds of a past -
Or not to hear at all -
Whereas I remember
Her ecstatic effusions orgiastic
Which brought us Her gifts:
For I am echo of some others and myself
And arrive to return a favour,
Drenched in blood
 

DW Myatt