Let Zeus

Red Roses For Bronze (1931)

I

I say, I am quite done,quite done with this;you smile your calminveterate chill smile

and light steps back;intolerate lovelinesssmiles at the ranksof obdurate bitterness;

you smile with keenchiselled and frigid lips;it seems no evilever could have been;

so, on the Parthenon,like splendour keepsperil at bay,facing inviolate dawn.

II

Men cannot mar you,women cannot breakyour innate strength,your stark autocracy;

still I will make no pleafor this slight verse;it outlines simplyLove’s authority:

but pardon this,

that in these luminous days,I re-invoke the darkto frame your praise;

as one to make a bright roomseem more bright,stares out deliberateinto Cerberus-night.

III

Sometimes I chide the manner of your dress;I want all men to see the grace of you;I mock your pace, your body’s insolence,thinking that all should praise, while obstinateyou still insist your beauty’s gold is clay:

I chide you that you stand not forth entire,set on bright plinth, intolerably desired;yet I in turn will cheat, will thwart your whim,I’ll break my thought, weld it to fit your measureas one who sets a statue on a heightto show where Hyacinth or Pan have been.

IV

When blight lay and the Persian like a scar,and death was heavy on Athens, plague and war,you gave me this bright garment and this ring;

I who still kept of wisdom’s meagre storea few rare songs and some philosophising,offered you these for I had nothing more;

that which both Athens and the Persian mockedyou took, as a cold famished bird takes grain,blown inland through darkness and withering rain.

V

Would you prefer myrrh-flower or cyclamen?I have them, I could spread them out again;but now for this stark moment while Love breathshis tentative breath, as dying, yet still lives,wait as that time you waited tense with me:

others shall love when Athens lives again,you waited in the agonies of war;others will praise when all the host proclaimsAthens the perfect; you, when Athens lost,stood by her; when the dark perfidious hostturned, it was you who pled for her with death.

VI

Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rareas Hesperus, nor yet so great a staras bright Aldebaran or Sirius,nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;

stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;yours is not gracious as the Pleiads’ arenor as Orion’s sapphires, luminous;yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,when all the others, blighted, reel and fall,your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid trystto freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.

VII

None watched with mewho watched his fluttering breath,none brought white roses,none the roses red;

many had loved,had sought him luminous,when he was blitheand purple draped his bed;

yet when Love fellstruck down with plague and war,you lay white myrrh-budson the darkened lintel;

you fastened blossomto the smitten sill;let Zeus record this,daring Death to mar.

from Red Roses For Bronze (1931)