TO VIRTUE
O Virtue, precious and light~sleeping daughter of Man,
how you rejoice when, all alone, biting your lips,
poor,persecuted, thrust into the desolate wastes,
you find no friend on whom to cling, no straw to clutch,
for there no souls crowd round to marvel at your grace,
no Gods are there for whose dear sake you fling your lance;
yet upright, silent, you fight in the wild wastes and know
you'll never win, but battle only for your own sake.
Rise high, O Virtue, gaze now on that white-haired head
with its brilliant brain that sails and plays
its gleaming tentacles like a frail nautilus.
Joy, sorrow, life and death blow through his tossing heart
like four swift winds and drive his flesh and mind down toward
the plunging cliff, two lovers clasped in tight embrace.
He's harvested the sea and all the joys of Earth,
he's plucked their flower whose honeyed poisons choke the heart
and hung it on his ear, then sung and strolled toward Death.
If earth had mind, it would rejoice, if fate had eyes
it would embrace this old and mighty warrior, touch
with fear and admiration his deep wounds and clutch
him tight so that it , too, might not descend to Hades.
All stones would burst in threnody, all trees would wail,
all beasts would snarl and raise their paws to pounce on Death,
and the most lustrous maidens would strip their bodies bare
to lure Death on so that upon the downy gaze
of their sweet breasts he might forget that holy head.
But earth is stupid and fate purblind; both have sent
that mighty lighthouse, that great sleepless brain to die
unwept and unprotected in the frozen wastes.
The sun like a gold quoit sped down the heaven's road,
and the round silver moon rose like a dead man's mask
and covered the pale tranquil face of the brain-shadow.
He sailed in his light coffin all day, all night long,
and the whole sky and sea stretched taut like a curved bow
against his hoary-haired swift-dying chest until
he felt his skiff between them speed like a swift arrow.
Above his white head seagulls slowly rowed and sailed
a day or two, but then grew tired and swerved back;
a lean sea-eagle wove him wreaths in air all day,
perched like a sleepless ship's boy on his mast all night,
but on the seventh day it, too, grew weary and flew away.
Two sharp-nosed frothing sharks followed like hungry dogs,
opened and closed their gleaming teeth with longing greed,
but when they lost all hope of food, they plunged away.
"Farewell! Turn to your prey, I 'm not yet food for sharks,"
the boatman mocked and cast off fish and birds like old
soiled clothes, and breathed the crystal solitude, stripped bare.
At times birds passed above him, smeared with sweetest scent,
and their sharp claw-tips dripped with musk and the air flashed
like a cock-pheasant's feathers, gold and crimson wings.
At times a feather fell upon his foam-washed deck,
but the quick~handed man flung it upon the waves:
"Farewell! O Wings and fragrances, ideas, dreams,
Farewell! O multicoloured precious filigrees of air!"
~FINIS~
XX By Mine Own Hand ~~~~Queen Edain Siveni XX