Love's Progress 1-7

(i)

Her ferryboat, garlanded,
its prow carved with
a cherrywood Isis.

"Step aboard" she says
and I honour
her wish.

The aromas of a spruce
forest delight us and
dampen childish anxieties;

the coolness of night
settles me and we eat
sweetmeats from a silver dish.

"Where are we going ?"
I ask. She smiles and presses
a finger to her ruby lips.

The ferryboat casts off.
We sail through glistening waters
like curium in the womb.

(ii)

Well rubbed and smoothed
by her expensive towels
she speaks to me of her father.

No pain now from my previous
life. The serenity of her touch
dissolves faint mists from the past.

While she sleeps I sit on deck,
absorb the last of summer's sweet amber.
A wolf with golden eyes howls

from the river bank. "Many have
sailed these waters" he says
"and none have yet returned."

In her bed I watch a moth jig
before a fiery filament: dust-wings
scattering dry confetti.

(iii)

We dine on deck
in moonlight. Her friend,
a sorceress, joins us.

She has brought seafood
concealed in a wicker basket.
"Eat it" she says. "It will make

you strong." I insert
my knife into the shell
and fight to prise open

the stubborn muscle within.
She laughs. "Allow me!"
Her sweet lips kiss

the shell and it opens
of its own accord. I stare
at the flesh-egg inside,

tear it with my knife,
scoop the jellied embryo
into my mouth. The sorceress

transforms herself
into a giant sea-anemone
and lifts me with her

tentacles into her
gaping stomach - a
celestial body made of

translucent flesh -
a sea-grotto perfumed by
Neptune's most secret corals.

And she appears inside
her own stomach, radiant,
wearing sea-jasmine

and pearl and we lie together
in the centric part like
Adam and his bride.

(iv)

His mother sits him
by the lake and unfurls
a picnic for his pleasure.

"Look what I have made"
she says. She is a magician,
this mother of his,

and all who seek
her wisdom will depart
well nourished.

Spread on the blanket
the most luscious foods
enfolded in brown paper,

housed in colourful
glass jars. "But I do not
dare touch" he says.

"Father is at war!
I cannot betray him!"
His mother looks sullen.

Eat and his father
will devour him.
Drink and his father

will hunt him down.
Warm his cheek
at mother's loving breast

and father will return,
resplendent in golden armour,
to bayonet his young eyes,

rip out his tiny spleen,
bury him deep beneath
the old hawthorn.

She offers him a spoonful
of her best jam
but he turns away.

"I'm not hungry"
he says - purses his lips.
Oh mother! Perfection in unity!

Do you not know that father
is a jealous and violent man ?
Jealous of this picnic

with its fruit cake and
iced breads and savoury
flans ?

His mother weeps
and wails - an oracle
to fill the air.

Now look what you have done:
you have brought sorrow
to the dearest lady.

You have conjured sadness
out of sunshine and
tranquility.

He runs into the forest -
deep into the forest's heart -
and stands ready beneath

the hawthorn armed with
his pocket knife, waiting
for his father,

the great warrior-king
astride a golden
horse.

(v)

The birthing room - the perfect
liberty and true dream
made of horn.

She leads me to the central panel,
a gathering of giant fruit
planted by her friend the chemist.

"It is Satan's bait" she says
"evolving like an expanding city
with bulging purse."

She is not bashful, my lover -
there is no false modesty in our
everlasting delight.

We swim the fragrant lake,
fondle in the reeds, lie together
in a floating pod,

sweetness incumbent as she sings
her song of love. We remain naked,
wedded to her fruit -

a glistening strawberry sun-baked
and succulent. "Bite it" she says
squeezing the core

"and drink its jazzy sap."
I look round and see other
couples drinking - love-devotees

like ourselves mirroring
my sense and passion.
And so I too bite.

(vi)

Her father, oiled, walks
across the cinder square.
She kisses me and says:

"My love - you must fight
to the death". The man approaching
is of pensionable age, muscle

and sinew still taut and bronzed.
"Here" she says "rub this chalk-dust
into your hands."

Her father's friends chant and bare
their teeth. They have recently returned
from a long and bloody war.

I look up - invoke my secret prayer.
An eagle swoops, and drops a feathery egg.
"The egg will burnish you" it says

and I crack the shell, drink down
the bloody yoke in one. My arms tranform
into wings, my fingers into golden talons,

my nose into a deadly yellow beak.
Her father is no match for me now,
of course, and I leave his corpse

to be claimed by his acolytes.
My love embraces me and strokes
my feathered breast,

buries her head in my eagle
wings, caws her mating song
into my eagle-ear.

(vii)

He has lost his way in
the forest's most secret
recesses. Dusk draws ever near.

The white lake of winter -
where is it ? Which direction?
He walks - first north,

then south. The silence
and shadows of autumn emerge,
unwind, unflex,

with only a faint image
in the symmetry of his mind
of where the lake can be.

A fox crosses his path -
a young fox, its flaming ears
and tail flecked with silver.

"If you are lost, rest here"
it says. "You will not come
to harm."

Tiredness overcomes him.
Love's progress is an exhausting
trial. He covers himself

with leaves and sleeps beneath
the old hawthorn, the fox
alert by his side.