The First of All Springtimes
The serpent hung from her hips like a belt,
its head stared up at me, a smug buckle.
Her hat had, as an accent,
not a bird-of-paradise feather
but an apple of paradise,
and all this loveliness made my blood race,
crazed with longing, same as hers.
There was terror in the way the primeval sun
revealed our primeval nakedness,
and its light, despite brightness,
had the melancholy splendor
of a dying fire. My face, like hers,
was pale with dread in those doleful golden beams—
the effect was quite becoming.
Who says fate isn’t playful?
What could be more winsome
than this hour’s puzzlement
when we trembled, lowered our bashful eyes
at this fairy-tale ending
that circled round like a wedding ring
to where it started, where we were one.
I forgot that she was my sister
I balanced on the edge of a spiritual precipice.
Her mouth was hungry and red as flame,
my lips quivered like a little boy’s.
Evening gloried all around sky’s rim
like a ruddy ouroboros.
Flowers on the tree of knowledge sparkled,
clearly enjoying the joke.
Orgy
Evening secretly kissed the budding laurel
which became, in our game, a temple of Apollo
when our over-strong longing tumbled us together.
Night sky poured darkness like perfume
into the slow-surging waves
of a wind rich in possibility
into which the centuries sank
and re-awoke, stretching themselves,
to stand, all golden, in the starry armor of destiny.
Our impossibly lucky gamble brought us
the fruits of May-month paradise.
From a place deep as wanting, my scream sang
over the halo of your tousled hair
like the cry of a primeval forest bird.
Your newly created skies fell,
invisible but evident as a wild sweet scent,
confounding my earth with a heaven
no one could have even known how to wish for.
We tore off whatever still covered us,
cried out, drunk from breathing in
the hard cider of such an atmosphere!
I bound myself so tightly to your life
that I faded into you,
recovered my shape, vanished again
into the untamed double symphony
of exultant, criminally innocent love
that didn’t know right from song.
Viva!
This little wish runs hot through my veins
like a sparkle-mad wine from a fire-leafed vine:
I wish we were one strength, one pulse, one satisfying
passion, one love-song to the whole burning world!
I wish we were reaching skywards, like a pair of branches
when a sun-crazed summer day shrieks for rain
and a cloudburst answers,
I wish we’d live forever, so we could tear Death
from his grave and laugh because his supposedly terrible
silence is all he can offer in reply!
I’d like to see the ground rise
within our deepest canyon,
lift into cliffs, gush up summits
vast beyond reach,
I want us to lay hands on heaven’s center,
to rediscover ourselves
with every breath, outshining all eternity!
I want a holiday just for rushing together,
we two, falling torrents
fountained down from precipitous cliffs,
thrilled by our own roaring water-song,
abruptly bubbling up, unendingly blending
into each another,
one flooding water-horde!
Mildred Faintly’s translation of Styx is now available in our bookstore here.