Silverpoints | Page 6

the torment that devours.
But as along the shore we skirted, near
Enough to scare the birds with
our white sails,
We saw a three-limbed gibbet rising sheer.

Detached against the sky in spare details.
Perched on their pasturage, ferocious fowl
Riddled with rage a more
than putrid roast;
Each of them stabbing, like a tool, his foul
Beak
in the oozing members of his host.
Below, a troop of jealous quadrupeds,
Looking aloft with eye and
steadfast snout;
A larger beast above the others' heads,
A hangman
with his porters round about.
The eyes, two caves; and from the rotten paunch,
Its freight, too
heavy, streamed along the haunch,
Hang for these harpies' hideous
delight,
Poor rag of flesh, torn of thy sex and sight!
Cythera's child, child of so sweet a sky!
Silent thou bearest insult--as
we must--
In expiation of what faults deny
Thee even a shallow
shelter in the dust.
Ludicrous sufferer! thy woes are mine.
There came, at seeing of thy
dangling limbs,
Up to my lips, like vomiting, the streams
Of ancient
miseries, of gall and brine.
Before thee, brother in my memory fresh!
I felt the mangling of the
appetites
Of the black panthers, of the savage kites,
That were so
fain to rend and pick my flesh.
The sea was sleeping. Blue and beautiful
The sky. Henceforth I saw
but murk and blood,
Alas! and as it had been in a shroud,
My heart

lay buried in that parable,
All thine isle showed me, Venus! was upthrust,
A symbol calvary
where my image hung.
Give me, Lord God, to look upon that dung,

My body and my heart, without disgust.
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