Poems R Us - Take Three

Who Weeps, Who Weeps For Adonis?

Who weeps for the lion, whose golden curls tumble
To the ground? He is most fine and bound in rough hemp, he’s tied
To a table of stone, and will lie,
Death-quiet, through a dark night,
Beneath the stars.

Who weeps for Dumuzi on a throne of gold? Cast down
Into dust, the death of brightness,
He's dragged into the dark
For his wife.

Who weeps for Adonis whose ivory skin is sprawled and tainted
By a boar’s tusk? His purple lips and sunken eyes
Will make no kisses now.

Who weeps for the burning boy, staggering back
With a piece of mistletoe in his eye?

Who weeps? Who weeps for a beautiful youth, fallen
To the outraged shout of a gunshot?
Blood seeps into cracks in concrete
To nourish the mosses, like urine;
His waste, his discards, boxed up and planted
In a tidy garden, somewhere,
With a carved stone on it.

Who weeps for the man who trembles with cold?
Hunched and shivering, back to a dried up pine tree,
He's the sacrifice of a pig hunt gone wrong;
His blood soaks into parched ground,
Down to a red salt sea.
That pale youth has a new name:
Corpse-rot, worm-food; he’s swallowed up in earth now,
His body hung by Herself on a nail on the wall,
Gone into dust.

Have we paid teind enough?
Lord?

-- Stephanie Pegg, November 2005

*********************************
This is one of those highly referential jobs that are lots of fun to write, but are hard to understand by anyone who hasn't read exactly the same books as the poet. I'm not sorry, but I'll understand if my vict- er, readers don't really get this.

I wrote the first draft when I was studying for an exam on Classical Traditions in English Literature and had been fairly well steeped in the Venus and Adonis myth. So that's where it comes from, as much as anything else.

Cheers all,

Stephanie