I
They built a new temple where the old had fallen
in the long and terrible days of Indian summer.
Their eyes in their skulls
admitted no sensible light.
They walked with hands pressed to their mouths,
observing a law of silence
while the crossed blades shone
wicked and jewel-like
in atmosphere that shook with September heat.
It must have been she that spoke first
the damned thing they were forbidden,
ugly upon her lips as something which had been scrawled
with a thick black stub of pencil
across a wall . . .
He turned, coughing dryly a little,
as if to stamp out
with sudden look of denial
that muttering speech.
But it was too late —
already those flames, tinder-quick,
the sperm of the goatlike summer
that ravaged her loins,
had licked up the steep hillside.
Those stunted bushes,
the ones with the hard red berries,
accepted the fire almost as a benediction,
and passed it on,
from tree to little tree,
from branch to branch,
till silently all the hillside quivered with light.
II
And still he would not look at her.
Her head was a thick chunk of amber
the light shone through,
transformed from blocks to spear points.
Her limbs divided,
spread indolently fanwise,
the wings of a tired butterfly . . .
Her eyes dropped downward, mocking,
to where his body had raised
a part of itself
like a child’s hand raised
to ask to answer a question.
Adam! Adam!
And now the whole afternoon
had hardened into a block of transparent amber,
no longer water,
but something that locked
all movement absolutely . . .
Yes, he admitted,
the tongue in his mouth like cotton,
I want to touch you!
The crossed blades shifted,
the wind blew south, and forever
the birds, like ashes, lifted
away from that hot center —
but they, being lost,
could not observe an omen —
they knew only
the hot, quick arrow of love
while metals clashed,
a battle of angels above them,
and thunder — and storm!