Dedicated to her by whose eyes I find my purpose clear.
Eternity. Droll I do not wish to seem, but how do you,
Cupid, whose unfettered arrow relieves
Those fetters man wears all to willingly,
Plan for proliferations of your sport,
Love’s continuity rare in this age
Whose youthful century cares not for it.
Cupid. Not like lesser embodiments, shriveled
When reverent tribute slakes the boundless thirst
And empowers limbs no more; Revelry,
Fortune and Pride, Arrogance their master,
Are threatened once forgotten, not this sprite.
Why I feel fit as a daisy’s first day
In May’s sisterhood. See how still I fly.
Eternity. Poor cupid, demonstration of those loops
In air and soft landing in ample grass
Betray you have lost your doubtless graces,
Once that overbore your movements, as will
Rivers when the rains are too generous.
Even now you lean lame upon your bow.
Cupid. To ponder do I lean, on subjects strange,
Necessitating crutch, to dream, to change.
I play the agent of love, answering
The call of love in lovers ever-changed.
Distraction, not infirmity, is my load.
Eternity. Considerations your station prizes
Should not alter your once agile flying.
Cupid. This assertion always seemed true, too, to me,
That is until new shoots won out from ash
As mankind exchanged love for ruder lights,
Connected each to each, but absent life.
Eternity. How had these two lovers waylaying you,
Whose immortality never doubtful
Has kept locks flaxen, curled in gold, and cheeks
Suffused with flushed hue, hues by flax caressed,
Entwined in their blindness, flowered entwined?
Cupid. Such mysteries weigh unencumbered flight,
Trips up landing when nothing through grass slips
Unnoticed; yet love’s creation my hands
Mold in no degree. Its tuneful song heard,
Prizing it above all else, I remain
Youthful, discovering it the strongest
When love looks to gods the most in doubt.
Eternity. How oft your whispered reassurance soothes
Pains in eternity’s bones causing quakes
When lovers quell madness, anneal, and speak
For the age’s waywardness through their bliss.
Like Pyramus with Thisbe, Thisbe he,
Or as the Greek, whose wife her visitors fooled,
Let guile purpose love’s principal promise;
What perfect form, experience complete,
Possess these in possessing each to each?
Cupid. No perfection, perfect the mystery
Communicated to cherub’s hearing.
Fraught as the grassy stream whose substance
Elsewhere in its run rips roots from the earth, this,
Lacking moderation keeps grass entranced
As Calypso hoped her captive forgot
The promise of home that once weighed heavy.
Eternity. To you, love’s summoning perfume obscures
The situation meant to remedy,
Our adolescent century tutored
With the best science can procure for him.
I must know if one was born high, one low;
If labors were demanded, labors won.
Cupid. No spirit can gleam their image clearly,
As man takes up new distractions, severed
From the murmurings through which we once spoke.
My only evidence of love is this
That tortured Psyche delivered the time
When I took a fallen tree for a desk
Whose branches ran ringers in the flowing
Run while pondering leafy visage and demise,
There to take a break from leisure, business
To attend. Her poor sunken cheeks spoke true
Of man, who cannot carry distraction
And hope to be, but open the casket
Pandora did and shake out the box’s dust,
Which clouds their frenzied hives with great towers
Such that Psyche cannot through static see
Where man makes sense, meaning Psyche’s currency.
Of two then she spoke whose forms were clearer.
Like maidens singing of the field once were,
Or pioneers, familiar once, now lost.
Eternity. Will legend approve unknown tenancy
Among ranks of beauty matching beauty?
Cupid. Tendered whether known or unknown with station,
The sense of this existing between them
Offers hints of misery, misery
Endured and thankful for misery’s stay
That joy should intercede in beholding
The station legend secures his grim life
In knowing love by her company.
Eternity. Turn this back, you your rift-less wound undo!
Cupid. My council is at your command, not acts.
You, whose articulations through the wheat,
Soothing in its growth the labors of man,
And when those heads shorn to stem are lain low,
The voicelessness no dissent to harvest,
You express pleasure in their righteousness.
When the perturbed hear your will in the pine,
Needles little speaking your great misgiving,
Lament those hearing not their sharp warnings.
You invent means to set dry pines to blaze.
The inner voice of fire many man notes
And carries out your wrath in psychosis.
That is when I am called by greenest sprout,
There to sow love against apocalypse.
Eternity. Fly as you might, cherub, from my vengeance,
The twin feathers left descending upon
My sudden wrath will not muffle my cry
Borne on sands along whose crests we have met,
With our expedition about the globe
Closing in the cold of Saharan nights.
One time or another when shock aligns
With earth along your cloudy avenue,
A strike will tear your form permanently
From the sky, by root and branch vaporized.
END
