Spyders
Stretch sylphlike-aërial into the airwaves:
Cast your bare shoulders broad in the light;
Atomise brute efficiency, so that your etchings
May clamber vinely in this slight hour’s chamber—
Do this, Daffodil, O Budding Rosemary!
Do this, for the spyders are ambling ever close,
Mandibles manifest as words of care and joy, of love—
To suffocate inn’cence in torture of the dull.
Venom encased in silver, paralysis, in turn,
In time, chiming sibilance to enslave entyre:
And awaiting yet until unxious tongue-sin
Bares its arachnoid, translucent teeth;
So greet this life with a hammer: hear how hollow
It rings, then fill it with gold; the Sun, as Moon,
Would nod verily, artificing such arcane attachments—
An addendum to the final message of God’s creation.
Thrown: thrown into the quintessent show,
A song’n-dance on a rack’d, emboss’d stage:
Thrown not aside but headfirst into costume-chaos:
Rapt by the modern map, paved with love,
Worshipping naught but death.