I. Demeter
Torches, with torches the goddess sprinted 'round the globe.
The mountain ranges shuddered in the face of her wrath.
The terrible voice of the Mother echoed and fruit fell from
branches and young olive trees grew ancient within minutes.
No man in the bloody heat of war ever felt rage as Hers.
Mighty Achilles fell as a lamb before her savage gaze.
The wall of Ajax slid into the sand. The land was wasted
and the memory of forests was transmuted into stone.
II.
Her face was flushed and the four fingers of his right hand
clawed without fingernails into the hair behind her head. He pulled
so that Persephone's bright eyes could see only the ceiling.
The middle finger of his left hand traced from her navel up, up, up,
until two inches below her chin and then grasped with
every tendon, his forefinger massaging the top of her spine.
His lips met upon her shoulder and she shivered and screamed.
After fifteen writhing moments he released her and stretched his arms
behind his head, a small scar on his forearm catching the candlelight.
III.
She rolled over and bit into a pomegranate seed, a thin bloody river
curving to her collar. She took his hand and said, "My love, I cannot
bear to have you again depart." She sighed and stood. Her face changed
and no empress ever had such an steeled stare. Her hair billowed
like a jungle set aflame. It roiled in the flickering night.
She suddenly reached beneath the bed. In her hands
there were gnarled shears and her hair fell in torrents
and the floor was flooded in despair.
IV.
With Persephone's slashed treasure tucked into a pouch,
Adonis trudged with weary muscles past the slavering
guardian of the dead's land. The brightness of the sun bit at his eyes
and the treacherous one giggled like a brook. She purred.
"Ah, my pet, you have found something, have you not?"
He squared his shoulders and said, "Goddess from the sea,
I have heard your promises like the rain upon the surf.
I have done what was required. She has broken the renewal.
She has shorn the promise of a shuttered frost.
Where then is your ugly husband's forge?
Let us bind her locks within a dagger's edge, let us
fashion a blade upon the anvil of all storms,
and then I shall descend again to the underworld
and with a weapon of her own body paint a picture
and be as Perseus with that dishonored Gorgon of the deep."
She laughed prettily, like the first taste of honey after the snow.
"My handsome love, you do despise her after all! Her brooding
features so inferior to mine, to think that she fancies you her own,
as if any man would prefer the nightshade to the opened lily.
"The smithing will be the work of a moment. Darling," she said,
her tongue flicking against his earlobe, "however did you convince
the dark lady to give to you such power? Oh, your body in the lamplight
is a crafter of legends, and when you speak of beauty
the very birds cease their song, but this, how this?"
Adonis chuckled and stared out at the horizon. "I kissed her on the mouth,"
he said, "and afterward she could never have been anything but mine.
"Hand to me this blade the Fates would fear, and soon you and I shall
never need to leave this glade. We will build towers and fill them
with the stories of our lives and all alive will strain for the echoes
of our voices."
Aphrodite handed him an immortal's bane. Bold Adonis pursed his lips
and wove his body like leaves in the wind. Like a tiger roused
from a dream he leapt. Blood pulsed in a bead
smaller than a needle's prick upon her cheek. "Oh," the foam-born
moaned. "Adonis, my dove, I would have made of you a king."
In an instant she could no longer bend the light
and in a mirage she rippled.
V.
Her hair spun like ivy around her.
She smiled like wolves smile.
She drank from a jar of wine, coughed, and tossed the jar
into the furnace. The clay cracked in two calm lines.
"My husband," she said. "My husband, it seems that the time
has arrived for you to make an accounting to your blushing bride."
He sat with a body covered in scars. Black Hades, horror of the Earth,
thief eternal, lifted his head and began to speak. No speech emerged,
for the steel whistled and Atlas bore no weight
and the boulder of accursed Sisyphus hung on a thread
and the head of the dark lord rolled bloodless on the bricks.
VI.
The moon grew close to the earth and heresies rustled
through the leaves of trees. It was rumored that the lord of the dead
had been slain. People milled in careful celebrations.
Women ragged with age slowly reverted to the rose of youth.
Men long crippled danced to the tune of unheard drinking songs.
The flowers that newlyweds planted in neat rows wilted.
Men reaching for an impassioned lover withered.
Laughing children broke to dust.
The sky, once blue like the ocean's eyes,
smoldered into the slate of a mausoleum.
Adonis kissed Persephone upon a throne of weathered bone.
