His
eyes
were holes and his important paunch
oozed lazy, looping innards down his hips;
those scavengers, licking sweetmeats from their lips,
had hung his pouch and penis on a branch.
Under his foot-soles, shoals of quadrupeds
with lifted muzzles nosed him round and guzzled;
a huge antediluvian reptile muscled
through them like an executioner with his aides.
Native of Cytherea, initiate,
how silently you hung and suffered insult
in retribution for your dirty cult
and orgasms only death could expiate.
Ridiculous hanged man, my sins confirm
your desecration; when I saw you seethe,
I felt my nausea mounting to my teeth,
the drying bile-stream of my wasted sperm.
Poor devil with sweet memories, your laws
are mine ;
before
you, I too felt those jaws:
black panther, lancing crow, the Noah's Ark
that loved to chafe my flesh and leave their mark.
I'd lost my vision clinging to those shrouds,
I feared the matching blues of sky and sea;
all things were henceforth black with blood for
me,
and plunged my heart in allegoric clouds ...
Nothing stands upright in your land, oh Lust,
except my double, hanging at full length-
Oh God, give me the courage and the strength
to contemplate my body without disgust.
