Stanza Saturday (9)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"Hades to Persephone"

By Arnold Asrelsky

From Pantheon and Other Poems

Yes, my brothers made the better bargain.

Zeus wove his words and I was caught again

He to peaks and wide sky and the other

to sea-roads where the seal and porpoise play.

The dim one to the darkness he deserved,

and armies of pale twittering ghosts.

They had Lethe, at least, and knew no loss.

Who could abide the dark stale air?  The dead

only, so mole took his black chariot

to Sicily to see again the sun.

Oh, that hot sun on my flesh, the warm air

in my lungs, flowery fields, grass beneath,

and in their midst, the fairest of all, you.

Field, flower, sun, all faded into you.

Should I have said, "Oh fair, lovely maiden,

I am lord of death: come to my kingdom,

be my sun and field and flower forever;

I will make you the queen of the shadows

of corpses"? No talker I, ever, less then.

Yes, I ravished you, but first you did me.

And when I pressed you to me, and you scorched

me like the sun, hot body against mine,

no words in my strangled throat but whimpers,

no thought in an empty head but the feel

of you, of you shuddering against me.

My heart, pounding as if it would burst,

opened a road to Hades and took you,

a terrified, shrieking child pressed against

a wall to escape the loathsome one who

had done this, and stung me, unaccustomed,

into honeyed words to soothe, make my suit,

and did, oh, miracle, did--and you sat

at this table we sit at now. I cut

the pomegranate you at first refused,

and each day cut again, refused again.

One day you looked into my sad face;

I saw, like a sun in this dark, dead land,

the hint of  pity in your eyes, and my tears

wet my cheek. And when I took your small hand

in mind, it did not move. And now you smile

as you did then, at last, and shyly took

the seeds, and now tears again on my cheek

as you draw my head to your breast, and I,

having told you the tale you love to hear,

embrace and lift you again from this table. 

Tomorrow to my sister and glad earth,

but tonight to our couch, my queen, my love.

My influence for this poem definitely stems from what I'm currently reading.  I have the perfect image to match the poem, but I think it should be shared here.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^