Aphrodite

"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible
god." - Jorge Luis Borges

-------------------------------

Above the flow of the River Styx
Not through verity, but through tricks
The sweet ambrosia her lips betwixt
Lay the goddess Aphrodite;
And like a maiden smiling she
Giving him no chance to flee
The mortal man, good Anchises
Succumbed to her delight.

And every moment he did quiver
His fatal body moving with her
It gushed as her eternal River
Carried him away;
With aromas only from above
Cast from the hair of the Lady of Love,
An enchantment in the sky she wove
All through the dusk and day.

Her honeyed skin a divine place
What smooth contortions on her face,
What rush of stormy, powered grace
The mortal man did feel;
The orchestra conducted so
By nimble fingers all aglow
His every thrill she'd overthrow
This goddess at the wheel.

So dancing with the earthen-born,
She brought him close to break of dawn,
Her body in cool dews adorned,
Beneath the skies of Zeus;
Inflicted with mortality
Destruction he could now foresee;
Yet her coils of vitality
With his self did fuse;

For though his muscles soon would tire,
Laced with effort's blazing fire
But not without burning desire
His finite lungs would ache;
She roused in him a forceful spark
So in the following fall of dark
And fright'ning tree-souls from their bark
His body she did take.

And throwing back her frenzied head,
Passion's song through air did thread,
And her ripened thighs did spread,
Laid open to the world;
And ripples tore across his skin
As freshened moonlight entered in
And in the river he did swim
His last pleasure now unfurled.

Now in fading wonder of her grip
Into a reverie he did slip
Hands fell from her magnificent hip
He gazed up at her eyes -
And in their smouldering timeless power
She looked upon his final hour
As bees dismiss the dying flower
She witnessed his demise.