AEIPATHY
She waited, unwearyingly, like a still water
Hungering for a dream, - a far-fetched hunch,
Eating up her creed like whirl-fire,
Oh! An overseas spouse is my desire.
O she waited, rebuffing countless hands like heaven
rejects sinners;
A sanguine sapphire, you may say, loathing stains in
her immaculate arms
Which craved for nebulous affection in some places,
far-off.
Oh! An overseas spouse is my desire.
And she kept to her dreams, a dedicated piffle,
borne out of lust for lucre.
Prince Charming came, an ebullient ebony, with the
heart of gold;
But she declined, even against pleas and promises.
Oh! An overseas spouse is my desire.
Now time journeyed beyond her reach,
With wrinkles embracing her skin like waters embrace
fishes.
She still sits, comfortably, overshadowed by menopause.
Oh! An overseas spouse is my desire.
Apollo and Daphne -- Yesi Casanova
Aeipathy: An unyielding or inveterate disease.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Publius Ovidius Naso, after Apollo the patron of archery mocked Eros for his employment of a bow and arrow to merely provoke lust, the god of desire shot his tormentor with a golden arrow and shot the naiad Daphne ("laurel"), a virgin companion of Apollo's twin sister Artemis, with a leaden one. The golden arrow instilled in Apollo a passionate love for Daphne, while the leaden one caused her an unshakeabale repulsion for him. "Thus the god departed into flames, thus in his whole heart he is burned and he feeds futile love by hoping. He sees that her hair hangs disarranged at her neck, and he says, “what if it be arranged?” He sees her flashing eyes like fire in the stars; he sees her lips, which it is not enough to have seen, he praises her fingers and hands and arms and upper-arms with more than the middle naked: if some things lie hidden, he imagines them better." Apollo pursued her without constraint, but she managed to evade his advances until Eros intervened to bring them in proximity. To prevent being raped she begged her father Peneus, a Thessalilan river god, for help. To save her Peneus transformed her into a laurel tree: "Her soft breasts are girded by thin bark, her hair grows into foliage, her arms into branches.... Apollo loves this one too and with a right hand placed on the trunk feels that her heart still trembles under the new bark, and having embraced the branches as limbs with his own arms he gives the wood kisses, and the wood shrinks from the kisses." Nevertheles, Apollo could not forsake his love for her: “Always my hair will have you, my lyres will have you, my quivers will have you, laurel tree."