Читать книгу Apples from Shinar - Hyam Plutzik - Страница 24

THE PRIEST EKRANATH

I who am sanctified—

Having lain with the holy harlots at Askelon

On the roof of the great temple under her visage

Who graces with splendor the night in the god-filled sky:

Mother, rich-wombed mistress, whose thighs are forever

Rising and falling like the tides in the roadstead of Gath,

To strike with fear the arid and impotent damned

And assure the fruit of field and man and animal

With Adonis and her chosen, fortunate priests—

Must tell you of these barbarians from the mountains,

From the anarchic hills come to destroy us,

Recent siftings out of the east and south.

They call her the White One or the White Lady

But do not worship her nor any mother-goddess.

I have seen them on the high days in Askelon

When the harlots dance naked through the gala streets

For the joy of Adonis and the blessed thirst of the loins

Turn away angry, cursing these holy bodies,

Crying, “Let them be stoned and their evil wombs ripped up.”

They hate delight. They have but a lone god

And he is their enemy. I met a certain one:

Sly as a jackal yet arrogant as a lion,

Rough-bearded, out of the desert, desperate

With his private phantoms, his eyes like an animal’s

(Fearful, and darting here and there, yet ready

To spring and rend), his hair and garments filthy

With the rot of caves, his skin flayed red by scorpions.

Though his nights are writhings of fire, he will not clasp

The salvation of sweet flesh, but for sustenance

Communes with this impossible imageless demon,

Stuff of a barren race, who has tainted him

With a sickness I cannot fathom, an evil spirit

Like the guilt which dogs a murderer. So always

He looks behind him, before, and within himself,

And the voice he hears becomes this maniacal thundering

On our sunlit streets and before our gleaming temples.