Bacchus IV

She whom the god had snatched into a cloud
Came up my stair and called to me across
The gulf she floated over of despair
Came roaring up as through triumphal arches
Called I should warm my hands on her gold cope
Called her despair the coping of her fire.

One cut as seizin from the turf the cross
Whose arch of branches are the best for fire
And made a fire enter their flue of cloud
Who swallow into vaults a double cross
And all the flounces of the trees made arches
Whose offered branches were the first despair
Whose rounded thought could hold a court for fire
With which the raptured Adam could not cope
And like a cow over the moon to fiddles
We leapt in turn across the cope of fire.

The god in making fire from her despair
Cast a parabola of falling arches
Whose arch could cast a focus to the skyline
Cold focus burning from another’s fire
Arachne sailing her own rope of cloud
A tracer photon with a rocket’s lifeline
And purged his path with a thin fan of

fire Round steel behind the lights of the god’s car
A wheel of fire that span her head across
Borne soaring forward through a cloud of cloud
Robed in fire round as heaven’s cope
The god had lit up her despair to fire
Fire behind grates of a part of her despair
And rang like bells the vaults and the dark arches.