NOTES TO A MYTH

What the unicorn said - 
"The": end of number; all definitive
short word.  No, not renewing like "the Pope";
specific, like "the Lion".  But: "Alive
there is one unicorn - and no more hope".
Pride, then ("the Sun", "the Devil")? - and with scope
for I am That I am?  No: such a boast
is ash in the true anguish of the ghost.

No-one remembers, or would guess, the days
when fresh Arcadia rand with floods of white
innumerable us; a gentian-blaze
of eye and fury in that blizzard; a light
like storm on armour, splintering from our flight
and ecstasy of hooves; colossal thorns, 
outblading the wild pastures, our flung horns.

None would have guessed those gale-dishevelling herds
mortal: can seas be censored, grains ungrow?
Is there a mantra for abolishing birds?
A down-clock universe - "hold in your hand, and blow"?
A long day's curfew crippled lizards, though;
yet we, ten-maring, felt the narrow breath
(when twos presented), not the bite, of death.

Clitoris-horned, our mares, grown mirage-hot
(therefore, perhaps) for zebra, horse and ass
and all bare-browed.  Leahs and Rachels - not
those little running dulcimers, tinkling glass-
and-flower lutes of lechery - the grass
hushed their diminishment, then their oblivion:
and we must breed from Rahab, or from none.

Oh, but the harlot!  To be counted hers!
We did not mount.  And so the monsters bred - 
zebras monocerots, two-horned onagers,
bizarre and puny throws less horrible dead:
and they died soon.  But nothing came instead,
except our aging, our subtraction, and
a folly that was fatal.  Understand:

no virgins past the teat, a fester of
ephemeral hybrids where the matrons lay
by shidders of impotence in our stallions: love,
and dark desire, found-out a twisted way.
Oh damsels in the fountains' disarray,
naked and white as we, should we have known
your pure and alien flesh would fell our  own?

Bird-subtly out of thickets, the wide lawn
their voted cloister, we would peep, appalled
to feel (but rule) the rigour of the faun.
They knew our presence, though; and if they called,
gentler than snowflakes on an emerald
we would approach them, trembling, horns abased
before a joy so beautiful yet chaste.

Then we were taught they were all sovereign,
those horns, that, only dipped into the pool, 
they gave elixir against age and pain,
amnesty from unease.  In the mild school 
our nymphs had lured us to, the virgin rule
they kissed us to, how should we grudge at all 
the symbols of what made us animal?

Not without pain does keratin saw-through,
nor its pink-jelly lining; but we bored
anguish corollary with loss, our blue
eyes tearless.  "Only wonder and adore",
we thought, "for, being pure, we need no more".
Yes?  But the combats of the flesh are fierce;
now we could spurn, indeed, but could not pierce.

Love, do you understand?  Nothing but that,
nothing but that, though barren, lethal, bent
by the deviant gravity the mares begat:
released into the nymphs' clear firmament,
its nova-light must outrage on till spent - 
in which our planetary conscripts' death
was prompt and sure as gnats' in dragon's-breath.

Hate, the known murderer, is a suicide
as well: burn strongly, and the dark is sure - 
yes, even love's, yes, even love's: we died
of that fire.  I have days to live; and your
one hope is this: cold only will endure.
"We must love one another or die"?  Understand:
where alone we could love, the word is "and".