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Above
the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By
the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He
holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
5 How
can those terrified vague fingers push
The
feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And
how can body, laid in that white rush,
But
feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A
shudder in the loins engenders there
10 The
broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And
Agamemnon dead.
Being
so caught up,
So
mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did
she put on his knowledge with his power
15 Before
the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Reading: Harold Bloom, Leda and the Swan
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