Danger be the man who bleeds the plights
of men of myth.
Don't you know that even Troy fell?
I do not throw pebbles at
your window in the night.
My eyes: yellow, unclouded;
mead and flowers drip thick
from my words:
banal and intoxicating.
Poppies blooming wild on timeworn cheeks,
Wine-dark hair in disarray.
Perhaps I have read too much into
the man who has read it all.
And perhaps he is only sea-mist mirage
cursed to appear an Adonis.

I made the ocean so that you would cross it.
It is only in this forced distance that
I am allowed to transcend this plain world;
in which I am bound to book
and you are bound to her.
Because in a land of gods and monsters
it seems not so strange that I am the other woman.
Clever sorceress who loves and lets you leave,
and with whom you know you might have stayed
forever.

Sail far, far away from me.