Europa

 

Behind his horns she made her seat, a throne, a couch.

And Minos’ future Labyrinth drew its early beginning

from the lap, bathed and rising with the rhythms of the sea.

Did it matter that her lover had no longer any human form

 

along with its face and limbs—even its distinctive speech?

Or wasn’t it namely what she always longed for—desired?

To ring and twine deep down and coil around the consigned,

concealed form behind the outward figure and its lying looks?

 

Or was it this that one lurid moment when, as in Zola’s Earth,

a woman cries “You, filthy swine!” and it turns out she meant it

as the utmost, rousing compliment—coming like a stroke of death

 

and one’s most last, final gasp? With such a passage, rite, the West

had begun and sprung its might that conjured, worshiped, mated,

tapped—the darkest of life’s lowest elements amid gods with horns!