Of the Roses-Horses on the Cliffs

 

What of Ariadne's golden thread?
How often did it—whether in thought
or in fact, itself a bold and brazen act—
lead a stranger along its winding path
and ever deeper into grave-like death?

And why would Ariadne then herself crack
and split into two—instead of the one—
into the troubadours' Eleanor
and the meek and pliant,
dove-like gentle Rosemund?

And Theseus? Wasn't he the first
to switch the sails from white to black,
just as he swapped between two sisters,
even though each—and in her own way—
carried the rider who was also both:
both love and death—and each
an entwined snaking thread
along the line of poetry and fate?

And wasn't Rosemund herself
such a bower's mare—
made of hros or horse

and mund, protection and guard,
until scholars changed her
into rosa munda, pure rose,
or into rosa mundi—
all the way back

to Phaedrus' two horses,
one black, the other white?
But why should one need
to repaint those roses
hanging on the seaside crag,

and keep one's sails inverted—
female reds and royal purples
into whites and blues and golds,
akin to the silk of kissing graze
as it navigates by the lover's nave?