Josh Hanson

HYMN TO CIRCE III

Aeolus' gift:
                   the broken course,
the renunciation of the middle way:
witchcraft of the eccentric:
                                          love,
which makes a boat of the body,
and bacchic terror, fruitful, sends us falling,
fins cutting water, where the wine spills down:
brine of parting lips, the widening eye,
the cord, tied fast at the olive:
                                               radius
slackening  from the marriage bed:
                                                         swim out.
            Love, we've unwoven that world
            --its thread in our hands--
            and the center pulls outward…
Which is the frenzy of the god, imageless:
Serpent,
            sea-witch,
                            wife.