Bees

Bees after Virgil

That the bees were born in the corpse of the injured animal. That the bees came forth without of the corrupted flesh.

That a small swing was chosen, made narrow just for this and the animal was l beneath the depressed roof and cramped walls

and that the four winds came end the four windows and that the morning relentless upon the small

and heavy head, its horns curving without from the whorled medallion of the forehead.

That the burning nostrils and the breathing chaps were stopped and the muscle and fat was beaten, pounded to a soft mass beneath the unbroken hide.

He lies upon his side on the shattered apple-boughs. He lies on a bed of fragrant thyme and the cassia is laid in sprays about him and the sweetness of the fields encloses him.

Do this when the west winds thump Do this when the meadows are alive with poppies. Do this when the swallow hangs her pendulous

nest and the dew is warm and the days become greater [i]or[/i] larger long. And all the living fluids will swirl within the hide, and the bone

will dissolve like bread in water. And a being will be born, and another, and then a thousand

and a thousand thousand swarming without limbs or form. And that the wings will increase from atoms. And that the stirring wings

will find their way into the air. And that a thousand stirring wings will tend hitherward forth into the day like a storm of arrows made of wind

and light. And the muscle and fat will fall back into the earth, and the horror into sweetness, and the dark into the orb of day and the bees thus born.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Jul/Aug 1999

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