Allegory

Picture a beauty, shoulders rich and fine,     Letting her long hair trail into her wine.     Talons of love, the poison tooth of sin     Slip and are dulled against her granite skin.     She laughs at Death and flouts Debauchery;     Those fiends who in their heavy pleasantries     Gouge and destroy, still keep a strange regard     For majesty - her body strong and hard.     A goddess, or a sultan's regal wife     A faithful Paynim of voluptuous life     Her eyes call mortal beings to the charms     Of ready breasts, between her open arms.     She feels, she knows - this maid, this barren girl     By our desire fit to move the world     The gift of body's beauty is sublime     And draws forgiveness out of every crime.     She knows no Hell, or any afterlife,     And when her time shall come to face the Night     She'll meet Death like a newborn, face to face     In innocence - with neither guilt nor hate.