Portrait of the poet as a lover - a poem by Chris Zachariou

Passionate Embrace of Lovers

The goddess commanded silence!

She was raging; I had disturbed her reverie
and though I said she was my only lover,
she scorned me and told me I was a stranger.
She broke my guitar, she burned my parchments
and locked away all my songs inside a jar.

Yet all the profanities she rants, arouse me.
I am seduced by the wasted purity of her youth.

Some days she vanishes deep into the forest
and when she is back, she has the scent
of jasmine blossom in her hair.
She tells me once she loved a man who tried
to mould her, but now she has broken free.
Then she loads her fever on another's shoulder
and leaves the mountain for days.

On violet-coloured nights, she sits by the shore
looking at the horizon but he who once heard
her cry at dawn will not return and my lover weeps.

Her lips taste of brine and the anger of the sea.
I strum a broken chord on the guitar she wrecked
but she reminds me of my oath of silence
and orders me to leave her.

Then she lies on my bed with eyes half-closed
and has the taste of May on her breasts.
My green-eyed lover beguiles me.
At last, I'm inside her twisted mind,
a familiar labyrinth of lust and a myriad
of delicious rooms of sheer depravity.