the stone is fruit with her and the marble
still breathes - her dress falling from breast and thigh
while beneath the ribs her snake-skin girdle
stays fastened - she comes on till well-nigh
on you - unseen and recognised too late
moving from invisibility
to exposure as she accelerates
beyond past divisibility
into a now ahead of voice and thought
out of tread and reach yet dead to rest -
why put up a hand to such onslaught
unless it be to touch her raised breast
and face that torso’s orgy and rabies -
Dionysus is the youth of Hades
Oxford
17 November 2018
This maenad can be found in the Ashmolean. Go and see her, she stands just beyond the entrance.
Maenads or Bacchantes attended Bacchic rites dedicated to Dionysus in which they performed superhuman feats of strength on the mountains and hunted down and ingested animals that crossed their path.
It is evident that I am responding to Rilke and Yeats. I respond to Heracleitus in the final line.