Yet how elusive the Mediterranean Light on the limits of our imagining. Our human Thought and its

Yet how elusive the Mediterranean

Light on the limits of our imagining.

Our human

Thought and its vagaries attend forever the birth

Of Aphrodite. From the tumultuous blue,

Out of these waters at an early dawn

Earth

Received her, lusting with spring, and knew

Only the pleasure of the delighted lawn.

 Signs might have cried: Keep off.-but the happy heart

Conceded the beachhead. We were insatiably lured,

And later, patched up by religion and art for art,

Falteringly inured

Somehow to manage again, except for the one

Haunted chamber opposing the regular commerce.

We are affected, incurably saddened and mad.

What’s done

Must be endured, no matter how you coerce

Past thunder’s shanty her smile in a tattered ad.

She won’t be mocked. The stunt once pulled has blunted

Only the agent. What lives in a farmer’s glance

Or a child’s as they look, the growth of wonder granted

 Is in advance

Of salesmanship. Imponderable accounts…

Aphrodite and Ares by Herbert Schaumann