The Altar

I desperately stepped into one of two altars
Of a thick dark bosquet
That steals the sky’s bright stars:
Riches that none else will inherit.

A goblet rested on the stone,
Glimmering mysteriously in the dark.
It stood solemn—alone—
In the sea of void, it was a shark.

I approached gingerly
As if it may strike violently,
Then as I tried to stop,
My hand flew to collect the bright crop.

My hand held its neck between its fingers
And cupped it like a skull.
In midair their movement became null;
Petrified, like one caught committing murders.

I thus held my Lady’s head
And surveyed the goblet’s content:
Her eyes of stone, her hair of lead;
Her life that to my hand she had leant.

Then, as if the grail had motive,
Its lips neared mine.
And I too edged towards its rim’s line
As if it were my fuel to live.

Her blood—her existential nectar—
Spilt on the unappreciative floor
Before she kissed my facial moor
And did my clay spirit stir.

I drank her bloody kiss;
Received the deep red life of the grail:
She filled me with the bliss
That she had drawn with a nail.

And as the oral bridge was consumed slowly,
The goblet faded into the darkness
Before glowing again from the abyss
By the divine love that now shone from me.