Hephaestus Alone

His heart is like a boat that sets forth alone on the ocean and goes far out from him, as Aphrodite proceeds on her pleasure journeys. He pours the gold down the runnels into a great mystery under the sand. When he pulls it up by the feet and knocks off the scale, it is a god. What is it she finds with those men that equals this dark birthing? He makes each immortal manifest. The deities remain invisible in their pretty gardens of grass and violets, of daffodils and jasmine. Even his wife lives like that. Going on yachts, speaking to the captains in the familiar. Let them have it, the noons and rain and joy. He makes a world here out of frog songs and packed earth. He made his wife so she contains the green-fleshed melons of Lindos, thalo blue of the sea, and one ripe peach at five in the morning. He fashioned her by the rules, with love, made her with rage and disillusion.