#50
Sleeping Venus does not dream of men.
She is made of love she cannot share,
Love being just another form of flesh
Only memory can touch again and again.
Like the sickle moon, vicious and fair,
She is unimaginably distant light and ash.
Her five handmaidens gyrate and moan,
Beseech the night for clothes of their own.
The well-dressed Madame, Venus' tool,
Mistakes a skeleton for a love-struck fool.
Bleak and meager dreams for a goddess,
Yet how peacefully she seems to sleep.
Though her realm is all stone and distress,
We will now invade her sacred keep.
