Vipera Venus                                                                                                                                                                                               Cole McKeith

 

Vipera, a genus of venomous snake

Venus, the morning star

———

This ancient beast is blind, not just;

its name belies its primal grace.

Its fevered lungs are choked with dust

and time should warp its crystal face.

Yet time abstains to mark its visage

which like the sun, stays blank and plain.

The graceful shades within its image,

won’t cleanse its veins of sands and grains.

Its heart has an ancient, inward beat

and takes the marks its face neglects.

Its hollowed blood betrays its heat

and bears the wrath its name rejects.

As fires of their bodies, starved,

and chasms between distant pains;

the art with which its nature’s carved,

will flesh and fade with violent rains.

Its nature’s art is lesser lost,

as proving of its ancient tasks,

which shroud around its vaporous thoughts,

which flicker in its gaseous mask.

As planets under dying suns

—the masses of their salts and dirts—

which thread its fate like leveled guns,

which drag its body down to Earth.

Its stare still holds its ghostly glow

but leaves its faded limbs with shade.

And so its ancient blood still flows

when drawn to flame,

when wrung to rage.

 

And in its heart,

as in the Garden they once stayed

—the fired touch with which they’re made—

are fragments of its burning blade.

 

Which shine like stars within its glare

and flare across its fractal stare,

as lightning’s voice is only rare

until its tongues have struck the air.

 

The truth is lost in the day to the glare of the light

and found in the eve in the notes of the night.

As fated flames in gyred flight,

the stars are far, but Burning Bright:

 

As mist flows in beyond the grasp,

and drifts beyond the Earthly lapse,

there is no path to gently pass

the nature of the Devil, Glass.

 

It might fuel the air like dust, displaced.

As it might ignite the Earth like stars, enraged.

 

But just as it may settle softly, a fog upon the dark.

Its spectral lines curving round the shadow of its heart.