Daphne

[heslopian]

Daphne was afraid of sex
but not solitude.
How many years must she have stood
overlooking small creatures?
Did lovers carve their names in her,
causing agony?
Apollo's penis terrified her.
As though it were an axe
she ran through the woods.
Her fingers sprouted greenery,
her vagina was enclosed by bark,
all of her yellow hairs vanished
and were replaced by laurel leaves.
Apollo's love became courtly.
No penetration, grunting, sperm
troubled her hide-and-seek soul.

I can empathise, Daphne.
When you cried to be saved,
and took root in the earth,
the passage of time
couldn't be comprehended.
If it could would you have stopped,
clenched your teeth and braced yourself
against Apollo's shaft? His sex
wounding yours, fist through stone.
Would a secret lock have broken
following the pain, justifying it?
Would you have come, and wanted to again?
Your fear is mine as well.
I envy your restraint. Your chastity's dam.

My buttocks is your vagina.
I tremble at the thought of it
smashed and ruined by a man whose touch
I couldn't fight, his breath on my back
and his hands round my waist.
But you could fight. I want to be loved.


Apollo and Daphne, a life-sized marble sculpture by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680)