On his bronzed warrior shoulders <br />He wore my heart and totems <br />Tattooed with my broken amulets <br />Whole as he remembered them <br /> <br />I had inflamed his craving, touch and taste <br />Liberating the church braids and tresses <br />Combed roughly by the wayward winds <br />Tangling, twining wanton with his senses <br /> <br />I bathed carefree in slipstream rivers <br />Wetting his parched partisan soul <br />Lit candles to goddesses <br />And gazed at the stars <br />With the fae I lay naked in tall silken grasses <br />I touched shy deer with gentle hands <br />Understanding their silent languages <br />And they stood trembling beside me as he did <br /> <br />These heinous crimes I died for <br />Accused of worshipping a pagan god <br />It destroyed his black spurned heart <br />To burn me <br />Naming me the witch I was <br /> <br />Many lifetimes of remorse and sorrow <br />He searches the earth for me <br />My hatred growing with resentment <br />As I returned to him in anguish <br />For many centuries past and present <br /> <br />In the Himalayas he glimpsed me <br />Gathering flowers for the Sherpa feast <br />And when he called with pleading heart <br />With stones I shunned and scorned him <br /> <br />In foreign eastern lands <br />I danced naked with armlets and veils <br />For the Baptist head I deceived him <br />Burdening his country with treason <br />And I was the queen who betrayed him <br />Causing great wars and mayhem <br /> <br />In a forest glen forgotten <br />A paupers grave stirs remembrance <br />Where he was buried and I was burnt <br />With my ashen spells and essence <br /> <br />Heavy heart with aching weariness <br />Amongst the flowers he lays his sword <br />Begging for a just forgiveness <br />Released was then our binding sadness <br />Healing our souls thus parted <br />And so it was that the gods ordained <br />To be freed from karmic paths of pain<br /><br />Simone Inez Harriman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/burning-goddesses/
