In the dour ages <br />Of drafty cells and draftier castles, <br />Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables, <br />Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles <br />By no miracle or majestic means, <br /> <br />But by such abuses <br />As smack of spite and the overscrupulous <br />Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews, <br />One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles <br />Of God's city and Babylon's <br /> <br />Must wait, while here Suso's <br />Hand hones his tack and needles, <br />Scouraging to sores his own red sluices <br />For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles <br />Of horsehair and lice his horny loins; <br />While there irate Cyrus <br />Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes <br />To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes: <br />He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles <br />A girl could wade without wetting her shins. <br /> <br />Still, latter-day sages, <br />Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies <br />Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges, <br />Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles <br />From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains. <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by Venus<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-lesson-in-vengeance/
