A Byzantine Mosaic
“O Theotropia,
my empress consort.”
“O Theodendron,
my consort emporer.”
“How fair thou art, my
hollow-cheeked beloved.”
“How fine art thou,
blue-lipped spouse.”
“Thou art so wondrous frail
beneath thy bell-like gown,
the alarum of which, if but removed,
would waken all my kingdom.”
“How excellently mortified
thou art,
my lord and master,
to mine own shadow a twinnèd shade.”
“Oh how it pleaseth me
To see my lady’s palms,
Like unto palm leaves verily,
clasped to her mantle’s throat.”
“Wherewith, raised
heavenward,
I would pray thee mercy for
our son,
For he is not such as we, O Theodendron.”
“Heaven forfend,
O Theotropia.
pray, what might he be,
begotten and brought forth
in godly dignity?”
‘I will confess anon, and
thou shalt hear me.
Not a princeling
but a sinner have I borne thee.
Pink and shameless as a
piglet,
plump and merry, verily,
all chubby wrists and ringlets came he
rolling unto us.”
“He is roly-poly?”
“That he is.”
“He is voracious?”
“Yes, in truth.”
“His skin is milk and roses?”
“As thou sayest.”
“What, pray, does our
archimandrite say,
a man of most penetrating gnosis?
What say our consecrated eremites,
most holy skeletesses?
How should they strip the
fiendish infant
of his swaddling silks?”
“Metamorphosis miraculous
still lies within our Saviour’s power.
Yet thou, on spying
the babes unsightliness,
shalt not cry oyt
and rouse the sleeping demon from his rest?”
Wisława Szymborska (from No End of Fun
1967)
“I am thy twin in horror.
Lead on, Theotropia.”