Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CHIMERA'S KISS, by JEAN RICHEPIN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CHIMERA'S KISS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The fierce chimera's hooded eyes
Last Line: Immortal in one moment's bliss.
Subject(s): Death; Kisses; Love; Mythology; Tears; Dead, The


THE fierce Chimera's hooded eyes
Spilt blood and fire from lashes red;
Her sneer a rheumy slabber shed
And, with a laugh that rent the skies,
She said: "Wouldst metamorphosise
Thy soul, and slay thy dam with dread?

"Poor brat, my lovers glut the ditch.
To dusty death they tumbled down.
In maze of madness seer and clown
Reeled on to ruin. Poor and rich
Alike pursued the drouthy bitch,
Whose fangs were soon their purple crown.

"In sooth I promise him my bed
Who, fain and heedless, worships me.
With lips I lure my devotee
As steel unto the magnet's head;
He rushes on, but falls instead
Into the moat he did not see.

"Yet whosoever plights me troth
Must love me through the thorns and spears,
'Spite bludgeon blows and galled tears,
Nor for a single pulse be wroth,
Nor for an instant curse his oath,
Though every token disappears!"

"I would! I will!" the youth replied;
"Thy dubious promise I believe,
And for the kiss my lips would thieve
My heart 'gainst hell were fortified.
Yea, though my ebbing anguish sighed,
To thee my dying hope would cleave."

"So be it then," she said. "Proceed!"
And in a trice his back traversed.
His heart seemed in his maw immersed,
As smitten there with comet's speed;
Whilst all around the lousy breed
Roared: "Wait until his bowels burst."

The swills, the sluts, the thieves and fools,
The sweepings of the human sties
Assailed his ears with bawdy cries
And screeched with glee of gibbering ghouls
As deep he sank in ruts and pools
Beneath his burden, Atlas-wise.

"Down with the hell-begotten hag!
Down with the lean and crazy loon,
Bestraddled by this bitch-baboon.
The Mayor shall make her dewlaps sag
And scorch the withers of her nag,
Whose dam this morning died in swoon."

At this the urchin writhed and wept
And stumbled 'neath his giant load.
"Stay, lad," the sly Chimera crowed;
"'Twere well their counsel to accept.
I'll go and leave thy vow unkept.
Let me alight!" but on he strode.

They howled: "To Bedlam with the swine,
The matricide. He should be hurled
Into the cesspool of the world."
They fled, and soon he saw the shine
Of desert, bare of bush or pine,
All trackless, where no freshet purled.

There reigned an awful solitude,
With adamantine skies o'erhung,
Where burning sands in sheets were flung
And by the rolling tempest strewed,
Which momently the sun pursued
With hail of firebrands demon-slung.

No tree, no tent, a land accurst,
Sans nook or corner dropping shade,
Sans coolth of single grassy blade,
A wilderness of panting thirst;
Yet still the vile Chimera pursed
Her lips with: "Farther on, my blade!"

He staggered on. "Sweet lad," she said,
"But for thy load this heat would slay;
Yet cast thy testament away
And fountains shall thy thirst bestead."
"My thirst, which unto love is led,
Thy kiss," he sighed, "shall soon allay."

More frightful grew the ashen track,
Swept by the furnace-breathing gale,
Then suddenly the dismal trail
Rose from the desert bare and black
To pumice steeps of piled wrack
And soaring scimitars of shale.

His walk became a shambled lunge
When he essayed the flinty height,
Whose jagged knives began to bite
Until his feet were gory sponge
And crimson flesh began to plunge
Down fissures black with scales of blight

"Alas," she groaned, "'tis overmuch
I gall thee with my carnal freight.
Let me alight; 'tis not too late."
"My hopes," he answered, "are my crutch,
And all my smart shall nowise smutch
The immortal kiss for which I wait."

With eyes agleam, still on he went
And now among the rocks he reeled
On blunted knees, with blood congealed,
That shrank to stumps in his ascent,
Fringed round with tattered tegument
And rags of rawness flayed and peeled.

"Forsake me," the Chimera said,
"For I am sick and fain would rest.
So many martyrs glut my breast;
With thee I should be surfeited
-- My victim's son -- mayhap misled
And of his vision dispossessed."

"Nay, thou hast promised me thy kiss.
No matter!" said the intrepid child;
"And to my torture reconciled,
Amate, I scale this precipice,
Yea, though my metamorphosis
From me at last should be beguiled."

And now the gradient bristled sheer
With woods of cutlasses that rang
As passing knells. In mortal pang
On blood-soaked guts he ambled here
Yet, gazing through his vision's smear,
Still climbed, the while his fever sang.

At last as hasty-pudding rolled
His bowels. Soon his arms were gone.
Dismembered, crimson carrion,
He looked a carcase slashed and holed,
Yet whispered: "I shall be consoled,
Chimera, when thy kiss is won.

"While still an atom of me lives;
While still a globule beats in me;
'Tis thine and for eternity.
My faith its crystal current gives
To thee, whose spilt restoratives
Stream o'er my mortal misery.

"O fierce Chimera, while I hear
Thy burning sighs and breathed bliss,
Withhold from me the last abyss.
O Sweet, whose bosom tingles near,
Unto thy mystic mouth I veer,
Where bloom my vision's roseries.

"And should this holy sacrament
In ether vanish ere I die;
Yea, should thy promise prove a lie,
Anathema I would not vent;
But from the heart of my lament
Still would my deathless passion cry."

He did not see the galled lance
Of Death, who as a hornet fell
To filch his spirit's asphodel.
His soul ascended through its trance;
When suddenly his dazzled glance
Beheld the summit cleave the spell.

And in confusion leagues below
The desert swam through seas of mist.
A stream of gold his forehead kissed
And in the glory of his throe
Upon the phosphorescent snow
His hope beheld its eucharist.

"Thy love has won," she said: "I yield.
Such trust the Fiend might reconcile."
Yet still her spirit kept its guile
For suddenly the sun annealed
Her body and the vast revealed
Nought but a face with mocking smile.

And in that moment of despair
He knew his sempiternal loss
Surrendered to this setebos.
Nought of his ego whatsoe'er
Remained, save these -- a frozen stare,
A haggard face, a head of dross.

And of these livid faces soon
The living colours sank in white
As roses in the murk of night,
While in the temple's dried lagoon
The blood-drops knelled a ghostly tune
As drip from caverned stalactite.

"Alas," said he, "one trickle yet
And, loveless still as heretofore,
I die, but even as I swore:
Sans blasphemy, remorse, regret,
Through agony and bloody sweat,
Of thee enamoured more and more."

At this the wrought Chimera cried:
"O Misery, how may I keep
My testament? Fain would I weep
For thee, dear love; but mortified,
Pale spectres both, the fires subside
And, fuelless, our passions sleep."

"E'en so," he said, "let us unite
The incense of our passing sighs.
Together they shall agonise.
O Love, thy tender eyes are dight
With opal tears. Still may we plight
The troth our lips shall crystallise."

And, iris into iris blent,
And, lips commingled, kiss with kiss,
Her spirit melted into his
And into hers his soul was spent,
The while he drank Love's sacrament,
Immortal in one moment's bliss.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net