A sudden blow: the great wings beating
still above the staggering girl,
her thighs caressed by his dark webs,
her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his
a sudden blow: the great wings beating
still above the staggering girl,
her thighs caressed by his dark webs,
her nape caught in his bill

He holds her helpless breast upon his
how can those terrified vague fingers
push the feathered glory
from her loosening thighs?

How can anybody,
laid in that white rush,
but feel the strange heart
beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins,
engenders there the broken wall,
the burning roof and tower
and Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,so mastered
by the brute blood of the air,
did she put on his knowledge,
with his power before the
indifferent beak could let her drop?


~poetry by William Yeats~
~art by Josephine Wall~