Bacchantes (Sonnet) Poem by Gert Strydom

The fawn skin tightly covers your perfect figure
and the light yellowish brown goes with your hair
when at night you kill for Dionysus but at day are considerate
and when you wait in the darkness to the midnight hour,
in the bright moon your eyes glare like those of a predator
when sly plans are made to drive those to madness who do diverge
and all morality is lost in that which embodies an aeon-old religion
where you do make yourself one with everything living in nature
and in your hair you show off the coral tree's flower redder than blood,
in your hands you hold life and death, your body smells of passion sweat
and your breath is summer-fresh like on the ground the smell of rain
where you are dancing joyful, feminine breathtaking in the glare of the moon
as a luring tempting beautiful girl that no man can forget
but of whom a mother does warn and later does cry through many nights.