Betharnu Poem by Barry Van Asten

This animal life is governed by time
And I hath loved and dared to know
Why the soldier in my soul lies still;
Why my eyes are spun with sorrow now.
I hath touched upon forbidden things:
Things mysterious and things dreadful...I go,
Unto the ache of Osiris, for Isis, sighing
In depths measureless, to love thee, Betharnu!
What fiend hast cast this awful spell?
What darkness pass'd through halls in chain
To stain thy beauty? - dare I pray
To she who gives my heart to pain?
This vivid substance, this mortal clay
Thrown unto her smooth embrace...
She breathed and the ghost of things unsaid
Remained silent in the tomb of Betharnu!

Yet I saw her as she turned and glanced,
But not all as I thought her to be,
For I saw the tormented maid of Sidon
Still grasping at immortality.
In her eyes - the bearded face of Christ,
As she whispered: O heavy heart,
Why dost thou lieth strange and far
In dreamless destinies of love? - O Betharnu,

I hath savoured thy kisses in regions drear;
I hath glimpsed thine ecstasies from afar;
I hath sung the sweet rapture of thy heart
To rest easy in thy idyll. O perfect star,
Through my immeasurable shame and woe,
'Twas ever unto thee, my love...
Through my wanderings from thy true desires -
'Twas ever unto thee, Betharnu!

I hath dwelt amongst ungodly things:
Drawn death from darkness - life from light;
I hath roamed in wickedness and greatly sinned
To bring this vision of love to sight.
Viewless in vistas, yet I stray
'Twixt the darkness that falleth on thy lips
And the tears that falleth from thy light
That is ever in my heart, thy name, Betharnu!

Yet her veins pulse, not with the heart
And here was dawn and dusk caressed;
Light unto the dark's damnation
When her lips to mine, were gently pressed.
But remember me in the songs, she said,
The songs thou adorest by night.
But thou art light, I said, to my darkness,
Doomed always to love thee, the light!