The Young Bather

4

Down by the water a boy stood there, Stripped to bathe, on a rock shelf narrow, Sweet curved, spare,

With clustering hair,

Pure as a lily-bud, slim as an arrow.

Over his back in the freezing warm Shine and shadow danced free and fickle, Then, palm to palm,

Of each lifted arm.

Sweet and slight as the young moon's sickle,

He dived. And seeing that child of May, A whim of beauty, a wonder of slimness. I nigh could pray

That the gods would slay

And keep him there in the weedy dimness.

But lank and dripping his brown head rose; He crawls ashore and the leafage severs, And the branches close

On a form that goes

With all things else down the years great rivers.

To think that the glory must leave his head, And his young, white beauty must all forsake him; I had almost said

That the gods were dead,

Did it not need the hand of a god to make him.

Martin Armstrong