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Unbleached Venus

I heard them singing
Around the glassy sea,
The alabaster cherubim and seraphim.
I saw them falling down adoring
Their god of purity,
Singing in alabaster voices:

"Wholly, wholly, wholly
Deodorised and germ-free,
Sterilised and lily-white we come to worship Thee:
Lily-white, lily-white,
White!" they cry.
I'm glad we are not alabaster, you and I.

Cherubim and seraphim
Are notoriously sterile;
They are lily-poison pallid, and their bite is dangerous:
But we arc more of earth and sun
Than consecrated calcium
And the lily-life of cherubim is death to us.

You arc not, thanks be,
Like a pure lily,
Or the maiden of Orso
With the porcelain torso.
Give thanks again
Our maker willed
That the water of life be undistilled
And the blood in our veins unpasteurised.

That our love may grow as a flower grown wild
No hybrid white but carnation red:
Lilies are crossed on the breast of the dead
For only death is undefiled.

—H.W.G