Arachne's Tapestry

I destroyed her so long ago-
My rival who was mortal, and yet proud.
I destroyed her, and yet I know
That she does not really wear a shroud.
She breathes on the path of myth,
Where I and all my kind go forthwith.

I turned her into a weaver small,
The eight-legged thing called the spider.
I took her last weaving to my hall,
To hide it as that form would hide her.
And yet it did not challenge my skill.
I hid because I knew that mortals would kill

To possess a thing of beauty so rare.
Helen by herself started a war.
What this tapestry would wreak I dare
Not imagine. And yet, though I tore
My own weaving from the loom,
I brought her weaving from that room.

What is the weaving of, you say?
Nothing important, some may claim.
It is a scene set as dawn becomes day,
And the eastern skies are kindled flame,
That moment when the night's last dark
Fades. There calls out a single lark.

No, Arachne could not weave tunes.
But that is the impression one receives
From looking at a tapestry that moons
Would die in envy of. Diana grieves
Enough for Endymion as it is; 
I will give her no grief that is not his.

The scene is shaded by a tree,
The viewer looking from beneath
The leaves, out to a curling sea.
The foam breaks on the rock's teeth
Like candy in a child's mouth,
With all the sweetness of the sunny south.

The leaves are a dark, dark green,
Almost the color of violets in places.
For some reason I have never seen,
Arachne gave some of them human faces.
This tree, clad in faces and flowers,
Is enough to make one gaze for hours.


The fields are soft in the morning new,
Though lit with two kinds of fire:
The lucent smoke of burning dew
And the light that slowly will aspire
To breathe in the highest dome of heaven,
Near the stars that number seven.

The other trees are marked with gold,
As though Ceres thinks, as the years
Pass with Proserpine still locked in cold,
To use some other method than her tears
To lure her daughter back to flower-duty.
She is scattering the world with beauty.

There is a hint yet of the lingering eve,
The spell woven under Diana's light,
For which the stars silently all day grieve.
They laugh and rejoice only at night.
There is a darkness in the air,
And a hint of purple burgeoning there.

But this is mingled light of moon and sun.
There is the telltale gold on the grass,
The hint that at last the night is done,
That it has turned to dark and fragile glass
That will shatter with Apollo's coming.
The pools of gold are his wheels forerunning.

As I said, the sleepy songs of birds
And the unfolding of buds upon the vine
Are there, along with the nurse's words
As she coaxes her charges from dreaming-time.
The whole world is in a precious hold:
The moment when all dreams are gold,

And one can see both the moon-lady's car,
And the light of shining, dancing morning,
When one has all the dreams of a star,
And the mind is those dreams adorning
With golden baubles one can scarcely feel,
Whispering it will make those fancies real.

In the real world, that moment could not linger.
It never does; it fades into the mind.
Only one moment in the voice of a singer,
Or in a treasure one only hopes to find,
Could it ever last longer than itself,
Or gold bestowed by a laughing elf.

But Arachne wove that moment into being,
That moment of balanced, perfect peace.
Seeing that tapestry of hers is seeing
What will be when the stars find release
From the prison of their endless burning
And create new worlds from their yearning.

I pause by it often as I cross my halls,
And watch it, that moment of perfect stirring,
Where not a leaf yet fades or falls,
Where the streams are ever purring,
Where all the songs that the birds could sing
Are unborn, and matchless their awakening.