Perseus

 Her sleeping head with its great gelid mass
of serpents torpidly astir
burned into the mirroring shield--
a scathing image dire
as hated truth the mind accepts at last
and festers on.

I struck.
 The shield flashed bare.


Yet even as I lifted up the head
and started from that place
of gazing silences and terrored stone,
I thirsted to destroy.

None could have passed me then--
no garland-bearing girl, no priest
or staring boy--and lived.

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