Eve: the sweet sex, her deep engendered debt;
descent remembered, she ever regretted
her greed, her tree, her theft, her hell.
He (pressed sleeves, stern) pledges he’ll never sleep
ere she meets the terms he expects:
kneel, tremble, weep, bleed.
Endless dresses shelter née-free knees (flesh tempts the men);
the temptress – decent – detests the bent leg
(the speech represented there).
The precedence: men’s needs’, ever represses her.
he sketches the perfect wren he needs:
she serves, cheerless, tender.
Her strengths were smelted mettle’s sheen,
nerves welded steel, blessed essence,
herself expressed effervescent – peerless.
When her men weren’t jesters, she greeted them skewed;
her mere-green eyes, preened reddened tresses, breeze-swept legs
cemented men’s eyes there. her sex freezes them, jeers them.
He reflects: the secret, embedded percepts he sees here;
she, the slender dependent, the gem, the gentle sheep,
he, the legend resplendent, the jeweler, the shepherd.
Where nestled necks meet swelter-wettened sheets, he emerges glee-swelled.
sleepless, he senses the lesser terms she needs;
free her, she’d begged. let her shed these well-kept fetters.
She’d served her sentence, he knew, yet
he shelved these fevered creeds, vexed,
entered rest, nettled, never the help effected.
He pretended he’d never seen her wetted cheeks,
never left her rendered edgeless,
never knew she fell, her perch deserted.
He pretended she’d been free; he never heeded her stress,
her senseless vents. he led her, held her, kept her, yet
ever, she persevered.
