A Mirror For Adonis-stephanie pope

Adonis, why you place into my hand
this ache that outsides break, I'll never know
what outsides break come breaking in
a soul-affair so low that insides in
come pouring through
what such fair hand now shows
held out, held up this hand for you between us
dropping myrrh (it opens to us, sir)
what shatters in it, scatters in it, matters in it sir
how could you do what you just did
how say you there the thing you said
a myrrh-mere dropping rushes through the head...
and says
"some noli me imprisons me, beware!"
some watcher watching has remade
the mirror for Adonis...and Adonis
it must carry now what carries back across
because a memory like yours
comes back and pours
the myrrophore, Adonis...and Adonis
Memory comes back and pours
(don't strike where She is rooted, sir!)
she pours what can't remember anymore
you, yourself that seed
in shadow like a boar
that once did chase her into trees—and there
a breeze!
(that must have mattered to this once, I too, forget)
yet, resins shut away are made to seep
and now you brother blue-black scars
and trifle with the handle of these bars
where a vision pours me back and makes me drink
where myrrh still tastes when touched to lips like skin
this skin akin who must suppose what watcher sees her
likened unto none—no valued one in coming
yet lit and like the burning morn that gave you worth
remakes in ebony and art and deeply turning
how you keep her
graying in your heart's own black torment
what burnings turn in scents of blue-black things—
in flecks of animals that shadow through 
her wilder viscous thinned and gored and sored and
hearing where that bleu-noir in hurting said such things
and, still
she heard your beauty
rhyming through the memory of the trees
their myrrh's lament gave hers its birth as well as yours
beware, should you go near that blue-black beauty
for you will die there where her outsides break
and cry there, too
when what comes breaking back comes back
forgiving you
but, in this wood where droppings kill the myrrh
the way I am
touch not kind sir my hand

-for Mark, July, 2004