A Temple Prostitute

On Sunday as the lime tree
starts to bloom I throw a bridle
over the sinuous neck of a snorting donkey,
take my knife with the knobbed silver handle
and my mother's name inscribed on it,
and ride to the temple.

A drowsy prostitute
slumps in the dim recess forced
by her monstrous flesh,
stock-still, like a dog watching
a day old corpse:

Ishtar's maid is dripping
with spices and palm oil, pungent,
coagulating, streaking
down, into the terrifying mess
of her sooty pubic shocks.

A fan-like tawdry necklace,
a brash array of brown river shells,
reaches to the bristling citadels
of her brazen nipples –
twin helmets on the heads
of bald mercenaries –
behind which
lactating succubi entrench.

The undersides of her breasts
are pallid, sagging
into the fat wavy folds,
like the bottom of the sea
that roars and rises, rolling
towards and over me.

I cower and remember
my dear mother bathing –

a band of purest silver
swathed in a grimy cloth,
a chatoyant fishlet breathing
upon rancid moss,
a viridescent eye looking
wishlessly through a slit
in a screen of faded indigo –

and suddenly connect
what was unsaid so long ago
with what is now said,

and, choking, unable to contain
this liberating furious bliss,
I sink, I crawl towards
the grisly female demon
on my knees…

Emerging out of the temple,
I collapse
under the halcyon translucence
of ten thousand suns.

I get home hours past noon
and realise
that I did not pay my token –
a limestone demon with four jade eyes.

The demon was broken
in my bundle
by the silver knife's handle.

It must have happened when I fell.
I can't go next Sunday to the temple:

they'll seize me as a criminal
who had the nerve to ditch unpaid
Ishtar, lone-hearted, willow-haired.