LOCUSTA

Come close and see her and hearken. This is she.

Stop the ways fast against the stench that nips

Your nostril as it nears her. Lo, the lips

That between prayer and prayer find time to be

Poisonous, the hands holding a cup and key,

Key of deep hell, cup whence blood reeks and drips;

The loose lewd limbs, the reeling hingeless hips,

The scurf that is not skin but leprosy.

This haggard harlot grey of face and green

With the old hand's cunning mixes her new priest

The cup she mixed her Nero, stirred and spiced.

She lisps of Mary and Jesus Nazarene

With a tongue tuned, and head that bends to the east,

Praying. There are who say she is bride of Christ.