OK.
In this next to the last poem, I'll go back to Greece.
I mean Rome really.
"On a Summer Goddess who Should Be Nameless."
"On a summer goddess who should be nameless.
There are two things you have to worry about about her.
She opens up for you, and she closes up on you.
But you shouldn't worry too much about it,
because that is the way she is, and this is the way you are.
You just shouldn't mention her name.
She loves you in her own way, and you love her
in your own way, but you should never call her an ox.
If you call a woman an ox, you're dead.
So what do you say about a goddess?
She might keep you alive and in her own hell,
so you have to sweet talk her to death, your own.
And call her by all sorts of names, like ox-eyed daisy,
dog-dayes-eye, gold flower, white flower, clear flower,
Chrysanthemum leucanthemum or Bellis perennis,
anything to avoid it, the name of the ox-eyed goddess.
The one whose name begins with an H, has two letters, E and R,
and ends with an A.
You know the one I mean, the one who comes on Midsummer Night,
protected by and running that dog, Sirius, to oversee
the crisis of opening and closing time.
That's when the flowers start to bloom themselves to death,
so that their seeds can blow away and start up
someplace else.
So watch it.
Do right by her and her daisies, and beware the dog.
He's called Rusty or Red Dog or else Blackie or Black Dog,
because if he looks down on you out of one of his red eyes,
if she happens to ask him to, as they swing by overhead,
you and yours and your whole countryside
will be wholly burnt up to black ashes."