Odes of Strangers IV

Atalanta, you stand among your thorns.
Everything you touch withers and dies.
Your anger and shame behooves you
As the food you feed the nations
Wilts and does not satisfy.
It is ashes in the mouth.

You make haste to do good
Yet only grief and shame come from your deeds.
Your good is only ashes seeping from clenched fists.

How the nations love you
Atalanta. They cheer your fame
But they curse the name of man
Who challenges you.
You, like Death, bring the shadow
And the grey of the thunderstorm.

Your benefactor is rude in his abuses
And your lover is unkind.
Slowly, your creeping vine tangles itself around
The world, as you stand among your
Thorns, and pluck the Corolla of the Rose
To shape it into your deign.

Fortunes you cannot make.
And it flees from you;
All things die and wilt in your hands.
For the rose does not prosper
For you do not proceed with
Diligence. Your garden is fertile
But you slack hand makes the bulbs stoop.