The shrike is also known as the butcher bird from its habit of impaling its victims on thorns or spikes.
As a rueful conspectus of some past loves and time's scourge, I wrote "Down to Death" in May 2015 and posted it on 11 December 2019. There's a link here.
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According to the flesh, I loved
And lost a she unlike;
Petite and warm, my thoughts she doved,
Though inward she was tough:
Those love-gripped gaspings, leg-wrapped haspings,
Intimacies of bed and board,
Were thorn-stuck like the shrike
Who pikes its helpless prey,
When, losing faith, declaring that she’d had enough –
Such fear and trembling at those sudden waspings! –
She plunged and gored
In singleness of heart, and went her way.
Now what’s of spirit that can staunch
Eyeservice of the kind,
Menpleasers with a shaken haunch,
Gulfing the lusting male?
Might mind’s belayings wring betrayings,
Gentling passion to rise and take
Its bed, now love has pined
(For, truth, life waits for none)?
All must, with good will doing service, find avail
In years’ drudge, and forbearance of behavings,
That, then, love’s quake
Again, might, with the bond or free, be won.
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© October 2023
