The Second Circle

 
William Blake: The Circle of the Lustful

God, having finished with his droll didactics,
stills the spinning winds:
the lovers fall to the ground
like swallows after a long migration,
alighting on the shore they'd given up.

Francesca remembers her daughter
and Paolo his two children. Their folly
is not to be excused by adolescence;
the madness heated their sluggish blood,
but even old fools may receive forgiveness.

They feel in their quivering muscles
a slackening of the unremitting drum,
the quickening of an unexpected season.
Further down, among the more benighted,
dawn more unlikely, more unlooked-for springs.

David Callin

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  David Callin would be pleased to hear them.