Ariadne – Jennifer Maiden

[1949–current, Australian]

There is a claret light, a flood 
of chubby, meat-dark clouds, but you, intent, 
at first are in your old scent-satchel mood. 
Your hands are in the gliding mode, 
balletic, suppliant, sisterly, spin 
out grace in a web that love early 
crumbled to a fragrance, tannin-dry, 
but that dances now steadily, succulent, 
in revels, reverberant where within 
your threads and labyrinth you hold 
confined to the drunken god. 

Source: Maiden, J 1979, The Border Loss, Angus and Robertson, Australia.