As sometimes, in the gentler months, the sun
will return
before the rain has altogether
stopped and through
this lightest of curtains the curve of it shines
with a thousand
inclinations and so close
is the one to the
one adjacent that you cannot tell where magenta
for instance begins
and where the all-but-magenta
has ended and yet
you’d never mistake the blues for red, so these two,
the girl and the
goddess, with their earth-bred, grass-
fed, kettle-dyed
wools, devised on their looms
transitions so subtle no
hand could trace nor eye discern
their increments,
yet the stories they told were perfectly clear.
The gods in their heaven,
the one proposed. The gods in
heat, said the other.
And ludicrous too, with their pinions and swansdown,
fins and hooves,
their shepherds’ crooks and pizzles.
Till mingling
with their darlings-for-a-day they made
a progeny so motley it
defied all sorting-out.
It wasn’t the boasting
brought Arachne all her sorrow
nor even
the knowing her craft so well.
Once true
and twice attested.
It was simply the logic she’d already
taught us how
to read.
