The Lake

Amid the desert lies a poison lake
Whose phosphorescent waves befoul the sand.
Upon those deadly shores there lives a man
Whose mother, in her madness, once, to slake
Her lust for God, brought home a banded snake
And with its writhing body bound his hands,
Then threw them in together. When the trance —
The voice that had commanded her: Forsake
The love of your own flesh, for it is sin —
Broke from her bones, she urged him from the depths,
As whales their newborns do, and fell to rest
Upon the barren bed. Now sixty years
Gone past, the man remains: he sloughs his skin
With every season, praying serpent's prayers.