To Iris

Lucrezia Borgia’s evil face,
Framed by her orange sunset hair,
Shows in each trace of Its grimace,
Blood-red, the stigmata of her race.
So when the world was wan for air,
And God looked on, great Satan fell
Into the depth of that abyss
That naked lies between Heaven and Hell.
Red sensual lips mad for the kiss
Of Cesare when his arteries
Burn with the heat unutterable
Of his desires, of her desires;
That thin pure oval of the chin,
Those perverse eyes whose inner fires
Are hell's, wherein sin hides by sin,
And have no sense of aught therein
Save what one hears when lutes and lyres
Sound together in a scented room,
A room in the Vatican in Rome;
Strange eyes that shed such strange perfume
As when some girl returning home
Shakes off her perfume, to resume
Her other self. O poisonous fume
Of earth's hell in this flower whereon
Each separate petal's poisonous
As weeds that suck the blood from one,
As vampires that abhor the sun.
O God's weed, made more glorious
In paint, than weeds, this paint of John!