Dido in Hades

Dido, once me, believed 

love-vows could be witnessed by the storm:

Breaking surf, unbroken, whipping wind

raising a rain shower—

the will of the gods an encircling wave

bringing the torch that the bridegroom gave.

Aeneas, steel, countered: 

"Gods live in the mind and the storm:

Phoibos' flame transcends the Shaker's swell,

balancing blood's fervor"—

his clear-cut piety a glass to fire,
reveal, and drown my funeral pyre.

I, shade, then existed

so weather had nothing to do with me:

Waning sliver-moon, airless, dead night

cloaking a soul inured—

what harrowing God comes now, a flaming turn,

straining my flint-will twixt bend or burn?