It doesn't suck Countess. There are some good moments. My only qualm is that it can be tightened and shortened.
In the first section:
Quote:
You are
An Apollonian delight to the eye,
A divine revelation to man,
Your hair
A million honeyed velvet strands
Foretelling days of Spring
Your eyes
Two bluebirds on high
Twittering black haloed mysteries -
The love for Hyacinth
And Troilus,
The beauty of Narcissus
And Venus’ dead Adonis.
When God speaks, terror strikes men;
Kings topple kings , nations shatter
And vanish from the earth.
With his fingers
He reshapes landscapes.
Tornadoes, earthquakes and whirlwinds
Enrich or impoverish,
Disease eradicates
And indulgence destroys within.
I think that last stanza can be deleted. Either you've already said it in the previous or it's saying the obvious, "He reshapes landscapes."
In the second part,
Quote:
But for all of this
He blesses us
With the grandeur of nature,
The rain-drop glistening upon the delicate oak leaf,
The dappled heavens cascading at Autumn twilight
The crystal moon casting her starry blue rays
upon earth’s green carpet.
And your face - AH!
The crowning king of current creation
(man is the pinnacle of His craft,
As crime is the nadir)
With a glance
it calls me like the sirens
To shipwreck my soul
Upon the beach of your beauty,
And carve an idol out of being.
Our universe now stands
As testimony to the impermanence of man;
Husserl’s epoch’s, Yeat’s gyres
Will unwind and respin
And your beauty will pass away,
with each falling grain in the hourglass,
What time gains
You will lose
Until all is spent in death.
So let your lips blossom
Forever, like honeysuckle in September,
And transform these honeyed strands to gold
And blue eyes to platinum's silver.
I would just keep that first stanza and the last stanza. When a poem turns like that with a "But" you want to give it a short closing punch. By going on as long as you do, the point becomes lost. At least that's my opinion. See if this is a tighter poem by just deleting what I mentioned:
Quote:
You are
An Apollonian delight to the eye,
A divine revelation to man,
Your hair
A million honeyed velvet strands
Foretelling days of Spring
Your eyes
Two bluebirds on high
Twittering black haloed mysteries -
The love for Hyacinth
And Troilus,
The beauty of Narcissus
And Venus’ dead Adonis.
When God speaks, terror strikes men;
Kings topple kings , nations shatter
And vanish from the earth.
But for all of this
He blesses us
With the grandeur of nature,
The rain-drop glistening upon the delicate oak leaf,
The dappled heavens cascading at Autumn twilight
The crystal moon casting her starry blue rays
upon earth’s green carpet.
So let your lips blossom
Forever, like honeysuckle in September,
And transform these honeyed strands to gold
And blue eyes to platinum's silver.