#pentamenter

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 Vain — Broke from her bones, she urged him from the depths, As whales their newborns do, and fell to rest Upon the barren bed. The man remains, Though all these years have passed: a serpent's grin, One piercing eye, an ever-changing skin.