LLEWELLA

I have seen her
when she was so handsome
she gave me a start,
able to write simultaneously
in three languages --
English, German and French
and talk in the meantime;
equally positive in demanding a commotion
and in stipulating quiet:
"I should like to be alone;"
to which the visitor replies,
"I should like to be alone;
why not be alone together?"
Below the incandescent stars
below the incandescent fruit,
the strange experience of beauty;
its existence is too much;
it tears one to pieces
and each fresh wave of consciousness
is poison.
"See her, see her in this common world,"
the central flaw
in that first crystal-fine experiment,
this amalgamation which can never be more
than an interesting possibility,
describing it
as "that strange paradise
unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings,
the choicest piece of my life:

the heart rising
in its estate of peace
as a boat rises
with the rising of the water;"
constrained in speaking of the serpent --
that shed snakeskin in the history of politeness
not to be returned to again --

-Marianne Moore,
from Marriage

Key 17. All greens and golds this picture, with a tiny hint of blue. It depicts a woman kneeling on the seabed, her jade-green hair swirling all about her, her eyes the same color and bearing in their depths mystery and animus. Her complexion is just slightly green, her nipples darker where they are visible beneath the many golden necklaces and collars, belts and bracelets and anklets and rings she wears, all bearing green gems, save one firey opal at her throat, the only clothing she would consent to wear save a silver-green skirt of a translucent, shimmering material that stops well short of her knees. Her hands are long-fingered, bearing long bright blue nails, and in one she gathers water up in a silver cup, and in the other she holds, barely captive between her almost clenched fingers, a fish.

Queen of Amber Undersea and bride to the Fisher King, Llewella seems at home in the darkened Rebma and has done nothing to persuade her husband either to let more visitors come or to release the beings that are caged below. She seems at best indifferent to the state of affairs outside Rebma and cares nothing for any of her living relatives.

The only question that remains is what she will do now that the Fisher King has been slain.