You: an Achilles’ apple
Blushing sweet on a high branch
At the tip of the tallest tree.
You escaped those who would pluck your fruit.
Not that they didn’t try. No,
They could not forget you
Poised beyond their reach.
“Yours is not (I regret to say) the story they tell / although you howl and gash yourself / scurrying out of the tombs
where you now live. / God forces some. / God’s prophet came
to send your unclean spirit / into pigs, who ran amok. / I saw you
at the bottom of the cliff of pity / diving in pig blood— / “cleansed” now.”
Anne Carson | “The Grace That Comes By Violence”