Inspired by ‘Diana & Callisto”
National Gallery of Scotland

‘Be careful child.
For that is what you are still.
A child with child
I was young,
I was beautiful and, yes,
I was human.
Then I crossed Diana
And behold me now.

Does anyone even notice my presence
Or have any appreciation of my form?
Cursed to spend the rest of my life encased in this alien skin,
this fur, these claws, this guttural retching for a voice.

I had a son once,
Torn from my breast as I suckled him.
He lives on bereft of the warmth of a mother’s body
Or the love of a mother’s caress.

Behold these eye,
Focussed in their damned devotion
To a mistress of chastity, light and love.
Oh, how they ache and burn with love
But not for that embodiment of cruelty
They long for my son
So cruelly snatched away.

It claws my inside;
this bleeding,weeping wound.
This feeling tells me
That I still feel.

As a soothing ointment cools the fire of a wound,
So my hope anoints the flames of loss
Which rage in my soul.”