Year 9 student, Meklit Tariku, won 1st place at the University of Leeds' Myths and Legends Competition.
Meklit wowed judges with a beautiful and powerful poem about the story of Cupid and Psyche. The poem that won first place at the competition with schools from across the country reads as follows:
The Alchemical Soul:
The temple hushed where mortal footsteps fell,
For she was grace that made the altars cold.
The Queen of Beauty wove a bitter spell,
To see the girl by wretchedness controlled.
She sent the Boy, the Archer of the Veins,
To strike a blow of venom and of fire,
But Cupid felt the quickening of pains -
The hunter caught within his own desire.
He built a shroud of velvet, dark and deep,
A palace carved of silence and of sighs.
He visited while reason was asleep,
To hide his godhood from her seeking eyes.
With trembling hand, she brought the flame to bed,
The wick ignited with a hiss of gold;
She saw no beast, but Divinity instead,
With wings of light too blinding to behold.
A drop of oil, a searing, golden tear,
Upon his marble shoulder found its mark.
He woke to find the face of sudden fear,
And fled like smoke into the lonely dark.
Then Venus rose, with tasks of iron will,
To break the spirit of the girl she loathed.
"Go sort the grain and climb the frozen hill,
Until in failure's shroud your soul is clothed."
Through mountains of the seed and poppy grain,
The ants of order worked beneath the floor.
She stole the golden fleece from rams of pain,
Where thickets held the wealth the creatures wore.
