The nature of the Beast

When the bear caught up with them, his bear skin suddenly fell off, and there stood a handsome man, dressed all in gold…Snow White was married to him and Rose Red to his brother, and they shared the enormous treasures the dwarf had heaped up in his cave.
—"Snow White and Rose Red'
One sister swept his crystal-black fur
as he lay on the hearth's dust, shivering.
A pool formed, evaporated; his silhouette
loomed sharp, then hazy, against the fire.
With their look of exile, his eyes were
backlit amber. They melted and steamed, too.
The widow and her daughters prayed, petted
the lamb and the dove, shook out the tablecloth
and went to their small white nests to dream dreams
Edenically sweet, or none at all.
Each night he came — the bear with a gold ring
in one ear: an unnatural fugitive
from winter. Almost part of the family…
Himself he knew as one with a story
to reclaim, a rogue body to disenchant.
Leaving one morning, he stumbled and ripped
black fur: blood welled onto golden cloth.
Was it their excited shrieks that made him
abandon the set plot with its treasure,
vile-tempered dwarf, and blissful ending,
so that he walks forever onwards through
forest after forest, taking his chances
with hunters, loneliness, the endless snow —
all to escape what loomed before him:
 kindness without mind, a piously
patterned life, as he sits beside his wife,
Snow White, who faces her sister, Rose Red,
who sits by her husband, his mirror-brother,
through endless summer days playing
Spouse versus Sibling; Identical
versus Opposite; Top of the Pyramid
versus the Pit — while twin boys vie over
toy kingdoms on a crimson carpet?
At that moment, fur fused with royal garments
then with the human skin beneath. "Now,'
he sighed, "the spell can never be broken.'