Witch Craft Or the Spartan Queen
(To the Spartan Queen)
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra via
Mi inoltrai in una selva oscura
‘They drive horses down this hill’
She said,
‘They take them to drink down there, that pool, there’
She said it as though it mattered
As though I should care,
And it was dark and it seemed deep
And I thought,
‘I wonder if it is safe. ’
Knowing that it was not.
She played with a shock of hair,
Jet black shimmering
Turning it round and round
Coiling it about her finger
Pulling at it, tugging it to shreds
My heart, about her finger
As though it had been hers to tear.
And her eyes were all smiles
And her smile was jagged
And I saw myself falling
Down steep slopes to where
The horses were drinking
Knowing I should not be there
Not wanting to be there
Too near, too near the water.
She stood on the banks
Gazing at me with a frown
Petulant and childish in her scorn,
Wrathful like a storm brooding
Behind sunshine smeared on blue
Me and her, and you
But where are you now?
Where were you when I needed you?
The witch looked at me and smiled,
‘Are you afraid of me?’
She asked,
I smiled, I lied, well I tried,
“No, I’m not, certainly not”
She smiled, held it for a while
as a flight of gulls slid across the sun
vanished behind the moon
losing themselves
a brood of angry cloud came by,
‘You lie’ she said, ‘I see it in your eyes’.
Alexander the great reached India
Only to die,
Flow away without a trace
Away to immortality and oblivion.
Not all his men could save him,
All the king's horses all the kings men
Could not put Humpty together again.
'what are you thinking?'
Her voice is like a death knell
In her eyes the pall of squandered yesterdays,
how I did waste it all.
'What are you thinking?'
'Nothing much'
'That is not what your eyes tell'
she lifts her hand to her face,
a sable cuff rolls down arms like alabaster
skin like the grave,
fingers, ash stumps from depleted cigarettes,
on the verge of snapping and breaking,
so frail.
'Tell me what you're thinking?'
she persists, I turn to her, fix her with a stare,
'I am thinking of this moment, of how to escape it
and you, all that you are and all that we can never be,
all that I want and cannot have,
all that I have but cannot want,
all that is you,
all that is me
all that you and me can never be
where there is no us,
all is lost when found
and found only to be lost again!
There, now you know',
I said.
She is gone,
Faded like mist fades
Washed away like an easy stain
The smell of rain and pine,
When she was mine,
Rain falls on dark waters.
What nonsense
What bland, absolute nonsense,
This poem, this emotion
Humbug.
They drive horses down this hill,
To drink;
One fell, broke his legs beneath him
and died,
at least for a little while.
Carlos
Copyright © Carlos Debattista | Year Posted 2013
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