a golden oldie for Poe's 200th

In celebration of Edgar Allen Poe's glorious 200th birthday today, here's a golden oldie of my own: "The Night of Her Return," which made its latest appearance in Architectures of Night (Dark Regions Press, 2003).  

Before that, it appeared in Speculon (back in 2001), & won a split second place award in a contest sponsored by The Formalist  (also 2001) . . . so, like its inspiration, it seems to have a hard time staying dead.

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The Night of Her Return

Chill winds at midnight ripple cloth of gold:
these draperies whose twisted arabesques
suggest no single form, yet somehow hold
a thousand shadows of the pure grotesque.
I watch in vain, for none recall to me
the shadow of my love who ceased to be.

Sarcophagi from Luxor's sacred sites
transform the obscure angles of this room
with auguries of life eternal, rites
assuring swift deliverance from the tomb.
I curse them all.  No ancient god, no power,
spared my Ligeia in her final hour.

Yet now a thread of scented vapor seeping
down from that censer whose strange-colored fires
conjured a shade to rouse my soul from sleeping
rekindles certain memories & desires
so vividly, I almost seem to hear
the whisper of her breath upon my ear.

Imagination?  Madness?  Opium?
All three, I fear . . . until another gasp
from what was once a deathbed turns me numb
to all but marvels promised in the past
by one who struggled (might be struggling still?)
against death's tyranny with love & will.

These cerements which bind the weak blonde clay
of her successor, what do they conceal?
My trembling fingers seek, then shrink away
from joys too terrible to be revealed:
the twining midnight masses of her hair,
her wild black eyes -- and that triumphant stare.

    (after E.A. Poe's "Ligeia")

 

    Ann K. Schwader