Hemlock Love
If no love is, O
God, what fele I so?
- Troilus and Criseyde
Thousand times, perhaps,
or
more or countless –
I’ve
drunk all hemlock of my love,
swilled
like a thirsty tramp homeward
from
a remote land in summer-days!
O,
Wonder! My reminiscence,
my
hemlock love ocean alike!
And,
my soul like a brave diver,
ready
ever to plunge into waves.
Vinci
would even bow his head
to
my art – all vivid, afresh!
Fresh
like blood from Julius’ heart,
stabbed
by his dear Brute!
Thousand
times, perhaps,
or
more or countless –
I’ve
drunk all hemlock of my love!
Pharaohs,
the great, in Egypt,
the
mummies laid ornamented,
Sleep
with stolid caskets of gold
into
the pyramids embellished.
Cyclic,
the soul: it’s preached.
I
presume, yet, my hemlock love
in
morgue will be kept;
will
sink in dark alight!
But,
in silence, O!
I
know or I feel,
the
resurrection of pure love
after
crossing the bar! The beauty –
all
alike the death of a coiling snake
into
the hollow of a banyan tree.
The
great glory of stoic God!
Socrates,
the prophet, the man wise –
never
could predict the treason.
Sylvia,
the poetess of love and death,
had
nothing more to confess.
But,
O! Listen:
Thousand
times, perhaps,
or
more or countless –
I’ve
drunk all hemlock of my love!
(Published in Poetcrit 29.1
(January 2016) : 129)