Another Country
'Thou hast
committed
Fornication: but
that was in another country
And besides, the
wench is dead...'
~Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
The sickness came that night
the fever, the youth-slayer.
I can't remember much
except he spoke to me
in the sighing language of skins;
the one that I speak best. Then
contagion came to make its harvest home
as he hollowed out my shell
and I knew nothing more.
He is in
another country now.
No use to call his name
yet so I fight to do
where this midnight binds me
with its corded silence.
I see his marten's hair
gone grey, his imp's eyes
smoked by
cataracts
though his face I'll never
see, nor feel in my cold grasp
his sunbrown hand again
that played all night and day
with fire--his means
to such a different end
than my desire.
~November 2015
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Image: Ophelia, 1852, by John Everett Millais public domain via wikiart.org
