Maleficium
By dark lantern, by crimson candle, in
an absence floating in wine without bread,
the Necromancer toasts in mandrake hopes
the golden miracles of his dead.
His chamber is fumed with dubious pasts, an
offering's smoke where the last choke occurred.
His breath has gone dry as his corpse-woman's eye,
ceremonially opened with a theurgic word.
But that eggshell gaze is blind as stone, her
songs of the oriole fluttered away.
The nods of owls and mnemonic howls
work a brittle sequence no cello can play.
The final shriek puts grit in the lens, so
it never divines what time's drown erased.
The owl and the oriole dice for his soul;
every spirit that rises wears his own face.
In my dream you've left fetches and dust behind.
You stand by the door of a bridge's arc,
the wild blue river in flight from your quiver,
your shades all spent arrows that killed their marks.
February 2025
Necromancy: "..the practice of magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination.." ~wikipedia
Maleficium: "the practice of malevolent magic, derived from casting lots as a means of divining the future in the ancient Mediterranean world"~wikipedia
Theurgy:".. the ritual practices associated with the invocation or evocation of the presence of one or more deities..."~wikipedia
posted for Word Garden Word List
Images: The Necrophile. 1965, ©Jean Benoit Public Domain
The Blind Man of Toledo, 1906, ©Joaquin Sorolla Public Domain
