“I love my love”

It is still National Poetry Month, and I seem to have struck a theme, somehow or other. I present here another creepy poem.

Young Woman Combing Her Hair, Salomon de Bray

I Love My Love

~by Helen Adam 

 

There was a man who married a maid. She laughed as he led her home.

The living fleece of her long bright hair she combed with a golden comb.

He led her home through his barley fields where the saffron poppies grew.

She combed, and whispered, “I love my love.” Her voice like a plaintive coo.

Ha! Ha!

Her voice like a plaintive coo.

 

He lived alone with his chosen bride, at first their life was sweet.

Sweet was the touch of her playful hair binding his hands and feet.

When first she murmured adoring words her words did not appall.

“I love my love with a capital A. To my love I give my All.

Ah, Ha!

To my love I give my All.”

 

She circled him with the secret web she wove as her strong hair grew.

Like a golden spider she wove and sang, “My love is tender and true.”

She combed her hair with a golden comb and shackled him to a tree.

She shackled him close to the Tree of Life. “My love I’ll never set free.

No, No.

My love I’ll never set free.”

 

Whenever he broke her golden bonds he was held with bonds of gold.

“Oh! cannot a man escape from love, from Love’s hot smothering hold?”

He roared with fury. He broke her bonds. He ran in the light of the sun.

Her soft hair rippled and trapped his feet, as fast as his feet could run,

Ha! Ha!

As fast as his feet could run.

 

He dug a grave, and he dug it wide. He strangled her in her sleep.

He strangled his love with a strand of hair, and then he buried her deep.

He buried her deep when the sun was hid by a purple thunder cloud.

Her helpless hair sprawled over the corpse in a pale resplendent shroud.

Ha! Ha!

A pale resplendent shroud.

 

Morning and night of thunder rain, and then it came to pass

That the hair sprang up through the earth of the grave, and it grew like golden grass.

It grew and glittered along her grave alive in the light of the sun.

Every hair had a plaintive voice, the voice of his lovely one.

 

“I love my love with a capital T. My love is Tender and True.

I’ll love my love in the barley fields when the thunder cloud is blue.

My body crumbles beneath the ground but the hairs of my head will grow.

I’ll love my love with the hairs of my head. I’ll never, never let go.

Ha! Ha!

I’ll never, never let go.”

 

The hair sang soft, and the hair sang high, singing of loves that drown,

Till he took his scythe by the light of the moon, and he scythed that singing hair down.

Every hair laughed a lilting laugh, and shrilled as his scythe swept through.

“I love my love with a capital T. My love is Tender and True.

Ha! Ha!

Tender, Tender, and True.”

 

All through the night he wept and prayed, but before the first bird woke

Around the house in the barley fields blew the hair like billowing smoke.

Her hair blew over the barley fields where the slothful poppies gape.

All day long all its voices cooed, “My love can never escape,

No, No!

My love can never escape.”

 

“Be still, be still, you devilish hair. Glide back to the grave and sleep.

Glide back to the grave and wrap her bones down where I buried her deep.

I am the man who escaped from love, though love was my fate and doom.

Can no man ever escape from love who breaks from a woman’s womb?”

 

Over his house, when the sun stood high, her hair was a dazzling storm,

Rolling, lashing o’er walls and roof, heavy, and soft, and warm.

It thumped on the roof, it hissed and glowed over every window pane.

The smell of the hair was in the house. It smelled like a lion’s mane,

Ha! Ha!

It smelled like a lion’s mane.

 

Three times round the bed of their love, and his heart lurched with despair.

In through the keyhole, elvish bright, came creeping a single hair.

Softly, softly, it stroked his lips, on his eyelids traced a sign.

“I love my love with a capital Z. I mark him Zero and mine.

Ha! Ha!

I mark him Zero and mine.”

 

The hair rushed in. He struggled and tore, but wherever he tore a tress,

“I love my love with a capital Z,” sang the hair of the sorceress.

It swarmed upon him, it swaddled him fast, it muffled his every groan.

Like a golden monster it seized his flesh, and then it sought the bone,

Ha! Ha!

And then it sought the bone.

 

It smothered his flesh and sought the bones. Until his bones were bare

There was no sound but the joyful hiss of the sweet insatiable hair.

“I love my love,” it laughed as it ran back to the grave, its home.

Then the living fleece of her long bright hair, she combed with a golden comb.

 

 

1958

 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

John Keats (1795–1821).
 
La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,     
  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake, 
  And no birds sing. 

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!     
  So haggard and so woe-begone? 
The squirrel’s granary is full, 
  And the harvest’s done. 

III.
I see a lily on thy brow 
  With anguish moist and fever dew,      
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
  Fast withereth too. 
 
IV.
I met a lady in the meads, 
  Full beautiful—a faery’s child, 
Her hair was long, her foot was light,      
  And her eyes were wild. 
 
V.
I made a garland for her head, 
  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; 
She look’d at me as she did love, 
  And made sweet moan.        
 
VI.
I set her on my pacing steed, 
  And nothing else saw all day long, 
For sidelong would she bend, and sing 
  A faery’s song. 
 
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet,       
  And honey wild, and manna dew, 
And sure in language strange she said— 
  “I love thee true.” 
 
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot, 
  And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,       
And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
  With kisses four. 
 
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep, 
  And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide! 
The latest dream I ever dream’d      
  On the cold hill’s side. 
 
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too, 
  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; 
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci 
  Hath thee in thrall!”        
 
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 
  With horrid warning gaped wide, 
And I awoke and found me here, 
  On the cold hill’s side. 
 
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,        
  Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, 
  And no birds sing.

More Spooky Poetry

There are plenty of spooky or creepy poems that give you goosebumps, Edgar Allan Poe, of course. But here is a more unusual one that you may not have heard before:

Night Crow

Theodore Roethke

When I saw that clumsy crow
Flap from a wasted tree
A shape in the mind rose up:
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.

I am a-weary, weary….

I do love this poem! I am always having one character or another say, “I am a-weary, weary.”  For some reason, that is the way I hear it in my head. Probably because the syllables come out iambic that way.

Back in the olden days, when I first read this poem, I assumed that “he” did not come because he had died. Her grief, and her haunted-sounding surroundings, all seemed to me to point to death. Now, to me, it seems more likely that he does not come because he has dumped her. The reader wants to say, “Get over it already!” But it is always easy to tell others to get over their griefs.

Tidbit: if the first line sounds eerily familiar, you may have heard it in My Fair Lady; Professor Higgins gives this to Eliza to read after filling her mouth with marbles.

Mariana in the moated grange

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
    Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
    That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
    Unlifted was the clinking latch;
    Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
        She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
    Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
    Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
    When thickest dark did trance the sky,
    She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
        She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

Upon the middle of the night,
    Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
    From the dark fen the oxen’s low
Came to her: without hope of change,
    In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
    Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
        She only said, ‘The day is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

About a stone-cast from the wall
    A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
    The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
    All silver-green with gnarled bark:
    For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
        She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

And ever when the moon was low,
    And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
    She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
    And wild winds bound within their cell,
    The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
        She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

All day within the dreamy house,
    The doors upon their hinges creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
    Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,
Or from the crevice peer’d about.
    Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,
    Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call’d her from without.
        She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,’
            I would that I were dead!’

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,
    The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
    The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
    When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
    Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
        Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary,
            He will not come,’ she said;
        She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            O God, that I were dead!’

…And also in Vermont!

Yep, you read it here first, folks. Well, probably not, but. Yay, Vermont! Vermont does not have a residency requirement either, so… so much for all the New Yorkers taking a trip to the midwest. Unless they decide to honeymoon here. 

Only thing is, they’ll have more of a wait if they decide to be married in Vermont. It does not go into effect till September. In Iowa, you can get your license on April 24 and be married three days later.

Palm Sunday

It is with some trepidation that I prepare to leave for Palm Sunday services. Rarely can I last through the entire thing without crying. Palm Sunday is just so emotional to me. The hymn (which counts as poetry) which always gets to me, as much as I remember of it, and I don’t have time to look it up right now:

All glory, laud and honor to thee redeemer king,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring….

Tolkien Poetry

My 06 NaNo revolved around a group of Tolkien geeks, and so there was a great deal of Tolkien quoting going on. One character enjoys putting Tolkien’s poetry to music, and she sings the following to another character at sunset as they amble down the dirt road toward the lake.

The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it meets some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

Gay Marriage in Iowa!

“Progressive Iowan” may be considered an oxymoron by many unfamiliar with my state. But, as of today, Iowa is one of only three states in the U.S. to have legalized same-sex marriage. Take that, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois !

 On a more cynical note, this could give a boost to Iowa ’s economy as couples who are unable to marry elsewhere flock to our state.  In many cases, their home states that do not allow such marriages to occur will recognize marriages that occurred elsewhere, and Iowa, unlike many states, does not require that one be a resident in order to marry here.

In honor of this day, I am including below Shakespeare’s CXVI Sonnet. In the coffeehouse, this was ToddandViv’s poem. When they first met, Todd quoted this sonnet, and Vivian wrote the reference on his arm with a pen. Viv later inscribed Todd’s ring with CXVI ((gasp. They would now be able to come to Iowa to marry!)). Gothic Todd also scribbled this sonnet in a love letter to Gothic Viv. Ah! Those were good times.

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

    If this be error and upon me proved,

          I never writ, nor no man ever loved. – William Shakespeare

Poetry in The Haunting in Connecticut

Last night I saw The Haunting in Connecticut, and I skipped from the theater, delighted that one of the characters had quoted poetry! How serendipitous for the first day of National Poetry Month!  It also just so happened to be a poem that one of my own characters recently quoted to another character as they approached a dark stairwell in a bookstore.

Here is the poem in its entirety, though it’s usual to hear the first verse by itself:

Antigonish  by Hughes Mearns. 

As I was going up the stair

I saw a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away…

 

When I came home last night at three

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn’t see him there at all!

 

Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)

 

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today.

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

 ((The other poem in the movie is a folk rhyme, author unknown, and there are multiple versions of it (read more here). Near as I can remember, the version in the movie goes like this:

One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot one another,
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
Came and killed the two dead boys.))

 

More Spooky Poetry 

and yet more Creepy poetry

 

Thanks for stopping by! Leave me a comment and let me know why you decided to look up this poem after seeing the movie.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and a friend of mine says she posts a favorite poem every day of April.  Neat idea!  and I thought it would be fun to post poems that have something to do with things I have written ….

APRIL THE FIRST

OZYMANDIAS by Percy Bysshe Shelley

((this is the favorite poem of one of my characters))

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor  well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear –
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’