Requiem of Ophelia

Ophelia   John Everett Millais

Though as fragile as a butterfly’s wing,

and as prone to dust-like constitution . . .

the daisies of the field in profusion,

a star-like innocent voice rose to sing.

There was one ray, through which the sunlight beamed,

there was one meadow, she sat undisturbed,

her child-like hands had never been blistered,

not called to work, but paradise, she seemed.

She sat by the window, with her sewing:

her hands moved back and forth in counterpoint,

their whitely-held countenance was a wand,

conjuring teal magic not her doing.

What in her being she poured out anoints

savoury plate, previously mild sands.

 

Ophelia was a maid enraptured,

slightest ladybug called her attention,

flight of eagles she made duly mention,

if a bird landing on your hand—captured.

Red hair, threaded with pearls, in minute form

gave license to the braids of yesteryear,

her bright new purple eyes would shed a tear

if she found a hare was sorely tortured.

Her cream-like skin was crystal-dewy smooth

the harsh sun’s rays not dilapidating,

and pierced cloud had shed its clear light downward,

where highlights of her vision not removed,

the storm in her breast not now abating,

fury of her voice resounded onward.

 

With her frail throat she verbalized discourse,

she pleaded with the dragons of disdain,

and from her vial of juice now dripped a stain,

while she, distracted, remedied remorse.

The perfect loaves dropped from her hands, table

ready to receive them, although not her.

She knew she had no ceremonial

redemption from within; horse in stable

was next saddled to take her far away

to the forests, where she picked hollyhocks,

to the inland river where she would bend

for direction from inner voices late

that would lessen their blue scourge and torment

if she would heed their counsel, to good end.

 

Humble monarchs of the meadow landed

upon fennel, columbines, pale lily,

converging in wild gardens ’midst the wood

on her lithe and wax-like hands, enchanted.

Here, whispered light-hearted incantations,

for this pillar of stone now breathed into

the stillness of the mortal dawn, imbue

all matter with her voiced lamentations.

She was character of limpid softness

yet the bones of her small frame were rigid,

and each sinew held her dear together.

Her structure composed inert gracefulness

and her darkling eyelashes drew frigid

stares from under townspeople’s brown feathers.

 

She was both green of the wood, and winter,

the frosted land, both desirous and black

at once, cold and unyielding, giving flack

like an undecorated old spinster.

She both bright-blossomed and fell to the ground,

unlike seasons presiding majestic

over universe and the gavel’s lick

of wide-dealt justice, even deep-founded.

What other wise women maintained, she lost,

as fallen spray of fragrance to ’lil earth

as baskets disperse the wedding flowers,

as wool has fallen prey to powdered moths;

destiny and its dreams traded for mirth,

famine and fear now traded for bowers.

 

O Ophelia, my love, the sweetness

of the pleasant spring would unduly croon,

with potions that were remedies of moon,

and by your second-sight, your heavy breast

is ribboned by your green watery rest

and lucid rambles as your ship winds ’round

the brambles of infernal stony ground.

Flying straw-like limbs in constancy, drowned,

in earnestness, proper prayer-like anguish

beneath great spreading tree of green-clothed life.

You would mediate between chastity

and fertility, if one outdistance

the other; the craft of poetry, ice

upon the outstretched hands of charity.

 

Velvet tie that once secured her bonnet

now ties gentle waist to the bottom’s murk

where river nyads dance and aged lurk

to tap her gentil forehead in the net.

Abandoned fish will wander, silver, here,

and children peer beneath the ghostly air,

with their white dresses billowing, with fair

remembrances of her who sat so near.

She, at the paned window sang so sweetly,

she, around her neck, had worn daisy chains,

her hands held life’s grievance like a bouquet.

Still a child in thought, could think so kindly,

now victim with no succor in her pain:

bottom of the glass river’s tourniquet.

Emily Isaacson

Requiem for Bear Manor

Where the dogwood tree’s shade casts last shadows

and the wind from the wood through the branches

of time winds its way across the blue manse,

here, pools of inward fancy are shallows,

veins curving distinctively in untoothed leaves.

Large white petal-like bracts composed a mind

for the botanical nuances, signs

of celestial appearings, dark speech

from realms beyond the cloudless pewter sky.

At this one pulpit I alone would stand,

preacher of secrets held within a God,

the breeze Nantucket, dress blue striped and dyed, 

and orator of whisperings of lands:

where singular speaker outdid the mob.

Hinting of the moments of sunshine bright

I stood apart listless, pale like a moon,

I breathed of air far above clouds and crooned

while playing my guitar of broken light

streaming through famous panes on afternoons

with shadows hiding under wood antiques,

and strumming of new song and chords oblique,

when lentils simmered, the stove ladled soup.

I saw a glimmer of hope in lyrics

that wore sundresses, with lip gloss tinted,

where the bedraggled look melded away,

and our singing was observed by clerics

dressed in dark suits and starched collars minted,

the dead were carried to funeral bay.

 

The parting hand clasp of the deeper sea,

as she spit on shore the killer whale—black—

who had passed and was mourned in a large stack

of bulletins with tide’s finality.

There was the figure here now dressed with sand,

who in coral sea star found her earring,

and with culprit sage seaweed blistering,

decayed beneath the heat upon the land.

This body wreathed with torment there would lie,

where bitterness was gathered ’neath her breast

departed, there horizon would vacant

stare, unhindered at beautified sunrise.

Her once maternal sentiment and breath

had soothed the hungry untimely vagrant.

 

Without the home of the oceanic

temple, deep water could not be broken

top to bottom, and if wine-like token

paired with marine’s illusive sacrament.

Loitering crabs now would scatter beneath

ruined masts and shipwrecks of galleons

from medieval drime, pea sheen of bullions

in lorish trunks that once shone with god speak.

Flashing aqua fins of silver mermen

were like lush music in velveteen sea,

where pearl illusive crowns with wisdom’s down

as swans upon the salt of hard sternum

of a mortal dowager’s frosty tea,

premeditated wrath bequeaths her frown.

 

Heaven drawing close with finality,

feather’d angelic host peered ’round the door,

while hell slammed shut the bottom bunker poor,

they strummed with brass congeniality.

No music rivaled this one strain on earth,

for its equal none could eloquent sing,

nor dine without the meringue recipe

that was featured in flute-like hall of mirth.

Champagne be then poured for one and our pearls,

we would bow our heads at graced royalty, 

among reed grass—the winsome laughter rings, 

chocolate mousse, topped with chocolate curls—

that from the mermaid is glass loyalty, 

among the elite of heaven, they sing.

At this poor pot, the peppermint reaches

from the shadows to the light of the sun,

it dilates its veins to climb and running

from morning to evening, dark green stretches.

From this lesson, our orator took note,

whereby she often listened to Jason, 

placed the bust of Medea, she wrote him,

with blue and green lines floating from her boat.

What verse and of what pow’r shall I be best

visited? she asked. Frequented, she was,

by supernal beings, heard poetry

from afar, and it was fleeting soul rest,

yet she longed for the divine as tall mast,

on this ebullient ship lucidly.

 

The textured isle of power she now lived on

was rough to the touch, and her skin was smooth

and resinous with milky and opaque roots

in former times. For here was the dream long

into the night, the place where running drummed

and met the pavement, every house, dark-limp

an audience to her sounding trumpet.

She hit the mark, star-shone and illumined—

with one round white gleam that was her flashlight—

the stark dead, for she travelled there alone

and she exhaled the truth in bitter moans.

A warrior now at battleground to fight,

birth pains of Christ within her feet were stone,

and in her wrecked palms, the wretched nail holes.

Photo used by permisssion: Armstreet Clothing Company

Requiem for a King's Coronation March

 

How vast the verdant air seeped to the crux

of cathedral close, rising innocence

as Westminster Abbey’s purple incense

catapults sun into a sky of doves.

They fluttered, blotting golden light still blush,

and with their wings they heralded a new

day, bright with cheer. Yesterday, one or two

stragglers doubted, casting our crowns for us

into an abyss of thought and deed. Smoke

rose as sacred as our naked blue heads

shivering with cold: would mercy take us

with pity into her fold? The sword smote

all fear of the future, thrones in deep reds

were lit from underneath as they were just.

 

What was the reason we came to this place,

alongside the vast bloodlines, majesty

draping her fingers in a serene pool

where grew the remnants of the Queen Anne’s Lace.

I was picking wildflowers, carrying

them in my bonnet for the table’s height. . .

a poem or two were clippings with light

from an herb garden, fragrance varying

with words undone, yet casualty, each rhyme

of price would droop and die with winter’s frost,

and I could no more keep them there alive

with a black thumb—I could no more grow thyme 

than give a lark flight—its fledglings in moss,

hidden within ringed nest, the rain baptised.

 

I carried a leather book to write notes,

guarded for a King and Queen, and yet my

frivolous scribblings were nothing, yet lies,

compared to oratorio in throats

of singers, delineating past lands

of royalty who would stand here to be

crowned. Coloured symphonies, tragedians

would even bow, their feathered hats in hand.

All humble commoners took note, blissful

to see a coronation they would stand

for hours under searing heat, space of cloud,

the chorus, loud, soft,  still mingling, wistful

with children running underfoot, and bland

as inebriated rioting crowd.

 

It was time I grew up to my full green

stature, it was time to write a dark prayer

in despair at falling translucent tears

on earth after plague. All governed clear sheen

of dreams cast light-blue dew on cloak of grass,

society having lost the cloaks off

their backs, now hunched with misery at loss

and fire. The blood of loyalty seeped mass

into the fray of dust and fear. Now hear,

listen to my soft-spoken words of glass . . .

For a time we will enter reunion

with life in the midst of hell. Now, my dear,

don’t tell me you don’t wish for latent tasks

to keep busy, that good days were common.

 

For a time we are once more nightmare-free,

our chained slavery, blinded, as a god

we pay futile homage to in a mob,

we served without Justice or Liberty.

For long hours the afternoon sun slanted

tall windows, noisy, the street beneath me;

I poured through Emerson, Whitman, and Keats.

There was, like water trickling grey, blunted

from a stone, with deep cooling poignant verse—

the realms of cobalt-pure revelation

in visitation austere, and languid

eyes of a Madonna: her cupped hands, purse

in every gold realm, variation

of plenty, and the earth now turning sanguine.

 

I stopped in vile terror of a leader

so resplendent that the sage sea married

the shore, the corpse of life now ferried

with the wave of time in blue-black meter,

in salt crashing into its rocky crags,                                                      

with an aggressive tumult at life’s end,

without much hope left to entirely mend.

Yet we would array in vast red parade

the plush side of a splashed pomegranate

hiding beneath a spray of leaf entwined

where sky meets tree, and all fruit breathes in stealth.

The silver bowl now holds its pale manna

as life drains the juice of country supine,

archaic, old blue blood of Commonwealth.

 

Stay here, while I sing you one last lullay,

country of many countries that in one

dying moment forgot what made its song

live. The Commonwealth sang its lullaby

in dependable rhythm, its nature rung

to princes under its prism-withered eaves

bound-laid beneath its browning lifeless leaves.

Oh, forgotten me and my mother-song

of hovering spirit and milk-white breast,

promised land, honey hospitality.

Breathing iridescent through the curtains

hung with lace against the neck of time, rest

here for a glass of timid lime, cold tea,

bubbling to surfaces of castle earth.

Emily Isaacson

A Townswoman's Cloak

 

The vase would be for the yellow sun-streaked

daffodil, its brilliant bouquet untold

in hues, Wales aristocracy of gold

under the watch of Gothic castles, meek

out of gentle song of a thousand trees

next to black international velvet.

Where the spires rise to the morn’s fiery stealth

the ink drawing can scarcely describe me

as I am now, my hair white, my eyes bright,

I am in waiting as the country’s sight

is just out of reach too. The stone upon

stone of Caernarfon and Harlech’s dim light

seeping out from walls within walls and tide

waters brimming far away dreamy shore.

 

There is light in this vase of yellow-born,

like the sun streaming across the miles, bold

and high cliffs, isolated nature, old

red sandstone,  rugged cliffs battered by storms,

wild grass hosting a long Skokholm haven:

seabirds, in heath and salt marsh, St. John’s wort

rises serene; three-lobed water crowfoot—

with whisper of dew on ancient heaven.

In the grassland there are the tree mallow,

small nettle, sea campion—the guillemots,

chiffchaff, willow warblers, common whitethroat,

over mudstones and Red Maris. Fallow,

the linen of the garment lay in knots,

and the seamstress laboured at the new cloak.

 

With yellow dress now tied at her thin waist,

lace enamel lapping at her pale sleeves,

the ties drew back the bodice, and the lea

glistened from beyond her locked garden gate.

Ghostly was the sound of rabbits footsteps,

quietly the dawn transpired its gold knock;

the meadow courted her favour, as clock

ticked on and guided her elder years, debt

to those who had shown her guidance, advice

over the years always wise with graying

mentors’s speech, their moment joys and shadows,

until she knelt with sentiment, chastised.

In the will of God: saints—deepest praying—

stone upon stone was an altar hallowed.  

 

The moor, grasslands and coast, rife with curlew:

eerily they call, and townspeople lift

their heads—shaking at the suicide rifts

which rise to sky and echo; almost rue

their grey feathered existence were they not

shrieking a blood-chilling eloquent call,

frightening as Eden’s vine at the Fall,

her austere fertility entwined brought

images of fruit and flow’r to the mind,

along with temptress of the gnarled tree,

where pressure from the dark side stormy, breaks

down walls of the imagination-kind.

Pecking in the mud with icy curved beaks

each curlew contrasts Snowdon’s snow-flaked peak.

Emily Isaacson

 

 

Photo used by permission: Armstreet Clothing Company

Requiem of the Waterflower

Under the weeping willow, embedded

with opulent pearl, for eternity—

silk and cotton now momentarily

to the floor, the mossy river threaded

through the countryside ambling on at rest.

The long draped wing-like creamy bell-shaped sleeves

hung, momentous and old as the dry leaves

upon the ground. The guests dressed in their best

were unsure whether they were here, gifting

for a moment or a new century,

as the water floated by, the petals

met reflection of the hills, now sloping

away into the distance, luxury

of the crescent moon still whitened, natal.

 

It’s rare to be so quiet at deep grooves

that the moon, still unborn, whispers loudly

amid the bustle of skirts, with baby

carriages, and swish of dark horses hooves.

It’s rare to have a bluest heart so kind

that one would flutter in midair over

the stained purple-white wild lilies cover.

There was a greenish bank where diamond rinds,

hues of bubbles floated, amid stoic

remembrances and florid faces, sound

as glassy-eyed wine. The only priest was

present in season of the Spring Fair, it

cantered like a new horse, as he came ’round

only twice per year when given good cause.

 

The bride was wearing white soft-spoken lace,

her ladies, blue willowy glass figures,

baby’s breath to roses. Dainty creatures

of a delicate nature, they made case

that her figure was a pale rose in bloom

and her soft creases did not hide a child,

shining gold hair was plaited, smooth and mild,

she was quite reverent of his duty too.

But she was kind, and timely amid strife,

life in its piercing the dank moss shallows

of her life had made them crisp flowing pools,

and she stretched out her hand, became a wife,

she wore the diamond of her days, fallows

of a fertile land, farmed with ancient tools.

 

This royal moment in the river field

acquiesced to nature’s horn and plenty,

no woman’s life should be poor and wanting;

translucent gown following and men reeled

at the sight of such a character to

stand so graceful and so elegant, mild

as would a maiden be, yet there with child,

as her burgeoning soul would attest, blue

were his eyes, and theirs was a renaissance

ceremony, in formal dress, as spoke

the custom of their age. They were not young,

too young, to be the green reconnaissance

of all love in youthful years, which day woke

too early—was it just the web was spun?

 

The matchmaker nodded her fair consent,

they had breathed vows, a renaissance couple,

common in their time, even nuptials

were seen in almost half of cream crescent

moon young lovers wed along shadowed lull

of waters, where the trim of flowers deck

while perfectly gathered at the scooped neck,

and the pearl beaded bodice falls below

the wedding full of fine giving detail,

a life joined to a life is turtledoves—

where no death, waxen, cold, where flaxen breathes

the clothed bridesmaids celebrate, holding train.

The vests of his men were as brown as cloves,

velvet, and marching on in league motifs.

 

It was the Golden Age of Art Nouveau:

the curved glass bell of time had rung before—

mosaics out of brokenness, stained cores

of glass rose from marble floor to dome, no

sinewy sense of movement was nature’s

graceful shapes paired with yellowed narcissus.

The time of falling dusk had walked with us

into the organic future that spurs

the art of a new century, detail

fine and ornamental in its finite

way of climbing intricate design walk

of the nineteenth century with black rail

to render elements sculptural wine,

fluent in curves, iris buds and starched stalks.

 

How had this composite of medieval

times, limber of foot, danced into black tie

irony with exotic butterfly,

as was the case of her entourage belles.

There was the artist, the model a muse

sitting pale, simple before the painter—

no movement, hands folded, as in winter

of a soul, a childless stance waiting, loose

of the trappings of work and menial

blank servitude that so characterized

the eyes of darkened blind without new art;

here, the dim room started, congenial

to be receptive to old sterilized

forms of dying while still alive, thou art.

Emily Isaacson

Photo used by permission: Armstreet Clothing Company