AN ELIXIR OF POPPIES
I.
A cloud of remnant flames that sway
on slender stalks above a mound
of green entangled frond on frond
whose petals droop and drop away
to lie in tatters on the grass,
while still the heavy-headed blooms
imbue the air with drowsy fumes
that linger long before they pass.
The poppies rise, unfurl and swell
and spread their petals to the sun
till every hue is all undone
and every husk a hollow shell.
II.
Rossetti to his Lizzie gave
elixir of the poppy's bloom,
displacing all her pain with gloom
and bedding her within a grave,
but ere the lid was hammered tight
he lay his sonnets at her cheek
as though her muted lips might speak
his lyrics to the airless night.
At length a season passed away ~
the grass upon her grave stood tall ~
Rossetti could not sleep at all
for dreaming of her where she lay.
He quelled his sorrow and regret
with little sips of laudenum ~
elixir of the poppy's bloom
that wrapt and held him in its net
and drew him into visions such
as only thralls to beauty see,
that verge upon insanity
and touch what only spirits touch ~
then dead at last to all but art,
as though possessed, he drew and drew,
his every line a root that grew
around and through her buried heart.
III.
The light that pierced her deathly sleep
and fell upon her dreamless eyes
was not of angels come to prise
her body from the musty deep
but only of Rossetti's friends
who sought to wrest the sonnets from
the fastness of oblivion
and so undo a noble end.
On Highgate's old and holy ground
they knelt beside her open grave,
disciples of the holy cave
who could not speak of what they found
except the hair of poppy red
that down upon her shoulders spilled
in such luxuriance it filled
the confines of her coffin-bed.
IV.
Within a dim and airless hall
within an airless gallery,
her portrait hangs for all to see,
it casts a melancholy pall ~
of sad serenity composed,
her face conveys a deathly calm,
a poppy lies upon her palm,
her upward-gazing eyes are closed.
~~ bj omanson
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