Forgive the day’s   Last serenades   Her skies they bruise like Nordic women   Deep crimson stains   That Death would claim   His robes of office swim in      As would I   For his dark eye   Has fixed, a basilisk, a scythe   On charred remains   With shared disdain   For those I chose to mortify      Their cries have paralysed   And the smoke has choked these vistas   But still I lie, though tears have died   On the grave of my Clarissa      A verse for her whispered to the earth   A lover’s curse is a see-through coffin   Praises her curves so oft concurred   Though she was   No Snow White on the night she died   Her shadower’s boon when the moon glazed over   Lipped with blood and secrets pried      For on and in they spread her wide   That seraph bride   The Devil’s pride   Shalt soon avenge with swift reprise      But they would writhe   For my dark eye   Bewitched, was fixed like Mordecai’s   On Esther’s reign   And in this vein   I saw their lust still stain her thighs      Their cries have paralysed   And the smoke has choked these vistas   But still I lie, though tears have died   On the grave of my Clarissa      Beneath these trees where the mist enwreathes   Her spirit flees, seeing chains of torches   A fleeting kiss stirring leaves of poetry      I was no dark knight, breaking men like ice   I was like a lycanthrope until the moon glazed over   Lipped with blood and last goodbyes      Now I dream   Enwrapt in pure clouds of the sweetest oblivion   Where beauty streams   Freed from the teeth of those beasts that had come   To tear out her spells   In red lettered cells   Wherein even the crown Prince of Hell   Come out of his arrogant shell   Would falter to better      But her face soon dispels   And as black feathers fell   From heaven’s smoke   So I woke to insanity   Her exquisite corpse   Found fit for their sport   Of course   Would burn on the morrow with me      And there on this night   Strung up in my sight   Naked she sways   Displayed for their vulgar delight      I scream through my bars at the stars   That for these crimes of mine solace me   I will fear not the flames   That to passion are tame   Not nearly the same searing pain   I pray   As held sway upon losing her   Nor the mettle of roars   That will settle like ashes and scores   As with our ghosts in the fog   When we both turn no more