New Year's Night

Apr 09, 2008 - 08:35 AM PST

Snowflakes fall like petals from the stars
No wind, no sun, no light.
It’s night.
It’s New Year’s night.

Bleak and bare the moor beyond the bars
Bleak and bare this cell, this chill requite.

The cloister bell, rings once and rings again
And how I pray for gentle warming rain
And ponder what it was I stood to gain
From living and the taking of her life.

My love, your breast, your neck I scent anew.
The noose to strap mine own awaits at dawn.
Sure sorrow and regret do soak me through
As sure as any weather, any storm.

The hour drags by. A maudlin gallows cart,
Now hauls from darkness deep the spark of day
And as the bell strikes once, twice, thrice, my leaden heart
Obliges that I find my knees and pray,

For oh, dear sweet and tainted, lovely wife,
How could your crime bear equal cost to mine?
A broken vow ought not beget the knife,
But ought the rope our two ills so entwine?

Know this my disenfranchised, kindred soul,
Were time to run again I’d do no wrong.
Your own dear flesh I gladly would leave whole
And take the life of he that wooed and won.

Another hour. And sentence true I crave;
Consignment to th’Inferno, not the grave.
The drop, how pitiful and brief shall be that end
Compared with that I gave my best loved friend?