Lament for Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Dear Eleonora meanders

Across the vast expanse

Of his tragic musings,

Mixing with the sound of surf

And the eloquence of his

Hallucination, bizarrerie of which

She is simply unaware.

Only the words echo magically

As youth in love is prone

To hear them, not really

Understanding at all.

Poe might have imagined

The beatings, foreshadowing

What has been foreshadowed before –

The final consumption into nightmare,

Pain and release from pain,

How the art ultimately imitates,

As it must, the life

It haunts so intimately. 

Where is that enclosure now?

This shrinking square of red light

Suggests it was never really there.

We do not see it.

But he who has lived and

Died in it know only too well

The sudden burst of illumination

Like insight before everything diminishes

And falls into the throes of darkness. 

Lament for Poe © Ron Villejo

I saw a dramatic portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe on stage, and was drawn deeply into his macabre world.  This shrinking square of red light was how the play ended and how horrifically his life must've ended.  In September 1980 I wrote this poem.