Be it that her heart was laid down
Fervid love was assumed in the isles of spring
Reproach invited in her name
No escape the sound
     This chant echoing
     The worms of madness
Her love and his images of her
both hallucinations
                    eternal
Suffering to the acts unrepentive
Long before
     the question should have been mounted
          What heart gives to love
          what it has offered to sorrow?
For them
     almost a blithe moment
     at the end
     in the voyage of goodbyes
When it is found there is no break of the tempest
and
should they fade to winter
Were they to fade this night
leave thorns to blossom
     where their hearts once addled
As tears were handed out in sparse allotment
Each soul lent to guilt
when
he to pull the pills from her mouth
and cradle her delicate head
twelve minutes outside Eden


                                  -Dylan Wahl

                                   copyright 1997