Ulalume,  A Ballad
By Edgar Allan Poe


The skies they were ashen and sober;
      The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
      The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
      Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
      In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
      Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
      Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
      As the scoriac rivers that roll—
      As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
      In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
      In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
      But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
      Our memories were treacherous and sere—
For we knew not the month was October,
      And we marked not the night of the year—
      (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber—
      (Though once we had journeyed down here)—
We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
      Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
      And star-dials pointed to morn—
      As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
      And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
      Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
      Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:
      She rolls through an ether of sighs—
      She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
      These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
      To point us the path to the skies—
      To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
      To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
      With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
      Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust—
      Her pallor I strangely mistrust:—
Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger!
      Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
      Wings till they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
      Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
      Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:
      Let us on by this tremulous light!
      Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
      With Hope and in Beauty to-night:—
      See!—it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
      And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming
      That cannot but guide us aright,
      Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
      And tempted her out of her gloom—
      And conquered her scruples and gloom:
And we passed to the end of the vista,
      But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
      By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,
      On the door of this legended tomb?"
      She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—
      'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
      As the leaves that were crispèd and sere—
      As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried—"It was surely October
      On this very night of last year
      That I journeyed—I journeyed down here—
      That I brought a dread burden down here—
      On this night of all nights in the year,
      Oh, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
      This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber—
      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

Said we, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it
      Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—
      The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—
To bar up our way and to ban it
      From the secret that lies in these wolds—
      From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
      From the limbo of lunary souls—
This sinfully scintillant planet
      From the Hell of the planetary souls?"

We cursed the dark
but woke the cold plague wind,
cracked summer's 'crypted spell,
talked the pretty into hell.
And so the show begins.

Black cat's-paw on bleeding-stone;
two speakers in a field of bone
bite down a forgotten kiss.
Whispers from the too-full skull
laugh in the pumpkin's cut-out hull,

but never the voice I miss.



~October 2017

Hello, Doctor.
Welcome.

What a relief to see your bag.
No, not your tiresome shirts and socks
and your dime novels;
I mean your black bag, filled with the shining apparatus of life.

Follow me up the stairs, if you would be so kind.
Do you like the dark oak?
We find it somber, like a casket.

This is why we need you so desperately.
We have nearly given in!
So used, are we, to the predations and the despair,
that we women wear black, even at Easter time,
and the men drink, and are sick on the front lawn.

I apologize, Doctor.
You've only just arrived, and I haven't asked you about your trip.
Did you have a nice seat on the train?
Were there porters and cooks,
solicitous conductors?
A woman across the aisle, saying her rosary and weeping?
Monsters and archangels in your fitful dreams,
shooting it out like they do in the moving pictures?

I'm teasing, Doctor.
Forgive me for my familiarity.
Forgive me for trampling upon your necessary reserve.
Do you know why I was the one chosen to meet you?
It is because I am the sanest one here.
I am the limb that can, perhaps, be saved above the knee.
I have a nice singing voice,
but can no longer afford the risk to indulge it.

Are you good with severe injuries, Doctor?
You're not just some kindly old hand-holder, are you?
Here, one has to have eyes in the back of one's head.
We form fierce attachments all in a single afternoon;
a glance becomes a kiss becomes a fevered coming together,
and all before the dinner bell.

Don't look so disapproving, Doctor.
In this place, life isn't a game of whist in the stuffy parlor.
We must rip at it, and at each other, as one would a carcass,
or we starve,
gnawing on fear as if it were a rib.

Have you seen our Wolf yet, Doctor?
Were you uneasy, sitting on the box seat on the way in?
As a physician, you know how the organs and sinews are knit together...
did a tremor run through yours, like doomed babies holding each other?
Let me tell you about our Wolf.
After you've unpacked and taken tea,
I'll take you to the graveyard,
where the earth is always freshly turned.

Our Wolf is large, the same off-white as the doilies on the table downstairs.
The hired man we keep insists that there are no wolves here,
the last one having been shot years ago.
He swears it was a bear, or a cougar,
that gave him that ugly scar across his face.
He admits he didn't really see it, though,
and that was when he could still see, at all.
Now he sits polishing the silver, like an Irish servant girl,
fuming under his breath.

I saw our Wolf myself, Doctor,
when I was out gathering tomatoes from our vines,
just feet from the main house.
There he was, standing as still as January,
staring at me from next to the smokehouse.
Something in me shriveled, like a frost-struck bloom,
and I thought, "Cook will have to improvise her sauce tonight."
The fresh red pickings rolled out of my apron and onto the ground
like so many drops of blood.

It let me walk away, Doctor.
I've been distracted and unpredictable since.
Some wolves eat the organs first, did you know that?
The heart, the liver, what have you.
Tell me, what is it in these bodies that makes us animate?
Are we just some accident of chemistry, when we hope, dream,
fall in love?
Are we nothing but green vines with red eyes,
dumbly waiting?

Once again, I apologize, Doctor.
You're tired and want to unpack.
Will you think of your wife and children,
or does your head fill like a well bucket with the stuff of achievement,
overflowing?

Come down to dinner when you're ready.
We eat on the veranda,
because we have to keep the big table clear
to lay the injured on.
After dinner, relax a while, enjoy a cigar, read your journals.
Then, take a walk in the evening air, just at sunset.
Watch for our Wolf, though,
and I'll watch for you, from behind the curtain.

Goodbye, Doctor.
I mean for now, of course,
but I wouldn't unpack everything, if I were you.
Don't tax yourself the way our previous doctor did.
I don't think he really understood the things that come upon us here,
sudden and hard,
and always from an oblique angle.
Rest now, Doctor.
I'll let everyone know you've arrived,
except for our Wolf
who already knows.
__

Lady Of Dead Leaves



Beneath a dead leaf my love lies hidden
with a rose pearl and a starling's feather
where the dark forest unties Her ribbons

where night rides as black as robber's leather
with a bagful of moon's most starving hours
in a forest where leaves are falling forever,

where balefires blaze meteoric showers,
where pale sprites teach old lovers to dance
and sew up their wounds with threads of flowers.

For grape never saw the wine She decants,
a vintage that ripens with dissolution
aged in a song, sealed with ash and chance.

Under the starlight's silver infusion
asleep as a bee in the fading thunder,
which is volition and which illusion

when all that's left of life is to wonder
or lift the leaf that love lies under.




October 2022

Little fox,
I've come to confess to you

though I know your church is the chicken coop
and your Christ is appetite.

If there is mist up on the mountain,
it's my spirit wandering.

The rest of me kneels here,
before you in the brambles like an overturned cup.

Alone in my bed, I have wondered
why I hurt my lovers, why they hurt me,

but I think it's because
angels are so similar to layers

especially when a spray of white feathers
in the air is all that's left.

Little fox, here is my spirit
riding wrapped around your slender black feet.

Let's test our hearts and pull a wishbone--
you've got plenty cast aside.

If I win, I'll change my ways and skew to kind.
And if you win?

I'll call him, saying let's try again
knowing what will happen, and how sly my words have been.

Today is an old day,
leaking
the passed night's rain,

almost with its dawn already
yesterday,
faded replicant of yet another supplicant.

I'd throw it away, used-up as
a broken comb, a flared match fired once to
light something gone,

except
the birds
greet it with such celebration,

singing their
soft explosions
above the autumn seeds.

September 2025