Ballad of a Wasted Heart

Along the road she came to me
With moonbeams dancing in her face;
A half-lit gure fully formed
Of ragged light and earthen grace.

Her lissom lips enrapturing
And capturing my mortal will;
That smile bright, those eyes sublime,
Defy all rhyme and writer’s quill.

I worshipped at her golden throne,
A thousand hymns in rapture sang
And recked not reckoning above,
Till through my bones her silence rang.

Bright Beatrice! My opiate,
Who plies poor hearts with hands of ice
Without a care for we damned fools,
Such willing lambs to sacrifice.

Her laugh resounds in every hill;
All clichés fail to blunt the loss.
Unloved but loving all too strong,
She left me bleeding on the cross.

Broken, cast off, left to die
The slowest death a soul can bear.
A loathsome poet drunk on love,
Composing “Ode to Her Last Hair.”

Still, hating her less than myself,
I sought the way to dusty death;
That ancient curse now seemed a joy,
A glad return of awful breath.

In such despair I came to you,
And in your touch found something true.
At last a love to set me free:
This restless heart finds rest in thee!