Ode on a Rebecca Hall

YOU unravished bride of quietness
      You child of Midsummer's Titania
You overwrought Iseult of Hibernia
Our elusive untrodden love
      intensifying mutual rapture
Haunting my mind's eye before
      I was ever aware of yr existence
Perhaps -- my earth mother -- you bore
      me in the hazel warmth of Elysian Spring
Mesmerising in yr parching allure
      Bold lover, uncloying, as you sing

Why must you subsist in the flesh?
      Tormenting me with blissful celluloid clarity
Why mustn't the specter of yr forever remain
      in the smoky rings of my mind's charity?
I search yr taciturn gaze, yr burning forehead,
      in every lass I meet
Fooling myself, but really bitter & indignant
      at cruel Nature for failing to deliver you
      into my enfolding heat

As a boy I ran to you
      to share in triumphs
      to console personal offenses
      in my desolation
As a man I engaged in foolish -- eviscerating --
      affairs with marbled doppelgängers
      whose insouciant rejection, this nighttime thief
      unwearied by betrayal, left me 
in despondent grief


I weeped when you hanged yrself in Victorian England
      loved & unloved, by twins of magical pursuits
Lamented as you denied the passion within you
      for a philistine suit     
      in tragically melodist Barcelona
Stared at yr pastel sun dresses in the pious
      headiness of Nixonian California


The slight curls willow around yr
      creamery face -- punctuated
      by bitten lips of mysterious uncertainty
The sun highlights the freckles
      under yr innocent eyes
      around yr garland cheeks
Portending an epic innocence of which
      I desperately long to confederate
A naïve dreamland devoid of shame
      of deceit, 
      of avarice, of conceit
All breathing human passion above


When all yr lovers go to waste
      I shall remain in my woe
And speak this truth with immortal taste
'Rebecca is truth, truth Rebecca -- that is all
     I know on earth, and all I need to know.'


08/05/10