Lorelei Poem by robert dickerson

That was the hardest thing to fqthom-
there was nothing unseemly in her singing,
nothing lewd
to make a cleric tremble:
nothing forboding
to kindle a heros' innermost deathwish;
nothing that bespoke hull hell
or shrill lamentations of nails
hauled from their timbery slips
mastheads snapped
and men strewn like cabbages on the flood.

And when the tiny boats beetled into view
bobbing inverted along visions keel
(she had no prescience, no magic quick)
laden with cotton, neatly stowed hoeheads and sill,
you would swear it became, mere Rhine chanty,
a canticle of all innocence, Purity itself,
steeped in indifference. A taunt. A thing
self-loving solitude to herself might sing
to help her sleep, on some cloud-communing ledge,
gently admonishing the stars
for their too-loud shining.

Illimitably sweet.
effortless, a purl
sinuous, oblivious,
casual as a tide;
entering the wrapt ear as moonshine
enters the astonished pupil-instant hippus,
delectable contusion
converging in pleasant confusion
lightly as moths that flit above beanstalks
pintails etching the violet vellum
of falling night.