Doomed Lovers Poem by Jeffrey Obomeghie

Modigliani covered with paint
Dangles over a chair like a broken saint
Wracked by fevers and strange imaginings

He is surrounded by love's immanence
Comforted by death's imminence
Hebuterne squeezes his cold hand
and curses at death's bold command

But when Modigliani surrenders
And death declares victory
Beautiful Hebuterne refuses to yield
Hands on the window sill
She closes her eyes and jumps
Twenty-one is not too young to die
When you no longer hear your lover's sigh

Abelard soars inside the walls of his stone castle
A single lattice through which to watch the world astral
The same lattice through which to receive his evening meal
Who said that the stars in the firmament are too many to count?
Abelard knows exactly how many stars are in the galaxy
He has counted them all
Ran time through his fingers like a prayer bead

Abelard does not miss his freedom because he is still free.
Who can cage a mind inflamed with love?
He does not miss his Louise because he carries her with him
But down there he still feels the knife's rebuke
A dull ache where they made him castrato
Left him like Farinelli but without the soprano
He picks up his pen and begins to write another letter that Louise would never read

The hooves of Caesar's horses
The sounds of Caesar's armies
The streets are eerily silent
The birds oddly strident
Even the village drunk knew the war was over
When he came back sober
All that is left now is the mopping up
The picking up, the dragging up
The brisk business of burning the dead
and dispatching the near dead

Anthony with his defeated army
Ponders the chalice or the blade
Cleopatra with her ladies-in-waiting ponders ignominy
But when Caesar's men arrived
Anthony and Cleopatra had already fled
To a land without an extradition treaty
Where doomed lovers reunite freely
Where Abelard and his bride
No longer have to hide
And Modigliani with lightning in his eyes
Dances around with Hebuterne in his arms