Ophelia Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

OPHELIA

In the still of her bedroom
Candles on her mantles glow.
They quiver and gleam
As a demon does dream
In the fog near the sheets
Which cover her window.

And on the terrace where she meets
The solitary moon
The nascent night
Arrives too soon
With gloomy clouds
Which traverse the firmament.
Like burial shrouds -
All death is permanent.

A hopeless sinner moans and dies
And is banned as he crosses the despairing skies
In silence over the wintry dales
Where the last of the sunlight
Perishes and pales.

And in Ophelia's lifeless, stony gray eyes
There dwells no sadness
No sobs, no cries,
As she retreats into her chamber of sin.

A wanton madness
Wanders through the rattling din
Of her vacant soul,
Unchaste, unwhole,
As a baleful breeze
Sails through her hallway as a dark disease.

For evil reigns whenever it allows
The laughs in her head
For her husband lies dead -
Damned in a lake of scarlet red,
Where he lies stabbed twice in a bath of fleas
Outside below the boughs
Of leafless trees.

John Lars Zwerenz