Black Rose Triumphant

'Tis upon an evening of cold, there sits a girl in sadness untold.
Shadows lie o'er the silent snows, and but on tiptoes the chilled wind blows.
Sorrow, the girl's heart hath ahold; her erotic misery is to behold.
Death all around save a black rose, which through the ice somehow still grows.

At this black rose doth she long'ly stare, for darkness encamps 'bout her sleek raven hair.
A deity, from a throne, observes this drear scene, looks 'pon the girl, and wishes her serene,
But the girl still grieves with the pain that she bears; melancholy ages her pallid skin once fair.
The deity, upset, feels to intervene, and calls upon a frozen moonbeam.

To the girl the deity must go; he arises from his flower-covered throne
And rides the moonbeam to the sobbing girl's side; he kiss' gently the tears from the weeping girl's eyes.
Even in his hands, the girl ends not her sorrow; to a young man's pall her crystals still flow.
The girl, once the man's bride, alone, now that he hath died.

The deity, troubled with his fail', for yet the girl bewails,
Rises and speaks softly to her breast, speaking unspoken; her mourning comes to rest.
The deity departs the girl, once pale and frail and bale, and skips gaily down the ice-covered dale.
The girl, though death still upon her eyes, looks to the horizon's crest, and at last sees the deity by whom she's been caressed.

In the sunlight of the morrow, she tells her friends of her waning sorrow.
What her friends then say doth tremble her so, and once again she fades to woe.
"What you saw was a shadow of a willow skipping, skipping 'cross a field of fallow,
And what you felt was not, as you had hoped so, a young fair lad, but was Death's great moan."

---

Originally written:    November 30, 2002
Put online:    December 1, 2002
Discussion:    Hmm. This is a poem about a woman who has recently lost her mate. It takes place on a stone bench in a graveyard in the winter where she is mourning her loss (and, yes, I know there aren't real black roses). She is visited by a sympathetic and benevolent deity, unknown to her until she sees him skipping off in the distance (and, yes, I know there aren't real deities, either). Her sorrow is deep, for the deity tries two times to ease her suffering before finally succeeding on his third attempt by speaking directly to her heart. She begins to feel better...that is until she visits her friends the following morning. They destroy her little midnight encounter, and she begins to feel terrible again. This, I think, is a common occurrence in life (mine anyway). Left to myself, I'm usually just fine--as fine as I get, anyway. It's when I'm around other people that I really start to get funky. Finally, the title of this poem (once "Untitled #4") is largely taken from Opeth's "Black Rose Immortal."


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