✤ Once I came upon a painting
of a maiden, blind, decaying
swathed in pallid silk and wreathed in
flowers from a foreign grove.

So pitiful and pale appeared she
not a word was uttered in the
minutes, hours or days I sat with
her beside the crackling stove.

My mind was led astray to wonder
as I nodded off to slumber,
were her clouded eyes to open
would she gaze upon me too?

In vain I looked for an engraving
on the gilded frame encasing
her, whose name was left unspoken
yet my queries only grew.

From which country and which town
would hail a girl in scarlet crown?
As above and so below,
where do those scarlet flowers grow?

Suddenly, with startling temper
Stranger flames now rose from ember
like hellfire, I remember
cast the wooden shack aglow.

Through the haze of oddly fragrant
smoke I saw the portrait vacant
and the witch on yellowed canvas
stood and turned to look at me.

Seeing senseless things so clearly
childlike terror soon had grasped me
That I had thought dead was merely—

Dreaming of old stars, awaiting
for some long forgotten great thing
For a sainted limb reclaiming
all that is, has been, and will be
swaying dead in sweet nepenthe
sunken in the lake of Demhe.

Where the silver corpse-bells ring
with flowers tied in golden string
On that cloudy inland shore
My soul shall lay forevermore.