Hemingway’s Shotgun

III

Behind the man a specter is seen
She is his wife, his lover, his queen.
Her spirit glooms the granite scene:
In life’s realm she was not on lien.
In life, beauty was her greatest claim
She doubts that she is much the same.
Phantom, flowing locks follow her path
As she follows a hopeless wrath.
His wrath is soon seen by the shade
As a shroud in a masquerade.
He envelops despair, having weighed
Heavily as a leaden cascade.

Before the wraith herself had died
She had been the rose-cheeked bride
Of a man whose music rang out loud;
The sound of his grasps dreams avowed.
This dreaming would have never ceased
Were it not for a clamor from the east.
A great din rose towards the wedding feast
As the heavens borne a fearsome beast.
The Sky-Beast fed upon the maiden’s flesh
Raw and tender, the tendons fresh.
Though she had died a final end
It seems he too would soon descend.

The winged creatures know that within an hour
They will have another course to devour.

IV

We find our groom enduring pain
Of stinging agony, arcane strain.
Knowing only doubtful disdain,
He seeks love to return mundane.
His mundane wish for she long dead
Is not only known by he ahead.
Eurydice has considered much:
A lyre knows song as merely such.
His lyre, a device: means to an end
“Instrument” only begins to transcend…
That meaning is one she would amend
To include as well: a man’s one friend.

And as they rose a sandstone stride,
She knew at once she must not hide.
She’d naught to gain from few new years
Besides an assortment of imbued fears,
Fears who gnaw with blackened teeth
Fearing that which lies beneath,
Fearing they who make a sheath
For avarice, lust, sloth, and grief.
In his lyre existed her frights
Of long and lonely moonless nights
Oblivion consuming souls
Which burns and scorches as were they coals.

The winged creatures could still see all of this
Though they were gorging in their horrible bliss.