To The Night

Physically,
I’m all here.
There are no abnormalities,
no gashes, scrapes, nor bruises.
There are no burns, no fractures,
 no bites or stings.

But, it is here I wait out my days
cold and unclothed, devoid of the sun’s rays.

It has been a long time hence
I had set foot on greenest grass.
The bygone days are days of my past
and the world has become past tense.

Foul’d, I had been painted a villain.
I, a villain! An enemy of state!
It is a wretched twist and turn of fate
that I be shackled and split in twain.

My love, my dearest Agnes of Ford,
ran from the estate screaming.
I, in my chambers silently dreaming,
dreamt more of her than of God.

It was there, that wind-swept night,
that Agnes was found at the bank
of the stream, unholy stream,
streaming with black water and blight

night dances dancing on her head.
Her body became the night howl,
heard above the deepest bowels
of hell and the damned dead.

The next morn, whilst I slumbered,
the constable arrived at my door.
He asked if I had seen my poor
beloved Agnes, who I thought was silently chambered.

He walked me out, silent, abhorred,
deep into the wood around our estate.
He wished me to see the pristine state,
the state of Agnes of Ford.

There she was laying, face down,
peaceful slumber, skin like a winter
day. Her black hair, flowering in the hinter-
lands, making nary a sound.

Naturally, he said, I would be taken
for questioning. Naturally, I consented.
Now, here I sit, quite discontented,
in this cell under the bracken.

My dearest, deepest Agnes of Ford,
for whom my heart still beats.
Shall forever lay among the weeds,
with my knife and my word.

I shall remain here, wasting,
remembering the night that was,
remembering that I was
nothing more than an animal feasting.

Every night I am haunted by her visage,
under the eye of the demon’s tutelage.

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