The silver net

Chapter 4: BETROTHAL

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About This Book

A sequence of lyrical meditations that shifts between dreamlike visions, confessional solitude, and mythic or biblical reverie. Recurring images of sea and shipwreck, roses and gardens, and masked or legendary figures are used to probe longing, shame, desire, and the hope for spiritual renewal. Poems alternate between dramatic monologue, fable-like sketches, and brief nocturnes, exploring the tensions between illusion and revelation, life and death, and love as both ensnaring and ennobling, producing a compact, contemplative cycle of symbolist-inflected verse.

BETROTHAL

The steamer glided like a car of silver o’er the sea;

Above the dying worlds revolved their dark and crumbling wrecks,

Dead as the groping shadows of our shipmates on the decks—

All dead save you and me.

And yet amid this lie two fates were sealed, two souls set free;

Hands met and lips touched lips in rapturous spite of death and night,

And lo! at once each ghost, each world was touched with life and light,

Kindled by you and me.