See her there with the wind in her hair
singing from her rock,
calling out to passing ships
with naked plea to stop.
She’ll embrace you. She’ll drown you.
She makes love beneath the waves.
Fishes dance through her floating hair
and her arms are a sailor’s grave.
She loves the men who know the kiss
of the stars that roam the night.
Who thrill to the violence of a sea-god’s wrath
with a Viking’s wild delight.
She needs their hunger for the brooding deep
to caress her fathomless soul,
for her passions answer no mortal cry
but the dirge of a sea-death’s toll.
Her eyes are deep obsidian pools
bathed by the moon’s pale light.
Her body is a sepulchral reef
beckoning in the night.
Its promise torments a lookout’s watch
seeking safe waters to sail,
but her eyes are churned by unmapped tides
and her cry a rising gale.
She’s been alone for timeless years
singing softly that sad song,
singing of some eternal lover
from salt-washed ships hard-blown along.
Calling out with irresistible voice
that no man has yet failed to heed.
Sand drifts about these broken boats,
their ribs wrapped by clinging weeds.
So make your peace and close your ears
when she gives voice to that sad cry.
Cross yourself, and pray for the soul
of a sailor such as I.
One who heard and had to know
to what such sounds belonged,
who dared winter waves to try to love
this singer of siren song.
—————————-
Hexenkessel
(The Witches’ Cauldron)
Ah woman, how you twist me with your magic
beneath this occult moon!
I burn for you with blasphemous fire,
am mocked by its cold caress.
Release me or consume me!
Damn me and be done!
Oh wondrous witch, where comes this power
to play my poor heart so?
What secrets lie behind those testing-pools
which smile and drown me with such a sweet,
exquisite curse?
If you could only hear my despairing cry
as I howl my torment
to the moon’s indifferent face,
my baying, that rouses spirits of night;
but you listen for a different song,
and with a different ear.
Perhaps I should loose this thing within
and then together, naked,
we would laugh and run
bathed in haunting light.
And the days would be lost and full of woe
but the nights! the nights!
the insane and blood-fired joy of making love
beneath this staring thing.
Is it not worth a man’s paltry days
to fly wild with witches
at the deep of night!
