John William Polidori, M.D. 1795-1821
Alchemy
Such precision in your death.
You’d found the colour
of forgiveness, or, at least,
forgetting~
Mottled purple. Blue-black
like the bruise which wove
around your ankle when you leapt,
on Byron’s advice, from Diodati’s
balcony. For weeks after,
foot propped on a tattered pillow,
you dreamed you were his
crippled twin~
though he grew sullen
when you said as much
and sailed with Shelley to Chillon.
Long days of summer rain.
Snowy drams of laudanum.
Even the sky seemed in sympathy,
clouds shirred like the gauzy veils
of opium smoke with which you tried
to blunt the absence of his weight
rising above you, his savage grace
so perfect you and your desire
became one, wrists shredded,
bloody from pounding out the rhythm
of his lust upon your crucifix.
And when he would have nothing more
from Dear Polly, you returned
to London’s filthy streets
with your leeches, potions, madness,
your dark horse
all slather and sheened sweat,
careening over cobblestones,
leaving you amnesic,
stuttering at the base of a tree.
And the days after, your sentences
a child’s babble,
your book ghosting his plot.
Everything which brought you to this
silver cup, brimming,
Promethean. To swallow this fire
as if it were fine wine, a good
year, or the warmth of his tongue
gliding along your throat.
Honey.
For his hands~ softer than he’d like
to think;
plump flesh of his thighs.
For his siren’s voice.
Oil of amber.
Arsenic.
Adding light to light.
Morning and evening star.
Powdered charcoal.
To eclipse this liquid sun.
For his silhouette scything candleflame.
Prussic acid.
The colour of his eyes,
blue shadows.
Almost the colour of regret.
The Poetry
Room
The Main Hall
