Classic Poem

Her father
Indisposed to her marriage
And a rabid man at that
My most sympathetic daughter
Make yourself a conception
As large as this one
Here
But with yellow hair

From the house
Issuing Sunday dressed
Combed precisely
Splosh!
Pours something
Viscous
Malefic
Unfamiliar

While listening up I hear my husband
Mumbling Mumbling
Mumbling at the window
Malediction
Incantation

Under an hour
Her hand to her side pressing
Suffering
Being bewitched
Cesira fading
Daily daily feeble softer

The doctor “Pthisis”
The wise woman says to take her
So we following her instruction
I and the neighbour
Take her

The glass rattling
The rain slipping
I and the neighbour and her aunt
Bunched together
And Cesira
Droops across the cab

Fields and houses
Pass like the pulling out
Of sweetmeat ribbon
From a rascal's mouth
Till
A wheel in a rut
Jerks back my girl on the padding

And the hedges into the sky

Coming to the magic tree

Cesira becomes as a wild beast
A tree of age

“If Cesira should not become as a wild beast
It is merely Pthisis”
This being the wise woman's instruction

Knowing she has to die
We drive home
To wait
She certainly does in time

It is unnatural in a Father
Bewitching a daughter
whose hair down covers her thighs.