PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[to the memory of Y Dryw (bardic name of the

Reverend Edward Hughes), 1772-1850]

1

My old friend, John, once loved a tavern girl

when we were students.  But some local churl

took her---with her consent---in carnal knowledge.

For that, in sadness, my friend left the college

a while.  She died, after two or three years,

addicted to that dragon---poppies' tears,

given to her by that colossal bastard

on whom she wasted her love, harshly mastered.

Her death concluded a long agony.

And John went on to many fine successes,

but kept his rage against her uncouth lover---

anger untold except in poetry,

as anyone who knows him can discover.

His new and greatest poem largely expresses

that brute's lack of demeanor, as it reaches

its frenzied peak among the devil's speeches.

2

A tale I once heard, "from a little wren,"

said:  he, who ruined the least of this town's lives

learned, some years later, the slow way some knives

slice (and how long he could scream for death) when

some thugs seized him one night---who?  Cromwell's men.