Here reads thee an ode to the proud poet, Poe,

whose spirit's soul still resides in me, although,

his mem'ries, full of the darkest dread and woe,

pierce this hopeless heart — I humbly bid he go.


 

'Twas just a fortnight, donned in my black bandeau,

whilst I sat watching silent curtains of snow,

I grasped my quill, daunting dim candle light, low,

then set about — like doomed lover, Romeo …


 

… to tarry places I dared not even go,

a cadence whispered to me, so soft, so low;

whilst there, upon the whitest ground, down below,

the deepest, most dark, surely blackest of crows...


 

… sat stoically looking, much like one who'd know,

'gainst a sparkling snowdrift's alabaster glow.

I sat shivering, shaking, shunning terror's throe,

at his thrashing, rasping, ghastly horror show.


 

His metamorphosis came on very slow,

as the crow, like ancient times of long ago,

displayed daunting features, a ghastly fellow,

his shadowy specter gaunt — the eyes, hollow.


 

He cast me just a glance, one thought to bestow,

things he must have surely sought to foreshadow,

with silken smoothness, drifted to my window,

looked on, then bid me thus that I would follow.


 

For 'twas then that I knew that I now must go,

to follow him through the wet, cold ice, and snow

to heaven's high gates, hell's inferno below,

I'll admit to you now that I did not know...


 

Then, as we flew along — the earth far below,

our travels soon halted at some grim ghetto.

“Evermore, here, my sad seed in words you'll sow,

'tis forever here your zest for life must grow...”


 

By now, you may have guessed my fate, even so —

'tis here my shackled soul wavers to and fro,

trapped as I am, in this dingy bungalow,

a bard ensnared by ghosts of Edgar Allen Poe...