“Nonetheless, a worm/had eaten its way through any number/of Gabriel’s lines, some of his best./He had to reconstruct them from memory,/or compose them anew.”
Gabriel tucked his manuscript book
of poems into Lizzie Siddal’s coffin,
just before the interment. Yes,
she had probably killed herself,
though Gabriel’s friends had made
away with whatever note
she had written. The black dog
of melancholy had long had its teeth
in her; her child had come stillborn;
and Gabriel’s attentions—as always—
had been divided. Of all the things
that distracted him from Lizzie—
the painful progress of his art,
the nights out on the town
with Solomon and little Swinburne,
the beautiful models—it was easiest
to regret the poems he had spent
so many hours working and reworking.
So many of them, too, had been addressed
to her. A sacrifice was called for,
and Gabriel offered up the manuscript
book. It was the least he could do.
Seven years later he had second thoughts.
The poems in that notebook, he knew,
were among his best, and he had
no other copies of them. A man
in London was ready to print his work,
if he had enough to make a proper book.
It was what Lizzie would have wanted,
his friends assured him. Strings were pulled.
Gabriel was far away when the grave
was opened and the notebook rescued.
All in the coffin was found quite perfect,
reported the factotum into whose hands
the business had been entrusted. Did he mean
Lizzie’s pale skin was still smooth, her hair
still the auburn-gold curtain that once
entranced Gabriel, Millais, and Holman Hunt?
Probably not: just that no one had been there
first. The book came to Gabriel
some days later, still damp and reeking
of disinfectant. Lizzie had held it close,
protected it. Nonetheless, a worm
had eaten its way through any number
of Gabriel’s lines, some of his best.
He had to reconstruct them from memory,
or compose them anew.
Mark Scroggins’s first four books of poetry and selections of other work have been collected in Damage: Poems 1988-2022, which was released with Dos Madres Press in 2022. He is at work on a long serial poem, the first section of which, Zion Offramp 1-50, was published last year with MadHat Press. Zion Offramp 51-100 is expected late in 2024. He was written or edited three books on the poet Louis Zukofsky and a study of the British fantasist Michael Moorcock. His essays and reviews have been collected in three volumes, most recently Arcane Pleasures: On Poetry and Some Other Arts, published with Selva Oscura in 2023.
