Beata Beatrix, by Richard Buhr

Beata Beatrix, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (UK). 1864-1879.

Beata Beatrix

Tangled amid thorns and branches,
surrounded by moans and sighs,
a twig cracks, splits, oozing red
down gnarled bark. 

“Why have you torn me?
Have you no pity?”
Lizzie’s voice:
blood, words 
flowing
in a chloral haze.

Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case―
the peacock’s cry,
Argus eyes,
never-decaying flesh.

Seven years, her copper hair 
filled the coffin. 
In the lantern light 
of the pilfered grave,
her face, laudanum pale 
―Ophelia.

What of her glass without her …

A decade of betrayals 
of the mistress’s  
anorexic beauty,
the jealousies
of a stillborn
marriage.

At Tudor House, 
wombats, a kangaroo, 
armadillos, and
Lizzie 
rapping from beyond,
her voice incarnate
in a chaffinch’s song.
Fanny installed as housekeeper,
and Jane Morris, a dark-eyed
Proserpine. 

             Was not your grievous condition of weeping 
Sunlit copper halo. 
             wont one while to make others weep? 
Love holding her flickering flame,
                 And will ye now forget this thing
a white poppy
                 because a lady looketh upon you?
the red dove.

​Richard Buhr

Quotes in italics are from  Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation of Dante's La Vita Nuova, from Dante's Inferno, and from Rossetti's "The House of Life 53: Without Her."
Richard Buhr’s poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly and The New Renaissance and his essays have been published in Comparative Drama, the Midwest Quarterly and English Literature in Transition 1880-1920.  He lives in Maine, where he has worked over the years as a journalist and public relations professional.