Love Spells

Disproof of ritual magic:

incense and candles, amulets and spells.

Try hard as you will, you cannot make

an oblivious boy love you. 

I know. More than once, I have tried. Despite the aid

of an army of phantom assistants —

translucent, arrow-laden Cupids —

satyrs ascending fire-escapes —

garden Priapi all compass-pointing

from his bedroom to mine —

in spite of love-arbors made

by djins, piled high with roses

from the grave of Omar Khayyam —

in spite of the mandolin serenatas,

the gypsy fiddles, the er-hu, the lute,

the mournful barrage of hautbois

and the Arcadian shepherd’s pipe,

no, he heard not a single melody

that brought my name to his lips.

Not even the darker spells availed me:

despite the unfounded panic that seized

and diverted all his would-be lovers

as bodiless wish forms stalked them

on empty streets, scaling up to the height

of a penthouse with dacoit ease;

despite the solitude my magic cast

around him, still in all that emptiness,

I was not the one he called to fill it.

His lovers fled, and he fled their fleeing.

(Spells only serve repulsively, it seems!)

Vain were the midnight oaths and promises

I made to dubious monarchs of love,

half-seen in the smog of sulfurous hearth,

as I bartered off to black-eyed Erys

(love’s phantom in Pluto’s domain),

a whole year of my life, for a night of his.

“Later,” the hard bargainer said,

placing the coin back in my hand,

“Wait, and he will then be with you always.”

Now, with ashes and Styx between us

I know the scope of the contract refused:

The coin in my hand is for the boatman.

-2011, revised 2021.