Orpheus & Clayre
By Kevin Nicholas Roberts (1968-2008)
Orpheus
Fair phantom notes flow from thy lips
On breath made sweet with supple sighs;
Thy song, in soft and savage sips,
The gods would drink with half-closed eyes.
Your music sooth’d the souls of men
And moved the wind and stir’d the trees—
Forever now, sweet Orpheus,
It haunts the seas.
The savage sea, its surge and sway
Of clutching waves and barren deep
Sang soft thy dirge, then bore away
Thy sleepless life of lifeless sleep.
The gods who tore thee left a trace
Of former fairness, for it seems
You feign the face of one awake, the face
Of one who dreams.
The glancing blow, the blow that smote,
Harsh payment for thy single sin,
Unsexed thee by thy severed throat
And left thee loathe and least of men.
O lustful women! Whores of fate!
All envious of Eurydice,
They lured her in and locked the gates
Of Paradise.
Clayre
Shades that deck the dusky sky,
That changes hue
With every breeze that billows by,
Change less than you.
Its colors ever-changing;
Its tides so vastly ranging,
And still they change far less than Clayre should do.
It’s me alone she loves by night,
But then by day,
When lovers lure her supple sight,
She’s borne away.
Her straying glance can gash apart
The chambers of my steady heart;
So, my inconstant Clayre, what would you say?
Your eyes, no doubt, possess with grace
Their fickle stare,
Give magic to your maiden face,
Twice-over fair.
And still a lesser man might trade
Such beauty for a love that stayed,
For all the silken strands of all your hair.
But I, my Love, see only you
And could not cease
To love those eyes that thrill my soul,
yet yield no peace.
Their fever, like the blushing flowers
Left swaying in the sun for hours,
Gives rise to streams of sighs that still increase.
Your way, I know, no prayer nor plea
Could take away;
No more could I deny the sea
Its surge and sway.
As long as your mood ever ranges
To a love, as one love never changes;
Just as long as no thing ever changes
Your love for me.
Featured in New Lyre Summer 2022
Kevin Nicholas Roberts (1969-2008) was a poet, college English Professor, author, husband to Jan and father to his angel dog Buddy. Kevin had two books published in the United Kingdom: Fatal Women, a collection of poetry and Quest for the Beloved: Awaking Truth & Beauty through Mystical Poetry, a book of literary criticism and philosophical discussion. Kevin was the founder and first editor of the poetry journal, Romantics Quarterly.
The head of Orpheus is said to have continued singing as Thracian Hebrus carried it to the sea. But the tale says nothing of an exuberance of archaicisms, stumbling alliterations and hissing sibilants, about which I must say no more, lest I disturb Mr. Roberts' rest, and further impugn his editors' lapse of judgment.
Nil de mortuis nisi bonum.
Kevin Roberts has long been one of my favorite contemporary poets and he was considered the consensus best of his tribe, the New Romantics.
Thanks to David Gosselin for helping to keep his work in the public eye.