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I/Iseult

Night after night he drank the dusk
from this narrow window,
eyes devouring the skyline
for any sign of your ship.
You think I did not love him, but
I only wanted him to die
in some more glorious way than pining for you.

I told him your hair coiled golden slow
around another's hips. I told him your faultless
lips drank deep another chalice.
Any dram of jealousy, sucked from my heart
to his, would have tasted sweet.
Mournful Tristan never doubted you, other Iseult.
My husband loved you with his life; he was as dead to me.

So when he could not rise from bed,
could only sip the angry sky, eclipsing thirsty reverie
I held his head and filled his eyes
--black sail on hailblown sea, my Tristan
now I am your only Iseult
I hold my life out to you
cupped in these white hands--

I could not move his heart to love or grief;
it simply stopped.
Anyone with love less bitter, look
and weep, how he took his last drink of life
from the air of my high room,
the sea-salt sheen unkissed from my lips
and how on my pristine doorstep she hovered--

Lovers! Why of all chaste marble
rooms, did you have to twine your hearts
and die in mine? Your final tryst, Tristan;
how glorious, they'll say. Well, I know
how your love-abandoned bodies smell,
soul become breath, boiled off at last ...
in this Iseult's unspoiled bridal bed.

Joy K. Hoffman

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