Wretched Orpheus

I must be the cruellest of men, Eurydice, my beloved. To promise the earth only to allow you to perish; not once but twice. First in my absence and then through negligence. My blind, willful thoughtlessness.

I took you for my wife and my love for you was unequalled. Unequalled and utterly unbridled. But you were beset by reservations that bit and coiled like vipers around your conscience and they took you from me.

This is death, your prison. The dusted redoubts and crumbling crenellations; the undesired traps of guilt I lay all around like macabre wires. But the love I bore for you compelled me to deliver you from your solitude.

Like a fool I thought to deal with the gods. And to think they humoured me. Made me believe my childish verse and hopeful song, even as they foresaw my folly. But my charms were flawed and finite.

I have passed the gates of hell and traversed the underworld for you. To bring you home, my love. But my journey is naught when compared to your long, bleak existence, once I recalled to you the sky and the sun and our warm hearth.

For what have I done but reminded you of what you can no longer love? Tempted you with riches, however humble, when you inevitably must remain in the desolate realm of Hades. Live as a ghost and eternally die.

They told me not to look back and so I endeavour. I must not look back. But all the time I feel my head turning, eyes frantic, rolling in their sockets. Are you still at my elbow? My gaze is ever-bound to fall on you and freshly condemn you to oblivion.