Les Amants: Till the Gallows Do We Part
No promise can be forcibly broken
if we insist that nothing comes between us.
This cloth sundering our lips
is merely the grand drape of our affaire—
Never their barricade to our love.
Our passion is an insurgency that will blaze on post-mortem despite it.
A linen kiss;
Our crowning embrace until we head for the gallows.
The audience clusters outside to behold the finale of our melodrama,
and I yearn for your naked touch once more.
We squeeze with the thrills of memories afar.
and soon memories afar are all we’ll be, but not without this last mutiny.
Our love is why we’re here
so, it’s only fitting that this is how we’ll part.
If only we had run away instead,
we could’ve left our decrepit marriages dust bound—
Never stealing from our spouses their lives,
but we wanted each other so badly, we consummated our new life with murder.
As the noose is placed around our necks, our future is revealed;
It used to be a cabin in the woods—creek side in autumn.
A rope swing hung from a front yard maple; A few leaves fluttered down.
Our kids chased the dog in the yard or she was chasing them. We never knew.
but now this Townsquare has become our château des bois and our maple has been cut and formed into a stage with a drop floor and a single rafter.
I'm glad the rope still swings freely.
Lines of blood form our signatures on death certificates,
as the last words from condemned lovers are confessed.
“Our love was a sin coiled around our hearts,
and we were unconscious of it until we’d became its servant.
We stand proud of our reasons, but not our actions.
Our admission heeds a warning to any lovers too weak to see it through, like us.
I did the deed myself and she drew up the plans. For our love, for everything that we ever felt, and for the possibility of true happiness
we would do it all over again, tomorrow.”
The floor opens…
...Catherine Miller and George Smith parted ways at the Gallows on Feb 3rd, 1881. It was 11:20 am.
The clouds shed not one tear for them. It was a relatively sunny day.
the Painting:
The Lovers (Les Amants) by René Magritte
1928. Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8" (54 x 73.4 cm)
© 2023 Chris Sadhill