Villanelle: Rejection

This started out as a poem about a failed love, many years ago now, but transmuted into one about the devil - who exists and suffers (regardless of what the foolish recently-appointed Superior General of the Jesuits might say). However, perhaps there is something of the rejected human lover still lurking under the surface.

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Rejection is a grief the devil knows,
Undone by slighting of his self-sure love,
Heart-hate devours like canker in the rose.

Thrown from high ramparts where he’d thunder prose,

Baffled by mildness of the lyric dove,
Rejection is a grief the devil knows.

Freezing in hell-ice, each untruthful pose

Grinds jealous teeth at what’s been left above,
Heart-hate devours like canker in the rose.

Regret is helpless; that he rashly chose

Allows no backstep, like a gaoler’s shove,
Rejection is a grief the devil knows.

Ah, smile of gladness in a face which glows!

Instead, crabbed torment in a too-tight glove,
Heart-hate devours like canker in the rose.

No more to bluster in his fairground shows,

Self-sure but undone by his slighting love,
Rejection is a grief the devil knows,
Heart-hate devours like canker in the rose.

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© April 2014