I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
Bestrewn with lines of levity, held down in weighty prose
Each character a delight, each jot and tittle filled with those
Such words that enticed and sorely endeared
Oh, how my heart flew! Then its wings sheared
The shock as your cursive on vellum to see
Were just as well writ to another she
Who knew your words could so deceive,
When writ you loved me and I believed?
I read those words anew with different eyes
Wallowed in the depth of those well crafted lies
The parchments of paragraphs penned are gathered
Those once sweet sentences now kerosene slathered
And your fabrications float on incendiary puffs
That thus punctuate how my love of you is snuffed
With the last of when for you I yearned
It was a pleasure to burn
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Tonight at the pub Gospel Isosceles asks us to “bridge the gap” by quoting the opening lines from two different books, and then construct a poem filling in the space between. I used the following opening lines:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane;
—Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)
It was a pleasure to burn.
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
