Death and the Maiden: An Elegy

By Claudia Kessel

After Franz Schubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen, Op. 7, No. 3

I.

How to kill a maiden:

Start by cutting her hair with time’s merciless steel scissors. Let their vicious silver fangs tear her auburn locks, falling in damp ribbons across her feet

Then shove her off a cliff into the cold, churning waves. Consumed by the sea’s eager, salivating mouth, by river’s twisting tongue. Eternity thirsts for her. Let her dress billow like a Waterhouse painting, her face pale, fever-cheeked and frozen-lipped

Or snare her blue silk robes in spokes, as the future’s relentless wooden wheel drags her flailing down a dirt road, feet first

Or crush her beloved lute in tomorrow’s clammy, grasping palms. Smash it to splinters – shards slicing her delicate white wrists

Better not poison her with flattery’s fruit; perhaps mask venom in a stemmed glass, hidden in sweet tonic

Not cruelty, exactly

Why wait, passive and patient, for age advancing with its sluggish, hunched creep, its dragging cane, its hiccupping limp?

Better she sprints toward it, sparks the match herself. Why not quit youth in blaze and fury?

Her beauty a flaming sword, a gasp of fire, an imploding star

II.

MAIDEN:
I’m not ready, don’t take me yet
For years, men poured their ardor into me
I was a borderless vessel
fenceless garden, horizon-less sea

I skipped lightly on the earth
Not weighed down by regret
the world wanted me, with its gluttony
I’m not ready, don’t take me yet

DEATH:
Give me your hand, you pretty thing
You knew this day would come
Slip into my envelope of solitude
You had your season, your time is done

Wrap your slim legs around my cloak
I’ll clutch your narrow waist
Close your lips, hush your puerile voice
Let an old woman take your place

Beauty peels away in fragments
Now you will sleep, no more time to borrow
She’ll awaken each morning to her tea of joy
mirror of pain, and sunrise of sorrow