Of every death Preceding this moment in time As I stand before a painting Of a young woman hanging drowned In a scene inlayed With thoughtless flowers, Which death is it, Exactly, That renders Millais' Ophelia With its beauty?
The work alone has form: Flora, depth, the colour of minute lights And the image has concept: A woman, dead in water. Ophelia lives in an image and a play: One moment, one story Resting on the temporal slopes Of this painted pinnacle of signs. Why did Shakespeare write About a woman pushed to suicide By the death of her father, At the hands of a heroic lover feigning Spiritual vacancy At the request of his own undead parent? Does every woman share this fate, Or is it fantasy - Attaining psychic substance Through a kind of impossible insanity? In other words: Is Ophelia's death, So chosen by Millais And Shakespeare in turn (Whose names are poetry) A mimetic echo of a million mortal moments? Or is it the prophecy of a time yet to come For which death has been moulded In a looping narrative cast, Made into a word describing Some sacred foreseen feature - Which is it: Does meaning sink into the past Or fly into the future?