POEM: THE GIRL AND THE GOAT

"Demelza" from Poldark...sigh...

The Girl and the Goat

A girl and a goat stood upon

a rocky ledge of land.

The goat fed on some mossy fern,

the girl upon the strand.

Though fair winds blew and storms were gone, 

the air lay still with salt.

And as day warmed and the sky cleared,

her heart became a vault.

As she watched the waves turn to gold,

with the sun’s rise toward noon

she knew that the sea had one, then;

the which she’d know of soon.

After a time there came a sound,

a stirring like the tide,

for creatures with the fairest hair

will not long quiet bide.

A riven foot on broken stone

beside her clapped the noise.

The fair-haired beast with red-rimmed eye,

that keeper she employs,

dinned the silence of her eyrie       

with tokens from a time

when sun and moon and stars combined,

to form a darker rhyme.

Your beauty to my eye at least

will stand the fairest ground.

Why don’t you choose the one you love

and start your marriage round?

Your choice is simple—one must live,

the other, he must die.

‘Tis natural as the rain doth fall

down from a storm-banked sky.

No pain or suffering, no final fear;

to sleep will this one go.

Death’s a blessing without your love;

such sorrow he’ll not know.

No harm in body, mind or soul

will come upon your choice.

But choose you must, to take your lot,

and soon you will rejoice!

She watched the sea and searched for sails,

as noonday’s light drew down.

And sure enough in distance rode

a ship through day’s gold crown.

It made its way from water’s world

and toward our harbour quay.

That one would live, the other die,

it was for her to say.

We waited for our half-dead men

to climb upon the dock,

to know which from the salvage saved

would hear the calling cock.

At last it was that two emerged,

near dead as all the rest.

We all knew then without a doubt,

of all, who’d chosen best.

For on the rocks beneath the cliff

two bodies lay aside.

Fair haired, both, like fond lovers lay,

soon taken with the tide.

 I WROTE THIS NOT TOO LONG AGO. I love the British TV show Poldark, and scenes with a woman standing on a cliff side looking for signs of returning ships is one that is repeated there; they are scenes replete with fear and loss, and hope and joy. Originally, I had a picture in my head of a young woman standing with a lamb looking out to sea. I knew she was watching for signs of her lover's return. I had that kind of Gothic or perhaps an earlier, late seventeenth century setting in mind, influenced by the wonderful portrayal of the Cornish coastline so well captured in Poldark. 

That image sat with me for quite a while; I didn't know what to do with it. Then I changed the lamb to a goat and thought of the traditional representation of Satan, and I began to think of the setting as one in which the woman will confront evil in some manner, specifically her own. In her heart she loves two men. Both have gone to sea, and their fleet has been caught in a storm. Who will return? Both? Neither?

     The goat temps her by offering her the assurrance that, indeed, one will return--provided she chooses which one. The devil's speech is without using quotation marks because I want to suggest good and evil are things within us (thoughts, attitudes, actions, choices) that we either suppress or bring to the surface. The goat is in her, metaphorically. The reader learns that the speaker/narrator is actually one of the women at the nearby dock who waits with the other women for the return of their men, just as the woman does on the cliff. The speaker indicates that the women gathered there have made their choices, their own pacts with the devil. But the girl on the cliff has made a different choice. 

     I guess one thing I'm expressing here is the need for care in making choices in life; every choice has its consequence. Bunjee cords are not an option.

Cheers, Jake.