Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

EDGAR AND HELEN
Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman, 1848
An Imaginary Romance
1
They walk the sunlit avenue, the parasol
concealing her face as she says,
“How grand
you have come all this distance to see me.”
She wears a dress imported from France,
confounds him with a haughty roseate scent.
“I will not permit you, of course,
to fall in love with me.”
He grips
the black valise. His hands turn white
as sheaves of poems fall out
beneath the feet of Sunday crowds.
“Alas,” he says, retrieving them,
searching her eyes as she stoops to help,
“If such were possible, then —
Then it is already too late.”
By chance she finds the poem
inscribed to her:
I saw thee once — once only
She reads it and averts her gaze,
pretending to favor a floral display.
The suitor knows he has pleased her.
In the strange rooming house he broods
as unrelenting opiates of memory
draw moonlight houris in Helen’s form.