Like a scorpion in the vial
A black rose against the sky
Her love stone grey,
With all the pity of the sea.
Sweet acid corrosion
My benighted love weeps,
While from a dreaming distance
The death-knell makes its clarion call.

Hush, we dare not speak!
For with no more than a whisper,
Could her name could tear this world apart.

Oleander!
Like sight for the blind,
And love
For the broken-hearted,
Oleander!
Her name could hardly leave my lips
Without venomous reprise
From the blood-soaked
And the envious.
And still I speak,
Though the words may cut my tongue.

And though I never knew you,
Oleander,
Or the silence that surrounded you
In your wake,
The caress of flesh upon wind
That parts it all
So sweetly like a razor.
Though I never knew anything
Beyond time,
Before death was more than a memory,
I will sing your name,

Oleander!

Penned by my hand on the 7th of Niuran, in the year 187 MA.