filk: Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay

[elisem]

 (Whoever hellseries on AO3 is, this is for them, because it was their comment on https://archiveofourown.org/works/75916086 that made it happen.)

Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay

 

Says the reader to the poet, “Your verse fine and wild

My attention has caught, and my senses beguiled”

Says the poet to the reader, “Are you going my way?

I am Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay

You’ll not find me in found verse; the sonnet for me

Is the path of a poet determined to be free”

And she’ll pull you on behind

And down among the Muses you will ride

 

Some say that her love life is skid marks and swerves

But she’ll tell you in earnest it is Beauty she serves

She is changeable weather with a quicksilver soul

Edna St. Vincent’s not the kind you can control

But she writes like an angel with a devil’s sense of style

With heavenly precision and a wicked knowing smile

She says “They all will know some day

The name of Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning… Millay”

 

“Come down, come down, dear reader,” said the poetry patrol

“For they’ve taken young St. Vincent for the stealing of souls

She was speed racing Sappho, the Brownings, and Poe

Oh, come down, dear reader, to her final folio”

Now her body is broken and her breath is enjambed

She’s off to be the laureate of lays for the damned

But she smiles to hear you say

“I love you, Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning… Millay”

 

Vincent, by all opinions, could pour power into a poem

And take your breath and your heart before she took you home

Now too many poets — I won’t name names — they just came to play

They didn’t have a soul like St. Vincent Millay

She left us all longing, in spite of our pleas

But she reached out her hand and she left us with these

She gave us her visions, she gave us her poems 

And the Muses swooped down to carry her home

And the name we still reverence today

Is Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning… Millay