“My Muse” by Danil Rudoy is a 2008 English rhyming poem from Love Is Poetry. A black-and-blue room is interrupted by the Muse in red; her arrival restores courage, artistic purpose and the urge to live, while her disappearance returns the speaker to silence and mourning chords.
My Muse
I sit and ponder random things
Extracting music from the strings.
The room is colored blue and black:
These hues, I think, I’ll never lack.
You knock on my forgotten door
And bring me all that I adore:
Composure, courage and the urge
From self-destruction to emerge.
My Muse! You make me freeze at once
And wait for your approving glance,
Since all I did before you came
Had neither worth, nor use, nor aim.
You’re dressed in red from head to toe…
You soar above – I dwell below;
You talk to gods – I laugh at kings;
You have no flaws – I have no wings!
You know me well enough to take
Away the evil and the fake,
And give me all for what I ask,
Although it’s not an easy task…
The silence has to be destroyed:
You look exhausted and annoyed,
But I’m afraid that if I speak
I’ll make you more fatigued and sick.
I can’t pretend to be polite:
I take a pen and start to write
Portraying your immortal heart
In every form of human art.
You know how much I cried and prayed!
I need you now! – you need to fade!
I can’t destroy this old routine
And stop the fall of guillotine.
You vanish, turning into smoke,
Some incense I cannot evoke,
A tasteless fog, a vapid mist.
The red is gone: I end my feast.
The silence all my bliss absorbs
And I return to mourning chords.
The room, again, is black and blue:
I write a requiem for you.
2008
Publication
“My Muse” appears in Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life, in the opening movement, The Marriage Market.
In Love Is Poetry
The poem establishes several forces that recur across the collection: love as artistic command, the beloved woman as a measure of value, rhyme as emotional discipline, and the movement between exaltation and collapse. Its color architecture is unusually strict. Blue and black frame the speaker’s solitude; red belongs to the Muse; when red disappears, the opening colors return and the poem closes where it began.
Critical reading
A detailed critical reading of “My Muse” on Prose & Poetry follows the poem’s color architecture, sound, apostrophe, paired rhyme, disappearance and final requiem.
Related reading
Continue with The Gamut of Truth, Poetry by Danil Rudoy, Love Poems by Danil Rudoy, and Rhyming Poetry.
Text and citation
Copyright © Danil Rudoy. The poem is published here as the author’s canonical text. Short excerpts may be quoted for criticism, scholarship, teaching and literary discussion with attribution to Danil Rudoy and a link to this page. Full reproduction requires separate permission.