Nightingale Tears

Issue five: poem by Suzanne Willis

In this poetic retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The nightingale’, Suzanne Willis offers mercy and a second chance paid for in the trilling notes of song turned to tears.

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NIGHTINGALE—Motacilla Luscinia, Birds illustrated by color photography, Vol. III. No. 4, Nature Study Publishing Company: Chicago, 1898

Sparrow-brown, wren-flit,
she spins songs like ribbons, spiralling through the dusk.
Nattergal, Night Songstress
defying the end
crying back the dying under lavender light
and autumn’s cold breath, stealing
the verdant world.

	An emperor in love with eternal Spring
	woven in a clockwork forest, flocks
	of mimicry. Ribbons, to bind.

Nightingale sings for Sister Death, who promises a king’s crown
in exchange for its sweetness, for even
Death needs reprieve from savagery. Craves,
a little something lovely, a bright point 
in the dark.

But as she listens, Sister Death knows a crown
is not enough. She cannot bear to take
the notes, turn the nightbird’s song ephemeral
a withering echo in a forest, lifeless,
turn of season silenced. So Death reaches, 
instead, her bony fingertip
elegant
as an emperor’s smile, touches
the notes trilling from the tiny beak, turning
them to tears, weeping 
softly from the bird’s black eyes. Catches
the tears in a lachrymal jar the colour of dawn 
and scented saintly rose.

The Angel of Death, sculpture of a funeral gondola, Venice. photo by Paolo Monti, 1951.

	An emperor with an eternal court, automaton viziers,
	spring-wound wife.
	He calcifies himself to the world, so even Sister Death
	has no interest here.

Walk the world with me? Death asks the nightingale.
Its returning trill sounds
like a sad smile, and she rests her feathered head
on Sister Death’s tired shoulder,
winter in her wings
sings
Death on her ever-walk, footsteps disappearing 
in the shadows, dawn-jar tucked 
in her ribcage
like a heart, 
scent of rose bloom
in her wake.

	An emperor smiles at the song he cannot place,
	at the nightingale’s ribbon tune 
	spiralling in the air, unwinding
	a spring-wound life.

Who knew the Nattergal was
a second chance bird?

‘The nightingale’, illustrated by Edmund Dulac, Stories from Hans Andersen, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.: London, 1911.

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Suzanne Willis is a Melbourne, Australia-based writer, a graduate of Clarion South and an Aurealis Awards finalist. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies by Fablecroft Publishing and Egaeus Press, and in Abyss & Apex and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her debut short story collection was released by Trepidatio Publishing in May 2022.