filk: Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay
Jan. 2nd, 2026 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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
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