The Rusalky Poem by Richard George

They are Russian girls who drowned.
Their forms are slight as children.
Their dark hair is a mane and long.
They are combing it for ever.

In June, they run to the cornfields.
They slip through the stalks like willow.
Their hair and sweat glisten the grain.
Where they have danced, it grows taller.

No brown is deeper than their eyes.
Their bottom lips are weighty.
They stare, down their brows, at a young man.
They hook his soul, reeling him in.

They ask him riddles on pain of death.
They ream his pockets for wormwood.
If none is there, they bundle him off.
With snake's tongue kisses they kill him.

A few young men get away.
For as long as they live, they are mad.
They gibber of hair, snakes in the corn.
Mother Russia enfolds them.