Arnold Böcklin, Swiss
“I Don’t See the Problem. You Said When I Proposed, You Wanted a Nice Rock. Well…Ta Daaaaa!,” ca. 1875-76
Tempera on wood
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/// “A Parisian Hotel?” her groom mocks,
“That’s for rich folks, who own bonds and stocks.
Learn to like what I like,
like The Honeymoon hike.”
(Their young marriage is now on the rocks.)
/// She sat down on the edge of a cliff
to rest muscles grown achy and stiff.
He points past the divide
to the glen’s other side.
His bride won’t cross the gorge— their first tiff.
/// She’d been warned by her mother he might
get “too physical” their wedding night.
She’d prefer he, instead,
prove his prowess in bed.
Climbing mountains ‘til dawn isn’t right.
/// Those who come here don’t tragically weep
before jumping into “the big sleep.”
Here they risk a slight sprain,
or a bruise. Not much pain.
This is one mile below “Lover’s Leap.”
/// His bride tells him she’s grown very weary.
She must sleep soon; her eyesight is bleary.
She requests they turn back
to the Honeymoon Shack,
and to urge his assent she gets teary.
/// He insists that the goal they should seek
is the top of the nearby high peak.
His Ma said she believed
that’s where he was conceived.
“And you’d go there to spawn? You’re a freak!”
/// When, of wedding nights, most people think,
they don’t picture them spent on the brink
of a thousand yard fall
down a steep rocky wall.
Such a kink may well call for a shrink.
/// Her new husband admits he is thrilled
by the thought that some blood could be spilled
when at last he’d fulfilled
a groom’s right and she’s “drilled”
on a high ledge where both could be killed.