Poetry Break: "Succubus"

The image to the right comes to you courtesy of Wikipedia's John Collier Gallery. Collier (1850-1934) was a British artist who painted in the pre-Raphaelite style.

This particular painting is titled Lilith, and it dates from 1892. She appears here with a snake, which -- I'm guessing -- is intended to visually link her to Satan and his temptation of Eve.

The link derives from a Medieval legend that Lilith was the first wife of Adam. According to that legend as recounted in The Alphabet of Ben Sira, an anonymous Jewish text probably dating somewhere between 700 and 1000 A.D., Lilith refused to submit sexually to Adam if this meant lying below, stating: "I will not lie below." She then uttered the Hebrew name of God and flew off into the air, apparently becoming a night demon, as her name implies.

In some Kabbalistic works, Lilith is identified as the mate of Samael, whom readers of Gypsy Scholar have already met.

Possibly deriving from the Ben Sira passage just cited, perhaps due to the sexual element -- but I'm again just guessing -- Lilith has sometimes been associated with the Medieval figure of the succubus, which is etymologically problematic since the term "succubus" comes from the Latin "sub-" + "cubare," meaning "to lie under," which is precisely what Lilith refused to do.

According to Medieval legend, a succubus was a female demon who came to sleeping men during the night to seduce them during their dreams. The Malleus Maleficarum, published in 1487 and purporting to explain all about witchcraft and how to vanquish it, states that the succubus would collect semen from the men whom they seduced and give it to an incubus, who would use it to impregnate sleeping women, producing children susceptible to demonic influence.

No doubt, this is all fascinating, but I'll just stop here and offer my poem, which presents a succubus at work in seduction, though the dream is from the man's perspective -- not me, incidentally, for I've never experienced such a nightmare (thank God).

By the way, if literary descriptions of sexuality bother you, then you'll want to skip this poem.

Succubus

She slipped, alone, into my room
to moan low sighs upon my ear,
and catch me tangled in her hair,
and lull me in a sensual swoon.

I loved her softer in the night
than subtle hand, with light caress,
could stroke one leg to raise a dress
and brush a moistened inner thigh.

And as a wanton sybarite,
she pressed her body close to mine
and drank my love like warm red wine
as though to drink it fully dry.

Intoxicated with her charms,
I kissed, and kissed, her supple breasts,
till languished in quiescent rest,
I lingered long within her arms.

I composed this poem around 1984, which will set the gears in some minds whirring, but don't read too much into the date or the narrative "I."