Simply Gothic: Poe’s “Black Cat” retold

Simply Gothic is a new series I’ve started, in which I’m lyrically retelling some of my favorite masterpieces of short Gothic fiction. As much as I appreciate the brilliant prose of writers like Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, their expansive vocabulary and convoluted syntax is sometimes a bit much for the younger reader.

With this lyrical version of “The Black Cat” from Edgar Allen Poe, I hope to make the timeless classic more accessible to newcomers . The rhyming anapest adds a sense of levity, without compromising on any of the graphic details.

Other stories in the Simply Gothic series include “Feathertop” by Hawthorne and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” from Melville.

The complete poem will remain here on the website for a limited time. But eventually I intend to compile the series into a paperback or an illustrated e-book, and make it available for sale. You can also view and download the complete Simply Gothic anthology from my Bookshop page.

Locked up in prison, alone in my cell
With a story disturbing, not easy to tell
But let’s take it slowly, go back to the start
To my boyhood with nothing but joy in my heart
When my friends and my parents could easily see
That I loved all my pets and they also loved me
For my fondness of animals none could deny
From the rabbits in cages to birds that could fly

Happily married, my wife understood
The importance of house pets who made me feel good
And soon we had spaniels and hamsters and fish
A monkey, a parrot and all I could wish
Then one day she brought me a beautiful cat
Entirely black and a little bit fat
Now some say black cats are a witch in disguise
Yet this one was not only spotless but wise

Pluto we called him, a friend tried and true
But with years spent together, I gradually grew
To be shorter in temper and mean to my wife
And a little bit nasty to all forms of life
Abusive towards everything, dogs, cats and birds
Increasingly violent and prone to bad words
So even with Pluto, my very best friend
My kindness had come to a terrible end

And then came the drinking, and still I grew worse
While Pluto detected some sickness or curse
I should have consulted a family physician
As Pluto observed me with fear and suspicion
Till one night I reached for a knife in my pocket
And cut the cat’s eyeball right out of its socket
’Twas not a proud moment, I’ll have to admit
So then I took liquor to help me forget

Recovering slowly, poor Pluto improved
But he ran to avoid me wherever I moved
I hated him now, all deformed with one eye
And then started wishing that Pluto would die
So I hanged him till dead with some rope which I’d found
And the very same night my house burnt to the ground
Were the two things related? I can’t really say
Though I lost everything but my wife on that day

Our house was destroyed and just one wall remained
And the wall, we all saw, was unusually stained
So spectators gathered and plainly took note
The shape of a cat with a rope round its throat
A lingering shadow or ghost of some kind
Whose image now tortured my sensitive mind
And steadily drinking I started to thinking
Of finding a new cat with two eyes for blinking

Till one night I found him, as black as can be
And looking exactly like Pluto to me
Except for a white patch of fur on its chest
But otherwise ebony black all the rest
He purred for me loudly and followed me home
But not before long came the change in my tone
Strangely and deeply adored by my wife
This cat was becoming the scourge of my life

I missed it at first, and I can’t tell you why
But the cat, just like Pluto, was missing one eye
And the more I despised it, the more he grew near
It followed me everywhere, filled me with fear
A reminder of death and my murderous deed
How thoughts can turn hateful when fear takes the lead
Till finally I’d had it, I wanted him dead
So I picked up an axe and I swung for his head

But that’s when my wife intercepted the blow
And caught in the act my annoyance did grow
So I picked up the axe and I swung it again
And buried it squarely inside of her brain
I can’t say I felt a great sense of remorse
As I looked for a place to dispose of the corpse
I considered the garden, then tapped on the wall
And decided the cellar seemed safest of all

Removing some bricks I remodeled a bit
Creating some space where the body would fit
Then packed it in neatly and lined it with mortar
So none would suspect the least hint of disorder
And what a relief to be finished with that
For three days I waited: no sign of the cat
The crime had been perfect and now I was free
And no one could cast their suspicion on me

Even day four when the chief of police
Dropped in with his questions I answered with ease
And showed him the house, let him search high and low
While telling him all that he wanted to know
So proud of my work in the cellar I flaunted
That’s when we noticed the basement was haunted
A hideous cry from inside could be heard
From deep in the wall where my wife was interred

The howling continued, right there in the wall
A scream so inhuman, it made my skin crawl
And so the police, whom I’d taken for fools
Began moving bricks from the wall with their tools
Slowly exposing the spaces within
Revealing my foul and abominable sin
On the head of the dead rotting body he sat
For I’d buried that one-eyed unspeakable cat

Further reading

In the beginning was the worm

10 Honey-Tongued Limericks about Shakespeare

Love poems from lockdown: A work of fiction