Adventure tale and hard-won battle,

Hard on me, soft on us,

Struggled for your kisses, pliant

I chose your love and that was that.

Villainy, do you know it?

You do now, and so do I.

To say I had before I met you,

Forgiven thus, I’d have to lie.

Match me here, match me now,

I’m pious in my undertaking,

Lord in Heaven, Your Design,

Knaves have cast it for the breaking,

I, your love, have broken thus.

 

“I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this,/Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.” (5, 2, 420-421)

I wrote this poem from Othello’s perspective. His death scene, though it had that passage of him lamenting his own legacy, felt much more like a testament to Desdemona. His dying breath was upon her lips. He recognized in himself, that he was a great man who fell to cheap villainy, who understood that his love was not false simply because it failed; it was true but was out of his control. His power in life did not, in death, strip the Moorish identity he’d cast away long ago, and he killed himself not because of his hatred of it, but because of his hatred of the events it inspired, no matter how unrelated it may have looked to him at the height of his power.

Othello’s religious identity was something I explored in this poem. I felt it was a great dimension to his character, not just that he pronounced his identity, but because he lived it. Othello and Desdemona’s relationship was one built on the sanctity of marriage, and the respect that came for that and not pursuing each other out of wedlock. That devotion to sanctity is what inevitably led to the “in” Iago needed to set his plan in motion, and ultimately, their devotion to their religion and each other played a role in the tragedy that ended their lives.

I titled this poem kind of obviously, but essentially, story is what brought them together, and deceitful tales are what led to their deaths.