In this week’s “poetics” prompt at dVerse Poets, Dora has dandled in multilinguistic glee the challenge of incorporating a “foreign” word that does not have a direct translation in English, and demonstrating its meaning in rhyme.

I chose the German loan-word Schadenfreude: (“harm-joy”) … the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.

A poison tee hee hee

(with apologies to Blake)


so, Schadenfreude: perversest pleasure gotten

from seeing (of a friend) delight turn rotten,

especially when (and this he must not know)

you're thinking: "Well, I could've told you so!"


It puts me in the mind of William Blake's

'Experience' - quite subtle, like the snake's.

Blake says: "and in the morning, glad I see

"my foe" [once friend] "stretched out beneath the tree."

                        'A Poison Tree 'by William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794


© Kathy Labrum McVittie 13 May 2025