First Thing from Fairy Castle

“Ah, I live in Mulgrave, not in York,

This drive ends my job.” Peaceable eyes

Alighting on a sky textile grey,

Over the fairy fashioned trees.


A wide house, a tall castle, a white card

To convey place and construe laws of exit.

They dream of Mulgrave, all the wounded kings,

And oligarchs, and, of course, poet snobs,

Like me – it sounded better when he said it –

Our pumpkin rider – “Mulegrave. Muhlgrave. Moolg.”


If it was fairy it was solid, very,

And as you walked upwards, a journey stuck,

And trappings of the south drummed out your legs,

And work extended, though it did not grate,

As if the place made forge-slogging your art.


It did. Because you owned your forge, you were it,

It was, too, what you did. I needed

An essay and a lot of unread dross to classify me,

Like a narrator of Chaucer,

Walked in on Malory.