Fairy story

To be certain, he'd gone for a long enough way,
When they stopped by the priory's quiet.
And then he put aside some appeasement for time,
Pausing to strip at his stained saddle bags.

It was as they'd told him,
One of the calm places
In Cumbria with uncalm ends,
So he knew what to do with the glass box within.

Such a prince - he's the eldest, not the runt, of three -
And his talents and powers are where you can see them,
In his, like Arthur's, scabbardless, sword,
In his, like Talbot's, armed, company,
In frank blue eyes like Richard's,
Or Laszlo Corvinus',
Eyes atop the shape of Kornilov - you see.

But you have a night train to join and you catch it,
You knew - did you mind? - that was the last you'd see.

The prince cannot read and marks charters with crosses,
Or crowns, or some strange rampant creature he's put
In his fancy, when heralds put it in his arms;
So the curse that must frown from the priory lintel
Is read only, silently, by the dark cardinal,
Who's the old king's bastard, and a wicked man.

The cardinal has no hand telling this story,
But Powell and Pressburger say what the curse said.

The prince led the way down the priory aisle -
Forget about bridesmaids - the unhappy brideless
Are faithful and fatal bachelors for love
And bachelor doesn't for nothing mean knight,
So the prince's knight's rearing, well it could not pale him,
Standing beside the void in the glass box.

You are going away in a very strange carriage,
You sit in the midst of an ill-fitting train,
Such mien, such attendants, for king's or queen's daughter,
Even in the shadows...as small difference made
As the tablet in water you sink, mouth, eyes, glutting,
Your stare in the rest that seems such sure aggression.

The prince has displaced you in your display case,
His last gasps are silking up the demure crystal,
The cardinal's planning the regency council,
But only the farrier, local informant
Know's quite what's awry -

That his liege lies cold in sleepless beauty's eye.

Neo-Calvinism

Cowper and Hogg had a modus vivendi
A frame for it just so –
They missed each other at the crossroads,
though.

I’d prefer to take that assumption
Just a little bit, little bit further,
And closer, the clouds, after all, being clouds,
And the honey an enamel wrecker,
Just so.

I believe that this only world is populated
With base and with noble, distinguished by note.
The base aren’t worth discussion, they only discuss,

(But I know what they dream about, sadly, and dream it,
Somewhere where higher gravities don’t worry
At thoughty sinews, a warm dirty lair
For healthy and furry animals to roll in)

I see them, I walk with the powerful children,
I know they’re possessed of no power to destroy,
They make wonderful transient glory all day,
Might they let me tell them they’ve made it?

Canna say.

Arya Darlings

Well, there were different absences;
Not the bonny Irish (Danish) Swain -
He stood suppressing Sumorsaete - no, not
The snare of her dark hair, which, swaying
Outshone on. These songs
Can illustrate a kind of fitness yet -
That is the absence, and it can't transpire;
The ships are standardised, the tides are gone,
Lanegan keeps the ring and cannot tell
A dance where Calidore gets Pastorell.
Remember always where the sound was lain;
I love to listen where things aren't for long,
There where (big Gothic building at the back)
The Fairy King can ride you to the rack.

Goethe's Erlkonig, translation

Who rides so late through Night, Wind Wild?
It is the Father with his Child;
He has that Fry tucked in his arm,
He keeps him sicker, holds him warm.

‘Why hidest thou, son, thy pretty eyes?’
‘Seest thou not, sire, the Erlking arise?
The Erlking, crowned, amidst his train?’
‘My son, ‘tis fog doth presage rain.’

O Child beloved, follow me!
And sportive oddments shall ye see –
Many and bright be the Blooms of the Shore,
Golden the Garments my Dam hath in store.

‘Papa, o papa, didst thou not attend
To the vows of the Erlking, to make and to mend?’
‘Be of good cheer, staid cheer, my Child,
For Leaves feel wind just so, in Wild.’

Won’t you come, lovely Knave, won’t you come with me now?
My darling girls wait for thee; ask them not how
They be trim in the dance that is danced all the night,
But take their white hands, and rest in their eyes’ light.

‘O daddy, dear daddy, seest thou still but naught?
Not the Erlkonig’s girls in their house grimly wrought?’
‘O dearest, thy fancies! For I see them well,
And marvel you make Willows bevies from Hell.’

I love thee! for the glance in thy pretty eyes:
And if you resist me, well, force I’ll devise…
‘My father! my father! full hard is his grasp!
And hard be the Wound I have borne in his clasp…’

Though Papa be spooked, yet he presses the Horse,
He cradles the Boy with preemptive remorse,
Thus hampered, he wrests them almost to their Home,
But the Child has gone seeking the rest of the Tomb.

Ronsard Amours 74, draft 1

Translated in all, my Circean enchantress
Holds me belayed in her massed irons bound
Not through, though, spiked wine with its spoor or its sound,
Nor yet by some grass aphrodisiac mess.
The sword of revenge - the good Grecian's, none less -
And the tonic the winged doctor found
In the merest of nicks that a chime can resound
Well, it countermands countercharms that she may press
So that national sty at the end of the line
Regain all the stature not granted to kine,
Sagacity, crassly earned pause;
But for myself - that self, soul, this thing - to lodge her
It mightn't avail the signet of Roger
So darkly my reason gropes into my flaws.

Seconds

No child,
To be fair, but few,
And fewer who'd recall,
Thinks about one of TH White's
Cruder Gallic stereotypes
Sir Lancelot's squire, Uncle Dap
Greasing up rusty bones inside
His cancerous cuirass.

But that desire to keep age close
Is still a thing we understand.
I don't dare to be known grown up,
I stutter in all but two pubs,
And firmer humans than I am still hold to former hands.
The risk's the last set's had must be, to us, a very fearful dose.

Article: you are beautiful
When beauty is a licensed point,
And in art stand empirical.

Your separatehood accounted for
In script's elastic ambergris,
You back him up professional like,
She, warming, tenders me.

We fired first by turning up
And you had winged me two years back.
The bullet with your name on it
Stored in these vocal veins.

He reloaded the cartridges with keys,
His beard kept pointing down, so, powder-free;
My medico would have sluiced smelling-salts
Were she not down with me.

Well, there's a something that cats do
(Beasts for whom you lack sympathy
Though they be)

Their angle poised necked such a way
That you can't bond with them head-on
Unless you're otiose to stares
They hide undersong walrus smiles
Just like those madeup shotsmoke eyes
Scan, as it might be, unawares.

Against Langland

The flesh is no dungeon

Rather then a cauldron

For roasting unfatted

It simmers to boil -

the flesh, not like a garden,

But a tasked allotment,

has truck with no burden

of blandishing hurdles.

Though the flesh is no tower

(nor even verandah),

A balcony only

with jerry-built slats,

We should stand out come evening,

Full knowing it's raining.