For St Cross

An old anticlerical ensign is swaying
On Holy Cross scaffold – Don John he is back
And I watched him, walking, to deliver my poem,
My captain and king, in my treacherous way.

I thought, “You old bastard, how have you come slinking
Now driven from Bailleul-en-Vimeu, from England
Somewhere in the north, brooding Castle at Barnard,
From penning one lion and licking another,
Away from Galloway, the thistle, the rose –
Rubbished at Annan and scrubbed by Ben Jowett
To preach out the Greeks and love don’t you just know it
I’ll throw it
Kow-tow it
The towers of Jowett

Beat out of the academe, sold down the river
For top-tier nothings, you spent your last penny
On a quiet grave orchard more worthy than any?

God damn you, Lord John, and King John of Toom Tabard
And whatever of your bounty hanged in my scabbard
I cast it aside for the Mulvanine blackguard
To play prophylactics. If son of mine bear
A thread of the blood makes him Balliol’s heir

God burn out his breath
Or the devil at best.
And the heavens bless Rebecca Marsh and the rest."

Independent

Then could they ever count you quite like that?
I’ve looked at paved out pansies on the lawns,
All college coloured, like locked ranks of pawns,
And known you, in absentia, dodged the stat -
Think of the place five years ago. They sat
After their mornings chasing other yawns,
A different line of broken legs and Seans
From us and ours, more needed where we’re at.
Back then the banks were cropped about in red,
We would’ve turned up if we had been there.
And now we are, we can’t much care to play -
Well, bear well as you can, this day in May
Before the fortnight’s less than up; repair
The things you have to learn or else to shed.
Inside another head
More things are visible than were before,
The background scene will lift on what I saw
Outside the arching door.
Spoil away; you’re marked down to be chaste
Our ballot needs a salting and a baste.

To Persia

You are lying where her head lay,
As, on other mornings, mine.
You could nearly be mistaken:
Hair rather than sheeny, shaken
For a moment: has she been aged
Did she live her life laid down
And snore her sweet pigment away,
Leave your, peculiar, mottled line?
No, you and Boydy, long unstaged
Inherit softly, where the crown
Has left a waiting in the limes
And pomegranates. She would say –
I got to know them – I’d reply
Stay careful with that blanket’s sigh

Ramses

Some time ago I met a man
Who lived by choice without his hair
And told me why it was not strange
In his palace, loitering.

But I could see this was no time
To give delusion attention,
For things were – just as simple – strange;
So why would such a man,

A king of beauty, gleam around
The spoiling power of the blue
And wear a thing like a soft mat
For lager, on his glint?

“Some time ago I was a man
Who chose to take off all my hair
A woman took it cupped and strung
And hung it up for price.”

It was dull, it was more solid –
Daily shaven, under, twice…

Dryden Agonistes part II

“Who are we having then?” asked James’s daughter,
Asperity hawking all round her tone,
No mellowed from forgetting.

“Marlborough.”
“Not for that!”

…Darnby was looking very tired, so
Halifax – with the olden weather eye
For what was going on – stepped into place,

“You are inclining to the poetic,
Your Majesty?”

“I’m speaking the King’s –
My own, come to that, by Parliament –
The Queen’s own English.”

“And the King’s”, snapped William, stopping feigning,
“And Mr. Dryden’s, too” – that shut them up –
“Some say.”

“His contribution is scarcely in doubt,”
Halifax trimmed.

“Ve must develop it. I haf some taste.”

He liked to make them quite as quiet as
The paladin who founded Orangedom.

“You too, my darlink? You are staring zo? Vell
You must know I read and read a lot
And I haf tastes and I vont that man who
Allifax said before.”

“Rochester, sire, has been sometime dead…”

“Don’t patronise a Prinz King utero! I know all zat.
You zed ‘im: Shadwell.”

“No!”

Too much startlement’s hell for good address.

“I like him.” “But I never said him.” “Well.”

Halifax picks over his tact’s Fontenoy,
Spoils the bodies of prevarications,
Thinks of Prince William, his dykes, cochlea, cannon,
He knows now what went wrong,
“No, no, sire, ‘had well’…’
“Vell Shadwell I like.”

William of Orange, who has read Vegetius,
Machiavelli, and not Mac Flecknoe,
He thinks to summation: “Shadwell is humorous.”

Dryden Agonistes part I

He touched Mary's hand,
The wise Marquess of Halifax, thinking about
The theory of trimming, practice, how to tack -
The versified tackle an old friend can weave,
'There are some things of course that you won't want to change,'
Oh you, proud angered John and your fallow-field garland,
Will I yet laught gladly to th'epical Dutch?
'Your Majesties.' But she seemed slightly less clear.

'Things, Marquess?' 'Lady, I think about England
In my idle hours, so I like it calm.
Well, don't you, madam? Sure,
I'm no Rochester...'
'Nice Laurence Hyde?'
sniped Anne from her side.
'Oh, would that you were - '
'The other Rochester,
madam.'
'The ghastly mad boy, "Comus"
in his breast - '
'With a pretty dead Earling - '
'He only called once,
And I think that he had, well, some kind of
disease.'
'It is not of Rochester that I would
fain speak.' ('Then why did you say so?')
'The Laureacy.'

'Oh I see; well it's no, I'm afraid. That man tires me.'
'Dry Dryden, darling,' Anne said, and they laughed.
But Orange did not, for the sake of a scowling -
'I haf hat to dismiss my own Kaffalick food guarts.
I vant no papist poett, zo gett himm outt now.'

ISIS LOST, after Milton, written a year ago

'I married Isis on the fifth day of May' - Dylan


Of wed-bound husband's barren ridden hue,

Of mine, indeed, treat I. Thus fell it out:

As Greekish fables hail Pomona's pace,

Or Phoebus gentle season rolling forth,

In MAYUS tide - conjoined in such hour,

Whenasmuch Cynthia's cart had so careered

That of her bearings o'er breeze's swathe,

And royall Sojourns in marinick churnes,

Had tantafugued her radiant Master's tread

His tenfold Raye to swirle in fivefold full,

Grew I to Memphian maid, or Orphicke queene,

To Osiris and Horus demurest...