Acquisition

Red Chinese garment bought at Unicorn

I cannot say we’ll bide another night,

Or that we won’t. I know you cool me down,

A poultice up against that wound of warmth.

I love your look and think you’re fond of mine,

Can revel at my shoulders and express

Pride enough to be certain in your ride.

But though you passed sufferance, you may go.


Red garment that I bought at Unicorn,

You should know that your outer side is handsome.

It is well woven and softly repaired.

Argolid eyed it hung; drawn out it is

A banner, sure enough. But I am keener

On the smooth red creamsheen layered within,


The ideal contact, child of Unicorn,

That intimate synthesis, a kinship, and a touch,

From the collective purchase, to you, worn

Unlessened by company. Skin and you.

If this is our last night, Unicorn-silk,

We will spend it together.


Red garment bought at ancient Unicorn,

There where things have been bought or not

Bought since Christ was a cadet

(Around 1910, in the Irish arm) – know you,

You are a stopgap, love. Behind my claim

Lies desire for an unseen jacket form,

That whores its blindside, jubilating black,

That bleeds and stains its redness where you shine.


And though you are a beauty, you can’t pull

A trick like that. Count on no powers

During these sympathetic red-gold hours.

Your feeling cannot plead your case,

When I’m pledged in another place,

Though for the night, you’re needed to the full.


(I kept you as it turned out-

rival's late)

Wimple

I daresay I could, if I set my mind to it,

But my body will never be set to.

And so I never fight, I rarely look,

Why would I? When that which I see, I want?

I’ve been told I am tall enough,

The boathouse, such a place to hack that down.


But here we are, long coats wavering in step,

Rowing the air with the draped spavined lion,

And it is suffused with half-clerical fear

That I, for myself, crouch at that boathouse,


The irk of emasculation, the envy of the brave,

The guilt of the voyeur when the crews heave up

Their torpedoes, and shake them free.


I realise, still inward, the race is passing, and say,

“Which one are they? Which one?” and get no

Answer, presuppose navy blue, so catch that drama

Anyway. And they are winning.


An extended viewing I’ve scarcely deserved, all things

Being equal, and so am shamed to bawl for Ball,

And a bit comforted by this.


I find, beyond hope or qualm, the shape I have looked for,

Spiked with coldness to bump the rightful metaphor.


I cannot stay to greet it, only stare,

And scarper, to gather the spirits.


I hadn’t taken in that we were altogether first,

Which is sufficient, I suppose, at this point.


But blood and picture-postcard snow

Disturbed this feast.

Towering

Did we know it existed?

Shall we climb up within it?

Travel with an armed guard, then,

Benedick’s stong arm, and his girl’s meekness,

Artemis to the fore, Freyja to the aft,

Whither the winged lion would speak with you.


At Joyous Gard, I am a frequent guest.

They tend to put me next to Bors the good,

With Guinevere opposite. Another another’s,

And I care elsewhere, and so am safe here.


The plastic arras, it was apposite

For murder or for jinks, not for a clutch.

But we had left some happy ones

To search about the pretty night

Preferring ourselves to do as plants do,

To rustle.


The vultures may not eat but speak.

The white bird sent me out to pine,

And watched me netted in the reek

Of chugged up, patronised red wine.


What kind of thing is this? Feather, fake, fur,

Two persons or three or a pangoline?

The Queen shrugs off revolt, incarnated

In such a beautiful and noteless sound.

God Save Her with a golden liturgy,

God and I and another sirens serve.

Lupercalia. The order foreseen

So she spoke:

13th Feb

Anointing.
Bacchic state.
Frustrated search.
Purification and Rebirth.
Hymn to the Gods.
Lyric poetry.
Symposium.
Confrontation of Duty.
Aeolus and Cupid
bar, bar, ian
Flaying at the Dionysia

14th Feb

Piety
Confusion
Despair
Duty arisen
Amphitheatred
Being Whored
Becoming Innured
Flayed at the Dionysia

15th Feb

Meditation.
Self-reproach.
Asceticism.
Examination.
Curst deluge

And to survive I feigned that I
Was ignorant of Delphic Greek

So-So Drunk, Not So Drunk

You worry what you might have said?

My memory is good – but you’d

Rather not know. Yet surely you won’t mind

If I now tell you what, tonight, you did not say.


Never a syllable passed on a brow

Or garment or eye of a single man.

(Though tentative knives set about carving

At women, but that does does not count)


Suppose a yardarm had been raised,

Suppose a gallows-tree had creaked,

Suppose an oath had tied a mind, and then

Suppose what speech I could have made.


As I recall, I made it, and, along two anecdotes,

Clothpegged it hung strangled out and beat down.

That was before I tumbled and I ripped

And my dialogue became, well, less exact.


Before I fell, too, I talked with a prize

Bitch nestled in an alpha-nursed boudoir

Who joined her voice to throw my essay out

Perhaps remembering how I’d mocked hers,

In academic sense. Quite well set up,

These folk can play at prophets, powerful,

Unerring, right, salted and harnessed spite,

A cartel on an unknown-purging ride.

You see I wasn’t playing.


You weren’t playful; set to sleep, your mind

Quite lax. You did not declare love

For any being (inc. me) as you know,

You moved those limpid arms from side to side,

You stuck by rowing, analysed your course.

You went to bed.

You aren’t dull. You weren’t hoarse.


The night is small just as the quad is cold

And square shaped and contains none else.

The chorus part and gouged cloth is the king’s.

Its Colour

When you need to see something

The sky can’t be relied upon. Alone

It can look bald, and cluttered when

It’s stained by cloud or Gothic spire-junk.

So much lies in the colour.

One will do.


Sunsets pink and orange like so many boiled sweets

Shining and gloating that they’ve been sucked, no,

We can surely do without them.

Thin grey – well I like its touch,

It treats the wounds of thirst and tousles you.

But no, the artist’s tint lies in the sleeve of Marie-Louise.


Who is Marie-Louise? you may well ask, and does she

Go to St Hughs or Hildas? I don’t know, no, no,

I think she was probably home-schooled,

At some period prior to the flourishing

Of Anthony van Dyck, and arranged

Her blue-grey-mauve-radiant sleeve specially.


But it doesn’t last for very long, soon formalised

Until oversung twilight drapes black wood

And yellow stone, firm colours, Baltic flag.

Her gaze was vacant, no doubt. His was too,

Maybe. He might have been bought by the crinoline

Or perhaps Marie was clothed with Dutch sky.

A Habsburg match

1

It seemed ordained.

Both of them God-bestowed round the same time;

No proxies would be needed at the church.

They would be joined when she was tall enough

To fit the dress, diamantine brocaded,

That had belonged to small-pox buried aunt.


Their future prospects too great to be good,

Just one dissenting envoy said. “For he

Is heir to arid plains won by the sword,

To tilled and serried verdant fatherland,

Peninsular gem-cities, guarded isles,

And lordship of the heathen Cherokee.

And she? Will wear the mildest western crown,

Whose soft gold teases out a stream of tax,

Whose malleable sceptre subjects strokes,

Those tyrannied sea-people,

Those slaves who feel so blessed free.


“Sirs, what have you done, what do you do?

You parcel the first reign of all the earth.”


2

They do not care for awkward boundaries,

Not much more than they care not for each other,

Acquainted by inexpert hack portraits.

But they are not impassive. The princess

Gladly awaits her dead aunt Bessie’s dress;

And the prince wonders when the cannon sound.

They stick to expectations and go on.

At the altar they are vague, pleasantly so.


3

She thinks her husband a strange sort of boy,

So many words for everyone, quacking

In a garbled, hasty voice that self-corrects

And stumbles; yet he hardly speaks to her

And sounds like a bad actor when he does.

He wishes they weren’t watched

(She’s used to it. She’s been told dignity

Is always less vulgar than privacy).

He knows no conjugal demand

Can get her on her own; he doesn’t know

If this is under foreign protocol,

Or what she wants.


4

He gets into the habit of talking

To everyone when she has left the room

About love. To young, uninterested courtiers,

Old ones, who find it funny though don’t laugh,

A passing poet, and the queen his mother

(He sails back to his kingdom just to reach her),

Who answers “I don’t think, if your conduct

Is as you have described it, well,

I’d scarcely love you either. Restes tranquil.”


The princess misses him a little though.

She moves their household to a port-town, where

A maid falls dead of plague. She crooks

Her regal lips, and boredly wonders

If, when reunited, in heaven with her lord,

Things will perhaps feel easier than this.