Posted on by Liam Guilar

Forest fantasy

Image: Leonhard Lenz. Wikimedia Commons

Seren of the Wildwood  

Marly Youmans, Wiseblood books, illustrated, hb., 72pps., US$16

LIAM GUILAR is beguiled by a dream of tangled trees

The Wildwood holds the remnants of the past, / Strange ceremonies that the fays still love / To watch – the rituals of demon tribes / Who once played havoc with the universe, / And everything that says the world is not / Exactly what it seems is hidden here, / But also there are paths to blessedness.

So begins Seren of the Wildwood, Marly Youmans’ narrative poem that drifts the reader through a tale that seems both familiar and strange.

Traditional fairy and folk tales have been a resource for many modern writers and film makers. The old story is usually rewritten to correct a perceived ideological bias, or to rationalise the magic, or to make it acceptable to modern audiences, whose ideas of story have been shrunk by mass market films. With notable exceptions, rewriting fails to produce anything that comes close to the originals in their ability to unsettle and entertain. Writers can study archetypes, read the psychoanalytical literature, immerse themselves in Joseph Campbell et al, naturalise Propp’s Morphology, and still produce a story that fails to hold an audience.[i]

The stories Walt Disneyfied are closer to inappropriate dreams that don’t care about your daylight ideology, or your preferred version of the world. They exist in the liminal space between waking and sleeping, recalling a time when the wolves were real and the forest was a dangerous place. Marly Youmans’ story moves bodily into that space, where nothing is quite what it seems, and never quite what it should be, where hope and disappointment are as commonplace as leaves and what we might label cruelty is just the way the world is.

Her poem is not a retelling of a previous story – but is rather a new story, inhabiting old spaces to make them new again. Seren grows up on the edges of the Wildwood, her childhood overshadowed by the death of her brothers, which the story ascribes to her father’s ill-chosen words. Constrained at home by her mother’s care, she is lured into the trees by the promise of friendship and adventure. She meets characters who harm and help her, moving through a dream-like landscape, made real by Youmans’ descriptions, until she finds her way home.

The poem is written in sixty-two stanzas, each consisting of twenty-one lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter ending with a ‘Bob and Wheel’. The Bob is an abrupt two syllable line, the Wheel four short lines rhyming internally. They break the visual and aural monotony even the best blank verse can produce over a long narrative; they can summarise the stanza, comment on it, or provide an opportunity for epigrammatic statement:

[…]Next, a King

Not young but middle-aged his curling beard

Gone steel,

His mind turned lunatic,

His body no ideal

Of grace and charm to prick

Desire: man as ordeal.

The Bob and Wheel, famously used in Gawain and the Green Knight, inevitably evoke medieval precedent, as does the walled garden Seren finds but can’t enter. Although the Wildwood is not the harsh landscape Gawain rides into before returning home, the Knight of Romance rode into the forest to seek adventures because the forest was the place where the normal social rules and expectations did not apply. There is often a didactic element to such stories, but fortunately Youmans avoids the temptation to turn hers into a sermon.

Her poem is full of good lines:

Like some grandfather’s pocket watch wound tight

But then forgotten, Seren moved slower

And slower.

The descriptions of the landscape anchor the fantastic story. In the following quotation Seren is heading towards a river she must cross and discovers a waterfall:

And so she travelled toward the roar of rain

With thunder, apprehensive as she neared

The lip where torrents catapulted free

From stone and merged into a muscular

And sovereign streaming force – the energy

That shocks the trembling pebbles into flight

And grinds the massive boulders into bowls.

Occasionally it is not easy to decide if a line is padded or what might be padding is deliberate stye: ‘It seemed satanic, manic, half insane’, but this is so rare that the fact it’s noticeable is a tribute to all the other lines where it isn’t.  

The poem is rich in images and incidents and packed with a diverse cast of characters, but what does it mean? This is the wrong question. In school we are taught ‘how to read a poem’. For ‘read’, understand ‘analyse’ and the purpose of the analysis is to explain ‘what the poem means’ or, in its most depressing formulation ‘what was the poet was trying to say’. These questions and the approaches they require have little to do with the experience of reading poetry outside the academy.

Stories, poems, and narrative poems especially, can be a way of thinking in and through language, in a non-linear, perhaps non-rational, associative way. The story works for the reader when it activates memory, prior reading, knowledge and experience. The question therefore should be, what does the story do for you while you’re reading it, and afterwards, when a phrase, an incident, or an image remains in your memory.[ii]

Youmans’ poem encourages such a line of thinking; there are numerous allusions to other stories, tying Seren into a network of intertextuality, (at one point she is helped in the story by remembering the stories she has been told), there are images, which evoke a host of medieval precedents, but Youmans avoids the simplification of neat equivalence or the temptation of a tidy conclusion.

In terms of traditional narrative arcs, if you believe in the importance of such things, the story ends abruptly and very little is explained. There are questions left unanswered and threads that were run out but not neatly tied together at the end. The reader is being treated with respect and left alone with the story. It is a book that invites and rewards multiple rereading.

Reading is made easier because the book itself is a beautiful object. Wiseblood books are to be commended on producing such a fine hardback at such a low price. Printed on good quality paper, one stanza to a page, Seren of the Wildwood is illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. His black and white images complement the tone and mood of the story.

[i] There are obvious exceptions to this generalisation and to be precise everyone who has told these stories has altered them; the Grimms were notorious revisers.

[ii] The undeniable consequence of this line of thinking is that the book that haunts one reader is the same book another reader can’t be bothered to finish, regardless of the reviewer’s praise or condemnation. This seems especially true of narrative poetry. 

Posted on by Liam Guilar

Taking Possession

LIAM GUILAR is Poetry Editor of the Brazen Head. His most recent book is A Man of Heart (Shearsman, 2023)

Normans on the great north road

somewhere in England in 1071.[i]

Hubert, lord of these grey riders,

fought at Senlac, and since then

has been useful to the King

His reward, the manor he rides towards,

larger than the home he left in Normandy.

Walter, his seneschal, riding beside him,

fought at Senlac with distinction,

rallied the savaged in the Malfosse .[ii]

Between them, non-armoured, long haired,

Aelfric, an Englishman. Their local guide.

Their translator. He makes them awkward

in ways they’d struggle to define.

If pushed, Walter might reply;

he has no scars: his hands are soft.

The manor is wooden, unfortified.

Too easy to attack and futile to defend.

All this, thinks Hubert, I will change.

After the automatic military appraisal,

the childlike revelation: this is mine.

All mine. A group waits, women, children,

men so old they can’t stand straight.

The lady of the manor steps towards him.

Hubert remembers that in the English time

she could have run this place without a husband.

Now she and it are forfeit to the crown,

the crown bestowed them both on him

and he has come to take possession.

That thought will take a long time growing old.

He examines her the way he will inspect the cattle,

fields, fish weir and the little mill.

Tall, straight, young, blonde: she will do.

‘Where are the men?’ Vague images 

of those long legs, fine hips and breasts

do not make him stupid. ‘Where are the men?’

He has lost friends who were not so cautious,

in this green folded landscape, where the trees

and ditches hide those desperate for revenge.

Aelfric translates the question.

‘Where you should be.’ He ducks his head

til he remembers he rides with the victors

and she’s the one who lost and all her pride

will not avert the fate that rides towards her.

‘Her brothers, father, uncle, nephews died

at Stamford bridge and Senlac hill.

Their tenants and dependants died with them.’[iii] 

The idea that Englishmen are long-haired,

beer swilling, effeminate, will creep

into the Norman mind but not in Hubert’s

even if he lived a long and idle life.

Those longhaired drunkards stood their ground,

all day. Charge after charge breaking

on that obdurate line of shields. 

Anyone who’d seen a horse and rider split

by one swing of an axe would think twice

about disparaging the man who swung it.

But Aelfric swung no axe. That much is obvious.

2

After inspecting the boundaries,

a wary country ride with scouts,

after the inspection of the manor house,

after the welcome meal, Hubert decided

it was time to inspect his human property.

The men at arms were organised.

Guards posted, tasks allotted.

Walter thanked, allowed to leave.

Hubert talking to his Lady through Aelfric

was reminded of those shields.

When he was polite, she seemed insulted.

When he had tried to show an interest

she had seemed offended. He sensed

that what he said was not the words she heard.

She was nobility, understood the world

and what would happen next and so he doubted 

his tame Englishman was being honest.

He would have to learn her language,

some words at least, while she learnt his.

Bed, he thought, could be his classroom.

He stood up, took her hand. She did not move.

‘If you don’t go with him’, said Aelfric 

he’ll strip you for his men at arms.’

It was a stupid lie. This Norman was no fool

who’d break his prize possession out of spite.

Aelfric ignored the look she cut him with.

Once she’d been too proud to notice his existence

now she was this Norman’s mattress

and whatever in his character was broken,

or unfinished, rejoiced at her humiliation.

The curtains closed behind them.

Aelfric edged towards the drapery,

heard the sound of fabric falling,

imagined the pale body emerging.

He heard Hubert’s belt and sword unbuckled 

then set down, heard them move together.

Imagined his hands, heard Hubert grunting,

then making garbled noises like a stricken pig.

A female hand, the curtain parted.

She was naked, radiantly naked,

white flesh tinged pink about the throat.

Aelfric moved. She was majestic,

desire erased the thought that he’d been caught

erased the room, erased his name

and everything except desire

for the body moving closer to him

small hands reaching for his belt.

Who knows a dead man’s final thoughts?

Perhaps he was thinking mine at last,

perhaps he heard her say, ‘You should have died

with all the others’, and perhaps, before the knife

sliced the artery in his throat and geysered blood,

he realised she had spoken flawless Norman-French.

She caught him as he fell, pulling him down

screaming in English, help, help, murder, help.

Walter, sword drawn, running, saw

the Englishman raping the frantic lady

thrashing on the floor, hauled him away

one quick blow striking off the head.

The woman, sobbing, pointing at the curtains.

Behind them Hubert’s naked corpse,

twisted, reaching for the knife stuck in his back.

While the bodies were removed

Walter held the shuddering woman.

The King still owed him for the Malfosse.

Perhaps this manor. He would need a wife.

Hands skilled in settling a skittish mare

gentled the shaking body

aware of its taut lines, soft curves,

its bloody promise. She would do

when he came to take possession.

[i] This date is entirely arbitrary.

[ii] When the English army finally broke and ran at the Battle of Hastings, a small group turned and savaged the pursuing Normans at a place the Normans called The Malfosse.

[iii] Fulford Gate, Stamford bridge, Senlac, the three battles fought by the English in 1066. Many of the victors at Stamford Bridge died at Senlac (Hastings).

Posted on by Jez Punter

Violenta’s Revenge

JEZ PUNTER is based in London. When not writing poetry and plays he works as a chef. His poetry has appeared in First Time, Popshot, Bunbury, Eunoia, Snakeskin, Riggwelter, Dream Catcher, theCRANK and on the Society of Classical Poets website. He is currently writing a commentary on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

Violenta’s Revenge

After wooing her, Lord Didaco jilts his lowborn wife Violenta in favour of someone else.

Violenta exacts her revenge. Based on a story from Matteo Bandello’s Novelle (1554)

From forth a most grandeval stock of knights

Didaco, noble, young, with heart all riled,

appeared so as to centre neat his sights

on us who, under Spanish climate mild,

held all our dear Valencia beguiled.

He came to seek and court his infamy,

as in like manner he would soon to me.

For we were known, we ladies of the town,

throughout Iberia and thence beyond

for our assured repose and rife renown,

which faithly meant that we would not despond.

A fit and ordered question, we’d respond.

But not to him, this knot from in the grain.

A cut of eye, a smirk for his refrain.

Though thoroughly a city-sprouted son,

too green had he existed hitherto

to wear a badge amongst them all and none.

But then ‘of age’ and everything was ‘due’.

(It was to be my life he would imbue.)

Arising into public show, all heat

of heart (and thigh) he sought to eat,

acquire a means to sate the priming licks

a lust-led junior bears in ripening days,

thus duly set himself to work with clicks

and clucks and japing lines, as were his ways.

(A dog keeps more decorum when it bays.)

Yet what of me? Where else was there to roam?

Away from here, my ever-honoured home?

Valencia, ramparted coil of coast,

my ever chiefest seat of faith most true,

great guardian of justice, known as most

bulwarked and parapeted source of rue

for many a foe who can but pay their due.

I could not leave so was all audience

to what hindsight names lecherous conveyance.

‘Centiglia’, that was his family name;

and when we met it’s so, I do admit,

my gentle friends and I had earned some fame

about the streets provoking as was fit

the Jacks who liked to stalk, and stare at it.

We baited, fooling in our dalliance,

not thinking on a tangible alliance.

When he first cast his rod I lent him line,

did speak in idioms and commonplaces;

I caught his glance, said it I would refine –

if he could prize not every of our faces.

And so he swore, and I allowed embraces.

He swore of further things – of what he felt,

of how my look transfixed him; then he knelt

on knightly knee and pledged all love to me!

He talked of war-won accolades, of feats

of great endeavour, triumphs mercilessly

done, showed wounds as if they were receipts,

said we were fresh and so were owed the streets.

He spoke of how our union was fate;

of future times. I would reciprocate?

I could not say, so he then pried for more,

requesting secret news of where I dwelt,

how was my parentage – well-made or poor? –

my aspirations, what I had been dealt.

What was the look upon my face, pray, guilt?

What was, he wondered, my picked-out vocation?

But I would give no utterance or action

further. I disdained his lack of manner.

So he betook himself to search my name,

did door-to-door pay visit for my honour,

word of me and of my family game.

With bit well-champed ’twas me he wanted tame.

Inevitably by way of searching speech

he learned my place, my curbed societal reach.

For I was but a goldsmith’s modest daughter,

whose father died when he could give no more.

I had a loving and discerning mother,

two brethren working as my Pa before

safeguarding income on our trading floor.

But little else had I; though I was chaste

and honest, virtuous, never debased.

To boot I was well-read, and beautiful,

though you may not discern so here today.

I treasured books of words quite fanciful,

insurance ’gainst those youths renowned to stray

(I never stopped to think they would betray).

When reading ceased I exercised the needle –

to highest degree, no hour ever idle.

The news of all these pastimes he acquired

just like some blood-besotted fox-head hunter;

even the way I liked to be attired!

and that my parents named me Violenta.

He ’compassed me; I was to be his centre,

living flame to burn his pooling oil,

his additive, protection ’gainst his spoil.

And so began his suit. Every day

he called in at our humble residence

to lavish this and that. What could I say

to shun, to quash his over-confidence?

He visited despite my non-compliance;

for I refused them all, the messages,

the flowers, letters set in languages.

But he did persevere, did gift a scent

unto Mama, asked boys on his behalf

to vouch for his trustworthiness as gent.

‘A citizen true’ would be his epitaph,

he pledged. And in the end I had to laugh.

His care for me had reached nigh half a year

by now. The gent was ardent, it was clear.

So I a serenade afforded him.

But he was overcome. Could do nothing

but sink with sighs and sobs! He tried to trim

his fevered outburst venturing to sing

but soured his throat with what the words did bring.

I from my casement looked down with alarm,

my mother, worried, gripping at my arm!

Implore the rascal, in the end, I did

to sanction entry of some goodly sense

into his brain. How was he, pray, to bid

for my affections floored and buckled hence?

At this he breathed, ’fore fashioning defence:

‘Mistress Violenta,’ (his zeal was on the run),

‘I fear my eyes are lost, for at the sun

‘I have most helplessly directed them.

I speak not though of that, our shining pointer,

I speak of thee, who like some diadem

of brighter hue, are called good Violenta,

your shine on me so infinitely greater!

Pardon my tears but they flow from a heart

that has long threatened well to split apart.

‘Such numbers of my letters you’ve ignored,

such messengers of mine have turned away,

such smiles I gave returned with cold regard,

dismissive words of me been heard to say,

foundations hard on which a case to lay.

But yet a case to put I have, ’tis true:

I am in love, and my love’s name is you.

‘And so I say to you, Valencian fair,

act not as does the adder in our Psalms

that stoppers up its ears against the care

of its benevolent owner’s words and charms,

but hear with no unwarranted alarms;

and know although I seem a sign of sin

my heart is good if you but look within.’

His lines were medicine, did make me feel

ashamed at ever doubting his intention.

All trembling where he stood he seemed so real,

so virtuous and far from sly invention.

Thus giving pardon yet with apprehension

straight to him did I purpose response.

I would make plain his chances of romance.

‘Listen, Didaco, Señor of all our streets,

though I did not accept your numerous letters,

this does not mean I well denounce their treats,

their lines of passion broken free of fetters,

their moves of mood a youth so often suffers.

Despite a posting I did not allow them,

not once have I since lectured to condemn.

‘But yes, I have stoppered my ears of late;

as well have fortified my gentle heart.

’Thas been for fear, for dread I might relate

too much and so mislay in me that part

that God did label grace. I could not start                

again succeeding that. I’d be all shame;

I would have slayed my goodly fam’ly name.

‘Yet you intend no shame to put on me,

of that prospect I am entirely sure.

You wear your openness for all to see,

playing the jester here beneath my door.

You talk of love; perhaps I should hear more?

All of the oaths you say I do believe,

and now you’re here I wish you not to leave.

‘So hear me, world! I promise now henceforth

within my heart Didaco shall be placed,

and not one other as I live on earth;

for I’ve decided to no more be chased.

And yet by no exploit am I disgraced!

One warning though, Didaco: If you abuse

this trust I furnish, you shall truly lose

‘the very thing that you’ve so stubbornly sought.’

And thus I ended my pronounced acceptance

and awaited what it might have wrought.

But he (said beau) could mutter not a sentence

until my mother met him by our entrance:

‘My Lord Didaco, though you’ve been kept guessing,

rest assured that you have all my blessing.’

The Señor wept – presumably with joy –

and took his leave. He’d call upon the morrow

to all my genial company employ.

At this a tingle ran from mind to marrow.

Though my chances elsewhere now were narrow

great excitement overran my veins.

He wanted me, and I could see the gains.

But yet one year and half he kept his length

adhering to my fiat for some dignity.

We trod the battlements, praising their strength,

and laughed – but with upmost propriety.

Yet all the while I kept dubiety –

until of course, he had had enough,

his patience worked and worn away to fluff.

Consulting with his friends for some advice

it came about he next detained my mother

and (six hundred ducats to entice)

sought hard to plant himself into her favour;

as well a dowry, more than any other

he’d assign, if he the title ‘husband’

might receive. Ma smiled and called him brigand.

But I would not be summed in cold currency.

The offer he produced was firm offence!

If he and I in union were to be

a more exuberant plea should he dispense;

for nuptial oaths must not stand on pretence.

His eyes did film again. ‘Why do you tarry?’

he questioned. ‘All I want to do is marry.’

‘But why, you foolish stripling?’ asked my mother.

‘Why all this show and tell, this drooling, acting?’

‘Because, good matron,’ he returned, ‘I love her.

She is my one, yet here I am still waiting

deeds reciprocate to settle our dating.’

At this Mama relented. Now she knew

the match would work, the one fashioned from two.

For confirmation whereof he then eased

from off his finger an almighty emerald,

requested kisses from me (still he teased)

before ensuring that the gem was settled

on my digit and our union labelled.

But then he said (and, yes, I lacked suspicion),

‘Mistress fair, permit a last instruction:

‘Tell not society nor any friends

of this, our partnership now newly sealed,

till I’ve informed them fully of our ends,

and so established what may gossip yield;

for they know not before you I have kneeled.

But notwithstanding this I’ll find a priest

to solemnise our coupling at the least.’

And so it came to pass: a most clandestine

episode at four A.M. o’ th’clock,

the dark, in hindsight, seeming to predestine

what would be one systematic shock

foreshadowing one systematic shock.

Mama, my brothers and our servant thus

did witness marriage without hint of fuss

(although we fussed our bed sheets well in sport      

once we withdrew that morn into my chamber!).

For æons we did lustily cavort

in joy and mirth, needless to encumber

urge and itch one single minute longer.

Postpone the moment more? Heaven forfend!

We went to bed and so my eyes opened!

(As did much else.) And it was nigh on evening

when, with our pleasures slept away, we roused

our bodies limp with lust and love remaining,

so I could show my love where he was housed.

He wore a crenulated forehead as he browsed,

for he was not impressed. ‘But ’tis no bother,’

he averred, ‘I do not wish to smother

‘you with too much attendance. I shall keep

a house that is my own, some simple garret

where I can read my books and, after, sleep.

Besides, our marriage hence is to be secret,

yes? – until you’re famed as my love’s object.’

Object? I worried, his speech unordinary.

But yet I swore as he commanded me.

I was his wife, affianced to obey,

and he had business ’bout the town, ’twas clear.

‘Sweet love, fret not,’ he emphasised, ‘I’ll pay

a thousand, nay, twelve hundred ducats here

so you may keep all of your holdings dear.’

Our household (drab and dern) did need the sum,

so I agreed and of our deal kept mum.

He took his leave, my honest husband new,

and Ma and I reoccupied ourselves

with all our daily rounds. My brethren too

resumed their work i’the shop, stocking shelves,

keeping the books, all that that involves.

Didaco often stayed, as was his whim,

and as my duty told I treated him.

Yet soon the sun had made its whole compass,

and of some public advert to our bind

my gallant had not moved to any purpose.

I wished for us to settle, not be maligned.

For now the gossips openly opined

about my mother and the man who came

at oddly hours. It attracted shame! 

And then nature bestowed a pregnancy.

a joyous thing in circumstances fine.

But fathering guide was there none such to be.

Though he made call, he was withdrawn by nine.

Some vessel was I – to drain of all its wine?

A boy was born, a day to surely bless,

but joy was fast assuaged by foul distress.

Our nearest neighbour then enlightened all,

suggesting I was something he did ‘rent’,

some sort of secret maiden at his call,

a hidden harlot off’ring entertainment!

I lost myself in tears, I was forspent.

When next he called against him I did rage.

I was his wife! and twenty years in age.

I once was held by all in great esteem,

of reputation decent, conscientious.

But neighbours need no small excuse to scheme

and blame when one is inconspicuous;

they frenzy up themselves, becoming vicious.

‘My love,’ said I, ‘do you not know they taunt?

Foul rumour by its nature stays to haunt.’

At this my knight breathed forth a goodly sigh

and swore of changing his behaviour hence,

acknowledged weddedness he did belie

by playing shirker. He had no defence,

except he had much ‘business to dispense’.

‘For my shambolic ways I shall atone,’

he vowed. ‘Our marriage now will be well known.’

Alas, the lying villain knew to use

affection well, for I had burgeoned lenient.

This man had now become my love, my muse;

’twould hurt to play someone not all-compliant;

upon his whim and way I was reliant.                       

And this he knew, knew I his heart required.

My solitude was now with him attired.

Thenceforth his stays decreased. When he did show

it was to sate his carnal longing only,

with often not so much as a ‘hello’.

He seemed to smirk, cared not that I was lonely,

just had his way; the ill-hewn brute abused me.

Forsaking God and his own conscience then

I learned this cock indulged another hen!     

Indeed, frequenting other homes and haunts             

of divers gentlewomen in the city

is what he did. It was divulged – his flaunts

and foins of manliness, cupidity

exposed; his actions heartless, arbitrary.

I listened as he talked dissimulation

but knew what words were simply cold concoction.

But yet more salt was there to fire the wound:

Word reached our household he had now obtained

the lasting favour of another. I swooned,

with tears. Two years now past and I had gained

nothing but child, and now the child was stained.

The lover now to whom he played the suitor

was of Ramerio Vigliaracuta,

mayor, senior of a most ancient house,

red-rich and noble, highest in pedigree.

His daughter though was boring as a mouse

they said. But my espoused did not agree.

He wed the girl with great solemnity,

the nuptials eulogised by one and all.

Didaco gained a dowry, me my fall.

In hardest sorrow were we saturated,

me, my mother and my dearest brethren.

My baby cried, sensed something aggravated

his surroundings, like some ominous siren

voicing loud our desperate situation.

But we knew not to whom we could object.

No one would hear, to them we were abject.

Before the Church we pleaded, to relieve

the hurt; against our neighbours made a fuss.

‘You and Didaco?’ They would not believe;

and we knew not the priest who married us!

‘Thus,’ said they, ‘we’ve nothing to discuss.’

We stood against our city’s greatest lords

and were dismissed as prattling rancid bawds.

Didaco now was lodged with his new wife

inside the house of his new pa-in-law.

All dowry-rich, indemnified for life,

he praised the city – it praised him the more,

while I did take the appellation ‘whore’.

Throughout our world – brutal, prized, fortressed –

Didaco’s marriage was proclaimed the best.

The rakes, they envied their young colleague’s catch,

this daughter of Señor Ramerio.

‘Surely Valencia’s greatest ever match,’

they cried throughout the streets. It was a show –

for them. It was not my scenario.

Unto my chamber I withdrew, and there

I cried and cursed the world with not a care.

My body went diseased, did lie constricted:

an ireful, shrunken casing of its form

as fortune grasped, flayed me raw, evicted

hope and let immeasurable torment storm

on through, ever obsessive to perform.

My former lover lessened me. His bilk, 

his jeering stayed with me like sour milk.

My torn mind screeled beyond any affliction,

my suff’ring thoughts as soon as born unbound.

For all was snatched away from me, made fiction:

the bliss, felicity I thought I’d found!

But I was just a kernel to be ground.

Oh how I wished that God would grant relief,

for I was burning water, unencumbered grief!

It was some count of days before I stirred.

When finally I broke my lids apart

there stood before my bed the slightly blurred

resemblance of our maid, Janique, her heart

destroyed for me. ‘Mistress,’ she said, ‘let’s start

appeasement. So as to mollify your grief

we should contrive to snag our wretched thief.’

Henceforth she explicated, saying, ‘I,

I’ll beg some speech with the deceitful crack

and make him understand that by and by

he must unto the house that he did wrack

with woe. I’ll talk to him of what you lack.’

‘No, no, Janique,’ said I, so much fatigued.

‘Your meet advice is gratefully received

‘but talking time is past. I wish no longer

for my ears to hear Didaco’s terms.

Such sounds will only blight my insight further,

warren their way inside like rabbits, worms

abusing to implant what he affirms.

No, no. I am resolved so much in malice,

hatred, there shall be no courteousness,

‘only an execution by my hands,                               

a vengeance for what wrath on me our god

has laid. Painful time’s unyielding brands

reverted cannot be, but yet the sod

can be condemned to the eternal nod.

He takes my honour, I shall take his life –

by any means, Janique. By club, by knife!’

My faithful maid leaned close to hear my plan . . .

[To be continued]

Posted on by Marly Youmans

Five poems by Marly Youmans

The most recent books by MARLY YOUMANS are the book-length poem Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, 2023); a novel set in Puritan New England, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius Press, 2020); and her most recent collection of poems, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia Press, 2019.) She divides her time between Cooperstown, New York and Cullowhee, North Carolina.

The White Ibis 

Shell islands bleached to white, left by natives

In salty tidal rivers, and the ibis 

Dazzling against the sky…and there I saw

The wedding-froth of mating plume and leaned 

And caught a feather in my hand, the whole 

Bounty of landscape trembling with the heat 

And with the strange and flaring energies 

Of something not yet known, one tremendous

Something manifesting presence… that’s how 

It was for me, so strange it was to stare 

From the prow of the sailboat and to let 

A sunlit feather slip into my hand. 

At dead of night the ibis came to me, 

As beautiful as Eros to the soul, 

And bent to press its breathing dream-shape close 

Until I shivered, feeling spirit pour

Out of the river with its oyster isles,

Out of starred sky, out of the heart of the bird, 

Proclaiming more and more and ever more, 

Hidden behind the arras of the world. 

The Summoning

Long ago, I rode a horse

   As pretty as a ballad and strong,

And I called his name Lord Randal,

        With a neck like a tower, withers

As glossy as the Chinese silk,

             And all of him a song.

One day we found a curling path

   That led into the forest’s edge,

And on that path there lay a thing,

        Magic of a flaming feather.

The horse Lord Randal said to me,

             Here’s trouble, ruin’s pledge.

And did I bend to grasp the gold

   That bore the mark of fairyland,

And was I careless of the wrong?

        Come danger and come woe together!

I cried, and marveled at the fire

In rachis, calamus, and vane

           That quivered in my hand. 

To the Flowers

Flowers, you give yourself effortlessly, 

Without a stint, now strewing fragrances

But soon your petals in a dream of rain. 

I think you are a lesson meant for me, 

You giving soul and beauty all away 

And never counting out a single cost. 

I lean into the breeze, feeling myself 

Like grasses, rippling with the summer’s sun, 

Seeking like you to give myself away, 

Artlessly with art, a paradox 

That will lose luster, die, and be a seed.

Three hundred yards away from Lake Otsego,

The river makes small thunders at the dam,

Not yet the potent Susquehanna, no,

And the great blue heron like a long-legged god

Who rules the leaves and lapidary rocks

Skewers a fish and stalks out of the stream

Picking his everlasting way on stones…

I would not be the bluegill with his small

And flapping motions, helpless to change a fate,

Nor the heron, kingly in his element:

I side with flowers, incense, radiance,

The streaming of a blossom into air.

The Angel in the Tree

Who can understand the sins of angels?

Angular figure bent to thieve

A single egg, the bangle

Of halo dangling from a branch as leaves

Wholly surrendered to the wind

Go still: some presence grieves

The bird, the nest, the plucking from the tree,

The way the angel’s featherings

Seem leaves, the tragedy

In falls of feathered and unfeathered things…

A pebble that disturbs a pool

Begets a world of rings.

“Pray You, Love, Remember”

   This painting is the first using my daughter Cecelia’s motifs, 

    in my own style; her peonies, her sky, a glass structure 

    representing her soul house. —Laura Murphy Frankstone

A simple, delicate glass house to float

In skies like lakes, with peonies that float 

Like clouds and pitch their shadows on the sky

Like lilies on a pond, though clearly sky

Lades the canvas field with its forever,

Mystical, transparent blue forever…

The soul-house, left adrift in peonies,

Sets free one note of song, and peonies

Begin to stream perfume and streaks of song

Until the sky and blooms and glass and song

Are blent as one, and soul as fair as glass

Is painted, snared in flower-cloud and glass…

   O soul-house sing the songs of kingdom come,

   Of was and is and timelessness to come.

Posted on by Jon Bishop

The Agony of Sin

JON BISHOP is an MFA candidate at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, where he studies poetry. He lives
in New Hampshire


This deepened dark has set my mind to prayer.

I fill my fallen soul with sins each day

And purge them from myself before I sleep

And ask my God (oh, God!) to fill the air

With not my faults but with His grace and say

How He has seen me pull up from the deep,
Like haggard birds that soar across the sun

To flee the coming cold. They wait for May,

As I await my Lord to save His sheep.

We know He’ll come again when days are done, And all of Hell will
weep.

Posted on by Liam Guilar

Uplifting falling

The Book of Falling

David McCooey, Perth, Western Australia: Upswell Publishing, 2023, 109pps. Aus$24.99

LIAM GUILAR says David McCooey’s poetry is intelligent, skilful, varied – and plain enjoyable

The Book of Falling is David McCooey’s fifth collection of poems, and if nothing else, gives the lie to the invidious myth that people who work on academic writing programmes can’t write.

He’s very good at what he does. His poetry evokes Bunting’s praise of Scarlatti:

It is now time to consider how Domenico Scarlatti

condensed so much music into so few bars

with never a crabbed turn or congested cadence

never a boast or a see-here…

Every well-chosen word in its place, and each word doing the necessary work. In the first four lines of the collection a sense of vague but threatening menace is swiftly evoked:

The unseen night creatures – scaled and feathered

for their occult ceremonies – rasp and call outside

in the dark beyond the half dark that

surrounds this marbled, half lit house

(‘Questions of Travel’)  

Such deft verbal economy is a feature of the wide variety of poems that appear in The Book of Falling and plays against often surprising content. The first three poems are conventional poetic monologues as though the poet were setting out his stall and proving his ability. At the same time the subjects are anything but conventional. Elizabeth Bishop packs to travel; Sylvia Plath looks at her life on her 80th birthday; Marilyn Monroe divines the future and amongst other things, ‘…see[s] who will be forgotten first/ Queen Elizabeth, Molly Bloom, or me.’

These are followed by word play, short sequences about family, a group of satires and elegies, poems about urban life, as well as ‘Three Photo Poems.’ The latter is a new genre to me: three sequences which juxtapose very short texts (one of the sequences is made up of ‘found poems’) and photographs. 

The juxtaposition of pictures, either of the mundane, as in the sequence about bathrooms, or the family photographs which on closer inspection look anything but mundane, with short pieces of text, lead to the second reason you should read the book.

On a first reading you can never tell what’s going to be on the next page. This is a defining characteristic of the other two books of McCooey’s poetry I have read, and unusual in single author collections, where formal and thematic similarities tend to be on almost every page. The variety here is held together by a unified view of the world, a laconic wit, which takes pleasure in the commonplace while recognising how strange it is. Take his ‘Rain Poem’:

And as if someone uttered the trigger word

rain begins without ceremony.

But it’s not ‘driving rain’;

it’s just sitting outside

engine idling over the neighbourhood.

The poem could stop there, but it turns into something more than a pun and a neatly turned image.

It doesn’t give a damn

And then, like a poem ending

you look out the window

and the rain has stopped.

The birds have returned and the wind

has begun its invisible cover-up job.

Many of the poems present the everyday and familiar, but alter the point of view just enough to destabilise the way you’re used to looking at the world – Freud’s Uncanny perhaps, without the baggage attached to that word.

When was the last time you thought about how strange bathrooms are? ‘Bathroom Abstraction #3’ begins: “Windowless bathrooms are the cave of modernity”.

What you encounter as reader is an intelligence moving through time, and recording the variety of experience, taking interest and pleasure in the world – and above all wanting to share it with the reader. There are numerous single author collections where the reader is left feeling his or her presence is not required – or perhaps only required as an anonymous cheerleader who proved their devotion by buying the book.

If a poem can be a space for thinking through and in language, McCooey’s poems invite readers to look without telling them what to think. A short example is ‘Australia’:

Dropping my son at school.

It is ‘Art Day’;

students are to dress up

as their favourite artist.

I see a kid dressed in white.

He has sunscreen on his nose,

And carries a cricket bat.

This is both bemused and amusing, but open to different ways of being read. There is the traditional art community criticism of Australian attitudes towards ‘the arts’ in a sports-mad country – a criticism of the arts community’s failure to penetrate the education system even on a school day ostensibly devoted to ‘Art – or a wry celebration of the artistry of Australian cricketers, who can flog a rock-like ball a long distance with enough balletic grace to suggest cricket is indeed an art form. The poem holds all these possibilities (and others) open for the reader.

And finally – this may be a heretical comment: poetry is a highly sophisticated form of entertainment. It provides unique pleasures. Reading book reviews, it can seem that enjoying poetry is a subversive activity. The reviewer usually makes great claims for its importance, significance, ground-breaking genre-bending, appropriate ideological stance on the burning issues of the day, but rarely admits to having enjoyed reading the book under review. McCooey’s books are skilfully written, varied, thought provoking, and above all enjoyable. You should read them.

Posted on by Derek Turner

Fathers of Botany – Fossil Trees of Lesbos

Image: Courtesy of Dimitris Yeros

DEREK TURNER is editor of The Brazen Head, and a novelist and reviewer, who writes for journals including Country Life and the Irish Times. His first non-fiction book, Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire, was published in 2022 (Hurst)

Fathers of Botany – Fossil Trees of Greece

“We were searching to rediscover the first seed

So the ancient drama could begin again.” (George Seferis)

Tree from Titanic time, chlorophyll from Chronos –

A plant to make the Iliad feel young;

Older than Achaea, bough from Europe’s birth,

Corinthian column from anonymous earth.

Cell-structure chthonic, bark architectonic,

First saplings convert light for all lungs;

Dawns before dinosaurs, green deaths in deep glades

That shivered before any islands were made.

Steles sway in dead winds, mark skies meteoric –

Ossified weathers striated in stumps –

Hold in their heartwood earth’s earliest mysteries,

The comets and climates that changed before histories.

Rock sounds of ages and petrified tracks –

Trees shooting endless in verdant triumphs,

Creatures of ancient wing, instinct with sap and spring,

Once stood on these redwoods’ spread rooftops to sing.

Sang songs of the spheres, remote, melancholic,

Strange songs for lost woods in an alien tongue –

Harmoniously unify heavens and world

As seeds from stone cones let Creation unfurl.

Then day cataclysmic: deep doom from first physics:

Drums beating, bass booms as world structure unslung,

Ashfalls before Hades, heats pre-Hephaestus,

Flames black out the birds, stones alter the atlas.     

II

Metamorphosis – an ageless land’s axis,

New architect orders for the new world just sprung –

Stump of the sacred grove, and pillar of Zeus –

Shoots for the Stagirite, seeds Theophrastus.

Human analogies bud bright philosophic:

Trees rise, carry crowns, then return to the dung.

Though statues, they sow evergreenness from roots;  

Even now that they’re dead, we climb them for truths.

Posted on by Liam Guilar

A Man of Heart – Chapter 11: Things Fall Apart

LIAM GUILAR is Poetry Editor of The Brazen Head, and the author of several poetry collections including Lady Godiva and Me, From Rough Spun to Close Weave and, most recently, A Man of Heart

This is the last installment of the story of Vortigern. Chapter two onwards can be read on the Brazen Head site. Chapters One and Twelve appeared in Long Poem Magazine. The full story is published by Shearsman UK as A Man of Heart

The story so far. Fifth Century Britain. The legions have gone, leaving the Britons to fend for themselves.  Despite his success in uniting the province and bringing peace, Vortigern’s sons have led a rebellion against him. He now faces three problems: the remnants of his sons’ rebellion, the return of Aurelius and Uther, sons of the deposed King, and Hengist who wants revenge for his brother’s death during the rebellion.

Things Fall Apart

1

In the midnight forest,

in the moonstained tower.

the princess stares towards the morning

while her sleeping lord

dreams of a desperate hunt,

racing, branch whipped,

though the trees. His dogs,

white coats shining, red ears shining,

howling after a milk white stag.

The stag is walking, unconcerned, 

and his sweating horse

cannot close the distance.

Could you feel the moonlight on your skin?

She wanders the circuit of the room,

orbiting the bed, watching the sleeper

twitch, hearing him mutter orders

to the slavering pack

who pay him no attention.

Inside the winter forest of his dream,

the bored stag stops beside the river,

and turns to face the dogs

who cower from his indifference.

He’s standing on the river wall,

with London burning at his back.

The mighty silver river turned to silt.

The child with golden eyes

emerging from the smoke and shadows

holds the coin he’s worn around his neck

since he found it in the mud.

‘I know what lies beyond the ninth wave,’

says the child, ‘I know the age of the wind.

I know why Gwydion sang an eagle from an oak.

Why Math wouldn’t sell his mouse…’

on and on as the child grew older,

the mountains rising, like an insult,

to cut the road that fades into the fields,

the road to Lincoln, overgrown, baffled

by vertical grey stone veined by snow,

barriers of rock and ice blocking the horizon.

He is laughing at the boy, who hasn’t stopped.

‘Do you know why the gods allow humans to suffer?

Why wise men fail and fools succeed?

Why good men die and bad ones prosper?’

‘No,’ said the boy, flicking the coin

so it drifted like an ember in the smoke.

‘I do ,‘ he says, as they watch it settle in the silt

and the dirty waters swirl and cover it.

He wakes, feeling for the coin,

reassured, but it’s a dream within a dream.

‘You did come back?’ ‘Oh foolish man’

she says, ’when will you ever learn?’

He turns to the golden boy.

‘Because there are no gods,

only Fortune and her wheel

and she’s a brutal mistress

destroying all she favours.’

2

All winter Saxons from Thongcaester

and loyal northern tribes

had raided south, while Vortigern

from his own estates,

coordinating every detail,

had harried from the west,

‘til Vortimer’s writ no longer ran

north of Watling street or west of Dere.

They’d kept him bottled up and shaken,

watching his following dissolve.

The plan had been to wait ‘til spring

and then with Hengist sweep him off the map.

Yesterday the news. Keeping his promise,

Hengist had returned and landed fifty ships,

and then the twist: on the southern coast.

Hearing Gloucester had retreated to his own lands,

Hengist’s army was rampaging north and west,

undisciplined, voracious, hunting British heads,

like the Pictish horde that he’d been hired to stop[i].

There was death and destruction

to rival Boudica’s march on London.

Some of Vortigern’s supporters

had been mauled, their lands ransacked.

Another fleet led by Hengist’s sons,

had landed in the north

between the stone wall and the turf.

The Britons had sent a cautious embassy:

‘Your son, my lord is dead.’

‘My son died to me the day that he rebelled.’

He says the words again,

in private, surprised to find

wispy echoes drifting over nothing.

A dull sense of relief?

He will not humiliate his eldest son

destroying the rabble

he could not lead,

nor order his execution

after his inevitable defeat.

Their story is he killed himself,

playing the defeated Roman.

3

The ambassadors shuffle and fidget.

They won’t look him in the eye.

They say ‘He measures us for burial.’

‘Tell Gloucester if he comes to me,

and will submit, I will forgive him.’

It’s not the answer they expected.

They would have served him Adolf

on a golden platter,

stuffed and garnished to his taste.

‘As for the other matter,

I will reply tomorrow morning.

Until then, go, you are messengers,

you are safe, enjoy our hospitality.

Congratulations, gentlemen.

Tell your masters, when you return,

their folly has undone our wisdom.’

4

In the circular room,

at the top of their tower,

he curls against her

watching the rough-hewn stones

liquid in the fire’s light.

The way she moved could turn his world to water.

That nameless place where neck and shoulder meet.

This bewildering encounter with intelligence and affection.

Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

Unless you’re Vortigern the King?

Moonlight picking out a patch of floor.

We were sunlight dancing on water,

dazzling and scattered,

now gathered, still,

carried on a darker

gentle current.

The world can be forgotten.

He could drift along beside her.

But the day will have its answers.

‘If I accept their offer,

become again the ruler

of this fractured,

fractious province,

your father and I

must go to war

as enemies.’

‘How many times?

Your friends are my friends;

your enemies are mine.’

‘We don’t have the numbers

to stand against the force he’s raised.’

‘Adolf has an army.’

‘Adolf’s mob of whining British lords

will be fighting over precedent and office

after Hengist’s warriors strip their corpses

and leave them on the battlefield to rot.’

‘We have allies. They’ve stood by us all winter.

Why would they desert you now?’

‘Fear and Economics.

Fifty ships, a thousand men,

that rabble doesn’t care

for Hengist’s oath.

Without a commissariat,

he can’t feed a horde that size.

They’ll plunder every village

and estate and town

that’s on their route.

No one dares come south

with your brothers

camped between the walls.

Your father rides a tidal wave.

He can point it at his enemy

but it won’t discriminate

between the British lords

who joined in the revolt

and those who fought against it.’

The patch of moonlight fades.

‘He told me a story about your uncle.

Caught in a monster storm,

he turned his ship and surfed

straight down a wave face

three times higher than his mast.’

‘That sounds like him,

howling jubilant defiance at his Gods.’

‘His ship was overwhelmed.

The crew were drowned.

Your uncle swam ashore.

Hengist will crash into Gloucester and his army

and bury them. But The Boys have landed

and there will be a mighty showdown.’

5

Wylaf wers, tawaf wedy[ii]

She finds him on the roof,

staring towards the east.

‘They’re coming like the sunrise,

like a wave bearing down on a straw hut.

We have a month at most.’

Whatever he is trying to say,

she will not help him.

She watches night shapes

assume their daylight forms.

Waiting, knowing

there is cruelty in her silence.

He will not look at her.

‘Go to your father.

He will keep you safe.‘

In a hut ringed with body parts.[iii]

‘Hengist will trade me to the necessary ally.

Slightly soiled, one previous owner,

still worth fifty ships.

I will not become a sex toy for Aurelius.’

‘If you stay; you die.’

‘And you will play the Roman and fall upon your sword,

be Stilicho and go so quietly for the greater good,

dignified and honest in an age devoid of both?’

‘Hush lady…’

‘No. I will not hush!

I will not weep and then be silent!

I will not be the loyal wife

proudly watching as her man

acts with atypical stupidity.

What possible profit is there in your death?

Do you think they’ll tell your story straight after you’re dead?

They cannot, will not, do it when you’re still alive.

What does it matter what they think about you in a thousand years?

If bookish men still scrutinize your life, searching for the truth,

they will not find it. We will be figures dancing

on the limits of their comprehension,

simplified for story’s sake.’

She gestured to the hilltops to the west.

‘Who would bother chasing us?

There will be a place to raise this child.

We can carve ourselves a kingdom,

and if defeat becomes a fact

when there is no escape…’

A golden ampule in her palm.

‘There is enough for two.

We go to sleep: we don’t wake up.’

‘How do you know it works?’

‘Old Mother Gothel gave it to me,

before I sailed for Britain.

I made her prove that it was painless and effective.’

‘Who was Mother Gothel?’

‘You never met her:

she was honest.’

‘We will need bodies.

At least one must be a woman’s.’

‘There is a village in the next valley.

They have not offered us their help.

Anyone we cannot trust must die.’

‘Better dead friends than live enemies?’

‘For now.’

6

Ewch nawr[iv]

‘Go now,’ she said, ‘I set you free.

Go find my father, tell our story,

tell it straight.’ Keredic objects:

‘No lady, I have come this far

and I will stay with you.’

‘Do as I tell you, nithing.

It would sadden me to have you killed.

We cannot hold against an army.

But we will die facing our enemies.

We have been good to you.

Now go!’

7

For the ashes of your fathers, and the temples of whose gods?[v]

Dark rider on the riverbank at dusk;
he can smell how cold the water is,
listening to it hurry past,
a pale stain between the overhanging trees.
A stale moon behind sick clouds.
The flickering army on the other bank,
dead ancestors, mustering against his crossing.

Muttering: Duty, Loyalty, Reputation.

Go forward or go back? Dame Fortune
cranked her wheel to bring him here.

Tell me then,

what purpose does my death serve

at this point in the story?

I have been loyal to my oath of service,

faithful to all that made you great

when those I served were not deserving.

I have done everything I could

as well as I knew how.

Been honest in my dealings

held my office without guilt

I’ve done my duty.

held the line you drew

and seen the selfish,

the short-sighted

and the stupid destroy

everything you built.’

The massed ranks shift and mutter:

Loyalty, Honour, Duty.

8

The Boys

It takes time to land an army.

Mercenaries mostly, survivors of Chalons,[vi]

who fought beside Attila or against him.

Within the walls of Porchester,

in the clattering busyness, the rattle of voices,

the scurry of patrols, the interruptions of messengers,

the herding of the necessary horses,

The Boys wait for the British lords to come in;

for Gloucester and the army he has promised;

for loyal Britons to welcome their return

and for those who find their names on the wrong list;

dragged away and butchered,

their ragged heads raised on the wall,

staring slack mouthed at a desperate future.  

Trying to eat in the organised riot of the camp

at a long table under an awning, with the banners

the ceremonial armour, the purple cloaks,

the servants and all that is necessary to identify kings

to killers in their pay who wouldn’t recognise their faces.

Aurelius, fastidious with his food, was describing

his latest plan for Vortigern. ‘Of all men,

he is surely the most villainous.[vii]

How he will die I have yet to decide

but it will be slow and painful and terrible to behold.’

He’s got him blinded and castrated, flayed and crucified,

then burning when the news arrives to interrupt the catalogue.

According to Gloucester’s messenger,

Adolf had gone, unarmed, to parley

with the Saxons at the great stone ring.

They had drawn their hidden knives,

slaughtering the British lords. Heroically,

alone, Gloucester, had seized a log from a passing carter

and bludgeoned his way to the safety of his town.

‘The fool attempts Imperial diplomacy:

invite your federates to a feast,

wait ‘til they’re drunk,

then slit their throats?

Out thought. Out fought.

And then he ran.’

‘Talking was his only option.

But now we’re down an army.

We can still pick Hengist off,’

says Uther, ‘If we catch him

before he joins the northern horde.’

While they argue,

a man is bundled towards their table.

‘My Lords.’

He is trying to fold himself into nothing,

to become invisible and inaudible

at the centre of their attention.

‘If you bring bad news,

we will not harm you.’

Uther, who doesn’t lie,

often wonders why his brother is so good at it.

‘Merowch the Frank sends you greeting.

The leader of the scouting party?

The man you taxed to find the traitor?

He says, some of his auxiliaries,

over enthusiastic in their loyalty,

torched the tyrant’s fortress.

Soon there was nothing left.

Just cracked stone and charred bones.

They found the villain and his whore

or what was left of them.

As proof, this ancient coin,

the tyrant wore around his neck.’

The British lords are eager to confirm:

‘He’d take it off and stare at it

while making up his mind.’

‘Do you remember, how, before…’

Aurelius isn’t listening.

‘I want to see this tower.’

‘Hengist first,’ says Uther,

‘the tower can wait.

What is this obsession

with yesterday’s man?’

‘He killed…

‘I know who he killed.

But why hound the man who saved your kingdom.

Alive or dead, he’s now irrelevant.’

‘Because I want to see his charred remains.’

He wants to mutilate the bodies.

He’s spent years imagining his revenge.

But he also trusts his brother’s judgement.

‘What do we do with Gorlois?’

Thought is annihilated.

like a rabbit struck by a plunging hawk.

A dirty unkempt boy.

The ragged stinking fact of him

infecting the moment.

‘Greetings,’ he says

and smiles his dreamy smile,

blinking those golden eyes.

‘I am Merlin.

You need me.’

[i] See chapter four

[ii] I will weep and then be silent. See Chapter One.

[iii] As he does in chapter One

[iv] Go now. See Chapter One.

[v] A misquotation from ‘Horatio at the Bridge’ by Thomas Macaulay.

[vi] A battle between The Western Empire and Attila the Hun involving hundreds of thousands of combatants. Fought in 451, in modern France, a year or two after the traditional date for the landing of Hengist and Horsa’s three ships in Britain.

[vii] This sentence is a direct quote from Geoffrey of Monmouth. I’ve reduced the rest of his speech, which is almost a page long in Thorpe’s translation, to the next two lines.

Posted on by Michael Yost

The Concert in the Egg

MICHAEL YOST is a poet and essayist living in rural New Hampshire with his wife and children. His essays and poems have been published in places like Modern Age, First Things, The University Bookman, Dappled Things, The Brazen Head, and others. He substacks at The Weight of Form.

The Concert in the Egg

And now we climb the marble stairs, and roam

Beneath the LED’s electric wash.

We see, within the art museum’s dome.

A painting by a follower of Bosch:

I

Placed in the quarter of the upper right,

A snake hangs on a branch that seems to grow

Out of the chaunt-book’s leather back. By sight,

Notation’s bars and measured ratio

Are present, silent. See a branch suspend

A slender rosy jug for furniture,

that seems impossibly, to rest its end

Upon the polished, creamy curvature;

While further up the branch, a basket holds

a dead upended bird, an orchard limb

With fruit, of shadowed pinks and quiet golds.

It dangles lusciously, almost by whim.

Then sang the funnel hatted quack: 

“I read the birds, and note the star,

And scan the viscera of pigs

For knowledge of the things that are.

And these are the most casual facts,

That anyone could understand.

The world expands, goes round, contracts,

And blows like grains of gusted sand.”

                              II

The lapwings, stork, the bat in half-light blacked,

An owl, with eyes in back of the beaky head,

A neck that twists like one whose body’s racked,

Are met, as ghouls who come to eat the dead.

The owl winds talons in a wimpled nun’s

Habitual veil. He hovers over tangled

Night, who sees much, hears much, in the sun’s

Departure, over air presiding, angled

On eastern winds. And he is thus their vane

and orient; eyes black, intelligent

of good and evil, of desire’s pain,

And old rebellion’s rich impoverishment.

And harped the man with the tuberous nose

“To make a lad feel young and gay

There’s nothing like a tub of beer

Make haste, for all things pass away.

For drink and life are much the same:

There’s both too much, and not enough.

I drink enough to keep me tame,

And to forget the other stuff.

                              III

Over the open fissure of the shell

— Whose slabbed sides cracked like pistol shot,

Or plates of broad midwinter ice in hell,

that frigid deadland, deep as hate or thought —

Thus, in the dimming dawn, (or end of day),

The snake is honored in its figuration.

A type and image merely for the way;

Effective only via dispensation.

One man, birdhouse on head, in back, observes. 

A stork stands on the crimson chaperon

Belonging to the piper who disserves

His neighbor’s ear with wheedling semitone.

And pipes the man in the scarlet hat:

“The wealthy never need resign

their riches to the poorer man.

Of Virtue, Wealth’s the surest sign.

My avarice is needed, too;

It all coheres, in one great whole

Where good and evil, false and true

All twist toward one final goal.”


                              IV

Beneath the egg’s receding, round horizon,

a village of the plain lies feverish,

Afire. Floating in darkness’ orison,

A leopard guards a tender, cooking fish.

A tortoise plods beneath the egg as well

Who’s yet to be flipped over, unstrung, bored 
And hollowed with a knife blade from his shell

To make a merry lyre’s sounding board,

And blend all chaos in harmonious love.
His peeling, wrinkled hams drag needled claws,

His ancient eyes scan all the scene above

For food to pinch and tear in beaky jaws.

Then sang the fish on the cooking grill,

“The fireside is near and warm

But though it burns a bloody red,

I know it will not do me harm.”

Sensation heats my chilly flesh

And is a sign, at least, of life.

A sign is substance, rendered fresh,

And cannot lie, or deal out strife.”


                              V

Then breaking out, a monkey blows a shawm,

And hunching, gazes cunningly at you,

And grips his instrument with hairy palm,

As if to hide it secretly from view.

The egg tilts on a ledge, half off the ground,

Into the dark, where, lit by new moon’s shine,

An elf prince sits, attended all around.

His nude well-favored, red-skinned concubine,

Flirts and displays herself to minute men,

Who tender their respects, with downcast cross-eye,

to her idolic, tiny frame; and then

All nuzzle closer with their stiff probosci.

Then sang the scarlet elfin queen

“Come close, my thin-legged lovers all,

There’s more to sight than you have seen.

Come feel the flesh that caused the fall.

There is no love that knits all life

Together, save rampaging lust,

Therefore, embrace me, little men

And bend your bodies as you must.”

And at the centre of it all, alive,

Bizarre, grotesque, and painted out of tune,

Out sprout a clutch of human beings. They strive

Like lilies in the thorns inopportune.

Remember: “ex nihilo, nihil fit.”

What hen, I wonder, laid and warmed this brood?

What blimpish, half-breed cockerel seeded it

With half-born harmonies and music rude?

Then sang an echo from the egg:

“I am myself, a ship of fools,

And all my crew are born in me

And learn my inner logic’s rules.

They breed, and fight, and learn to play

The little game I teach to them.

It is a game where no one wins.

I hatch them only to condemn.

And when at length, they break my crust,

And venture through the outer space,

The darkness is all light to them,

And all the road before their face.”

We leave the gallery, and take the street.

And silence breaks beneath the weight of feet.

Posted on by Michael Yost

The Testified and Witnessed Ballad of the Truly Risen Elvis Aaron Presley

MICHAEL YOST is a poet and essayist living in rural New Hampshire with his wife and children. His essays and poems have been published in places like Modern Age, First Things, The University Bookman, Dappled Things, The Brazen Head, and others. He substacks at The Weight of Form.

The Testified and Witnessed Ballad of the Truly Risen Elvis Aaron Presley (As Reported in World News Weekly)

He rises from the purple sheen

    And velvet of his box

His sequined vest aquamarine

    Pomade spread in his locks,

His face unaged, bright red with youth

    As an immortal god.

He’s risen! This I know for truth

    (Although it may seem odd.)

He rocks death’s jailhouse even now,

    From Graceland, where he waits,

To play his last, and take a bow,

    Before the mighty fates.

For when Amurka’s own true king,

    Begins to gyre his pelvis

The juke-box joints will leap and sing

   “Salvation comes from Elvis.”

His golden buckle girding on,

    Likewise his golden shades

The King has come in bronze and brawn

   As our world’s music fades.

And after Armageddon, all

    Will be Banana-Bacon-

Peanut-Butter Sammich. All

     The lost, unloved, forsaken

He’ll shower with amphetamines,

    Cake, Coca-Cola, Jam,

Butabarbital, morphine,

    And piles of honeyed ham.

    Girls will dance naked, all for love

And T.V. sets will ring

    And squawk our songs and praises of

Our Once and Future King.