Can't Remember Me Own Verses

The Lover Disputes A Journey

2011-09-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

My ladyes a-gone to hell
For all that I could say her no,
That summer winds there wax too hot
She swore she were afire to go

“Where better”, sings she “for a ghost
“Than phantom manses for to dwell?”
I told her that her sprite was pale
And that her skin’d be burnt by hell.

I told her that she needed light
Cast by the moon and not the fire
The dampness on the curtain wall
The skull, the tongue and the desire…

She scorned my bones – she spurned my song –
She built her an enchanted craft
Then cast out on the flamed lagoon
Sailed as it blazed from prow to aft

I watch it like a burgeoning star
On its diminished brightening way –
I feel the night air bid me stay –
I’ll follow it yet, howsoe’er far.

Wild Laistrygonians

2011-06-06T11:10:00.001-07:00

To want eaglehood is a habit of mind

When you’re voyaging sullen through leaves on the line

But best taken back –

product of the wrong track;

as you watch them in harmony, seeming to breed

Without profit or sepal or interest or seed

Lowlands’ own Air-Triffids, seeming to resent

economic fashions that never quite went

For their certain coming.

If never quite happened,

They remember their slight with their static round cunning,

Systematic when slackened –

The yaws of starfleets obsolescently new

Primed against the dew.

Lamento paternale

2011-05-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

C’è la problema d’erudizione
Che dopo il libro sta la decadenza -
Fra eremito Herbert e saggio Spenser
Un letargo attenda coltivazione.
La dilemma rimanga in traduzione
Cossichè invece di meno potenza
Vediamo effetti della circostanza
Un’ ostacolo sempre di creazione.
Il poeta bisogna di traghettatrice
Per lago di filosofia navigare,
Senza volluttuosamente sbagliare
Resistante la cattiva più tentatrice,
E alle ninfe concettuali non dare
Il regalo di qualcosa fatto o fare.

To a good housekeeper

2011-05-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

This Glass of Steel unpartially doth show
Abuses all to such as in it look… - SIR WALTER RALEGH

If smelting is an unattractive trade
It’s still of use for tolerance and test
Silver and slag heaped and indifferent laid
Are stratified and sold out or caressed.

Since metallurgy has come on apace
Your table should be dressed in minute care
The kitchen knives kept each their proper space
The armigerous, the cutting and the spare.

And lest you, lady, prick too sharp an edge,
Then tarnish cherished silver with chaste blood
We find in common currency a sledge
Its softer mettle made of metal mud

But not to be employed on holidays
Nor trusted with the whiter company
Of cloth and kindness – above all, always
To be washed up before confectionery.

When steel is doctored it may be misnamed
Stains can be unapparent when no less
Corrosive, and embedded, unashamed,
Blades silted something lowlier than mess.

Well whetted, then, you see off dulled disguise,
Silver knives, lady, brightening your eyes.

A dream of Brookes of Sheffield

2010-12-16T02:09:00.000-08:00

A funny old fellow met up with last night,
Hell’s ugly, though hard to say why
In vital statistics, because I’d obtrude
On the way I remember my mother’s beau laid

(And yet he looked different – for he was there too,
Why, they knew, or were said to know, one another,
Though I felt it was only ad hoc bores’ rapport).

I felt it as some device for succession,
Mummy palely quiet, I took on the brunt
Of the new man’s smooth wooing; quite as if the thing
Was half-settled but waited my writ.
Not that it was smooth, no, but not inurbane,
As he talked of the country, the pictures and me,
And I answered in loud anecdotes of my father,
Addressed to the rest of the past sold up table.

Was he the conception, the ruddy disquisitant,
Of some unmet man, say, a dear heart’s employer,
Snuffling the trails of his own mink brood?

We boarded a train, without that taking centre,
He showed a new side there, as if the pretence
Required other agents; far without his depth, then
He greeted the lately known passing too late.

Some time after, I thought of the unlettered squire,
As I thought him over, or the cidrous uncle
Of that splendid shilling. I rubbed him away.

For Linda Norgrove

2010-10-29T04:29:00.001-07:00

They intended to take you to a distinct place
(from the spring of the well by the boundary mark),
Now it teaches that farness can never come near
Or infinity compass affinity’s hold.

You came back to your father’s plain balladic name
And they followed you there, crofters of sharper hills,
Bringing handfuls of honour’s dried, unclearanced earth.

Difference, not variance, had been on your mind.
But the things that did not change, too, held you in thrall,
Long before anything, or one else; longer after.

Contact

2010-10-13T08:18:00.001-07:00

What stray regret, or accidental mood
Could have been interrupted, with their night?
How is it we can stay sure, doing wrong,
Why and when it will happen; for how long
Were they left then that charily cold light?

Moved to resist the electronic gong
I turned it over and again, my song,
Particularity condensed to crude;
Touching the cell of ether with small right
Feels just on the consoling side of lewd.

Flora MacDonald to Dr. Johnson, 1773

2010-09-14T04:23:00.001-07:00

Nay, Doctor, it was not for the prompting of the swords or for the jostling of the bayonets that I took it to mind to do it; nor for the men, whether auld or bare bairns, who lay cooling their veins on the heather. Neither was there in me or mine hope of petticoats or favours when we took the young man through.

You have paid me many compliments, Doctor, as to call me a woman of soft features, of gentle manners, of, God save you, an elegant presence; but such as these must wither be they not housed in a kind soul.

I was no heedless overblown girl-child when I met Prince Charles; I was a grown woman a cast above twenty and some among my kin had said that I would cost them no dower but was likely to spare them no feeding in my age. It was a strange e’en then, when they came chieftain, prince, and all from Dunvegan a-pleading to my skirts.

I looked over the young gentleman and I thought what some had said of him; that he was Italian and no blood of ours by birth, of the Romish persuasion, that he had left our friends and our cousins to suffer in a cold pass. I heard alike the beseeching of Kingsburgh, that the slight laddie was all we had of hope.

I thought of the gold promised on warrants, and the chill eyes of the country ministers, and as I held out my hand to Charlie’s kiss I thought then, yon boy will look more handsome in ain of my auld frocks than upon the gibbets of Butcher Cumberland.

'The Children of Lir'

2010-09-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

It teetered there, snagged by its strap,
Jacob's rucksack, and in it, all we could remember,
Was on the rocks, weren't it now. Therein the golden
Defile of yellow pallades; oh, there where
They lived and they could last, the ragged staves
Each at the two others, striped bannering limbs -
All this, as I say, to the sea for a kiss;
It was time to get going,

I thought; disembark,
I walked down as comely a way as the stripcourse,
Island, to islet, in through the lagoon,
Thinking about pinkness was laid in that passing
Hard flowers and movingly fouled up pink stamps.

And I took it across both the head and my shoulder,
Knew the new felt lightness of the underwhelmed.
So I stepped to the boat, but back into the water.

Because such are times when instances can't matter
The rucksack, it can haver up that early part
But I must have dropped it; at worst in the wetness.
What alters, when I had forgotten it floats?

I had become busied
In cold anxious hands
If not malign vicious
If waiting then sure

A brocade of more or less memorable faces
To people the spaces
On Celticdom's floor.

Leaning to the one seeming most certain kind,
Perhaps as defined
Or expressible more
Smiling on yellow lanks, and sighs, I signed.

The sack lacking its rifice, the vow was no law
To the will of a child.
When they went aside all
As if asking her seal
Why not change my mind?

When the word is the mould of a thing so much smaller
Than I am, than they were, white where they could breathe
And she too engaged to the prince of the fishes
Well, talk about telling thin things from mere fingers.

Captain Arcadia episode 2 part 1

2010-08-18T03:06:00.000-07:00

Episode 2 – ‘Courting Controversy’

1576

Dublin Castle

Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, is on his deathbed…

(A tower room overlooking the sea. Essex lies not in a splendid four-poster bed, but upon a large straw pallet. He is covered by a rich, deep red samite drapery, so some luxury is maintained. Beside him waits an anxious manservant.)

ESSEX: Gilbert…

(The manservant cranes nearer.)

I want you to fetch the children…and a witness…you understand?...someone who can write, now, hurry…

(The manservant nods and tears off.)

(Brief cut to Penelope Devereux and Philip Sidney in another tower’s window seat. She is weeping. His hand is on her shoulder.)

(Cut to the manservant, Gilbert, stopping a middle-aged, stern, plainly dressed man in a castle corridor. A closer glance reveals him to be wearing several rich gold rings.)

MANSERVANT: Beggin’ yer pardon, yer honour, his Lordship desires yer presence. It is very close now…I believe he will have to make a decision about the young lady and Master Sidney…

WALSINGHAM: Will he now. Well, I’ll be along directly.

(Gilbert hurries off to fetch the young couple. Sir Francis Walsingham looks after him leaving, then leans against the wall, looking down at his hands, remembering something.)

VOICEOVER of LORD BURGHLEY: Walsingham. You will stop young Sidney marrying the Devereux girl. Whatever it takes.

VOICEOVER of WALSINGHAM: Understood, my lord…

(Back to the Earl’s bed-room. Sidney and Stella stand at the foot of the bed, a pace apart. Walsingham enters cautiously from a door at the right of the bed.)

ESSEX: Ah. Good. Walsingham. A…reliable clerk…

(Walsingham looks quietly sour.)

I have discussed this matter hitherto, Sidney, with the honoured Lord Deputy, your father…between us, well…

(Sidney seems to be mouthing something in anticipation.)

…there were some initial confusion about the dowry…

(Sidney is clenching his fists.)

…about remainder to my Earldom…

(Stella too looks frustrated.)

…your prospects, Master Sidney, and so on…you will understand if I proceeded with…

(Apparently unconsciously, Sidney slams down his foot. Essex sees the movement, frowns, brindles, then starts laughing hoarsely. The laugh breaks into coughing and both young people climb onto the pallet in consternation. Essex has not yet said enough to constitute consent…if he were to die now…

…Essex stretches out his hand and takes Sidney’s, joining it to Stella’s. Then he suddenly drops his grip and collapses back.)

STELLA: He cannot be…

WALSINGHAM: He is dead, most certainly. I know the expression well.

SIDNEY: Sir Francis…no word was spoken specifically, no statement was taken…but surely the intention was clear? You saw the action; he joined our hands; is that not enough?

(They watch his impassive face.)

WALSINGHAM: Oh…well…I should say…

…more than enough.

(The tension breaks and the lovers embrace. Walsingham regards them with a detached smile.)

Master Sidney, Lady Penelope, I shall be delighted to be the first to transmit news of your betrothal to the court.

for ease of reading: all episode 1 of 'Captain Arcadia'

2010-08-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

CAPTAIN ARCADIA

Episode 1 – ‘Gap Year’

Mainz, 1572

(A shot of the cathedral. A bell tolling. A view of the city progressing from grand to seedy. A Low Tavern. Laughter and oaths in German. A red robe splashed with mud. Shot up to the shrewd face of a Roman Catholic prelate, in middle age. He is counting some gold coins as he crosses the threshold. A man in brown shouts.)

DRINKER: Lash up your purses, lads! Herr Kardinal is here…

CARDINAL: (smiling charmingly) I’m not playing tonight Hermann. I have a duty to attend to.

DRINKER: Duty? And this duty’s name…is it Gertrude?

(Shot of a repelled looking bar wench taking a step back, uproarious laughter.)

CARDINAL: Not tonight. Tell me, is the Englishman still here?

DRINKER: Herr Norton? Not likely, your Eminence. You were foolish to be so generous about that account!

SECOND DRINKER: The heretic bastard will be in Cologne by now.

CARDINAL: Cologne? I think that unlikely. Hey, Herr Albrecht, give my boys a drink. Cologne? No, I’m a spiritual gentleman, Liutpold, and my judgement is that by now…

(A hitherto silent man in a green tunic slams a knife in the table.)

MURDEROUS GOON: He’ll be in Hell, Herr Kardinal!

(Shot of a very, very exhausted man, at a roadside, pausing for breath. A flung stone smacks him in the back of the neck and he falls. Three men in green tunics surround him, pinning him to the ground. One pulls a knife.)

KILLER 1: Mistah Norton. No one defaults on Herr Kardinal, do you understand?

KILLER 2: Not without inconvenience, ja?

(Sound of hooves. The three functionaries cluster together suspiciously.)

KILLER 2: Looks like a real gentleman.

(The third killer, with the knife, laughs. We cut to the approaching rider, a young man on a white horse. Should be absolutely archetypal)

SIDNEY: Afternoon, sirs. My mount is tiring; are any of you carrying water?

(Caught in the midst of dubiety, the killers are silent and awkward.)

Come on. My German may be imperfect, but…

(The second killer pulls a pistol and shoots the white horse dead. Sidney sees the action, alights in time, elegantly, smashes the third killer out cold, takes the knife, and stabs the second killer dead through the back of the neck to the gorge. The first man runs for it. The horse aside, the killers have failed to kill anyone.)

NORTON: (gasping) Master Philip!

SIDNEY: What have we here? Lord Jesus, aren’t you the footman mother had dismissed from Penshurst for gambling? What the devil are you doing here?

NORTON: Still gambling, Master Philip.

Rotterdam, some months later

(A bustling and mercantile thoroughfare, through which an old man in a long, black, fur-lined gown and a faintly disdainful looking, fashionably dressed young nobleman are winding their way.)

ERASMUS: Is my fair city less than to your liking, Mr Greville?

GREVILLE: The clouds upon my thoughts are glum enough already without being augmented by the…stench of moneychangers.

ERASMUS: You are a young man of uncompromising disposition, I see. What is that worries you so? The grave state of decrepitude in which modern learning self-evidently finds herself?

GREVILLE: My troubles are of a personal nature, Erasmus.

ERASMUS: Aha! A love affair.

GREVILLE: No, no. If you must know, it’s about my friend Philip Sidney…

ERASMUS: Ah yes, I remember him, a most accomplished and promising young gentleman. A scholar of Oxford, Christ Church, I believe? Is his mother not one of the Count of Leicester’s sisters?

GREVILLE: The point is, for months he’s been missing, no sign of him anywhere, and I received disturbing word from…well, from an unreliable source, but…

(Loud commotion and shouts of “Thief, thief!” A nearby stall is in utter commotion. A pale young man dressed in black, wearing a flashy opal ring, is trying to extricate himself from a particularly angry knot of people with a red faced burgher at its centre.)

MARLOWE: I hold a commission from, from, the con- con- sistory court at Rh-Rh-Rheims, I am a, a theological scholar, a scholar and a…

BURGHER: A red-handed thief! That’s my best opal, you degenerate, on order to the Duchess of Brabant, went missing four days back…

GREVILLE: What an extraordinary chance. That’s him, Erasmus, the man who said he might have bad news about Philip.

ERASMUS: Allow me to sort out this unfortunate situation. My good man, (he lays a restraining hand on the angry burgher’s shoulder) you have perhaps heard of my repute. I am Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam…

(The burgher punches Erasmus in the face and the sage falls over. Marlowe has gripped hold of Greville.)

MARLOWE: Ey, the old man’ll be just fine. Scram now, and we’ll talk about your friend. I know a nice safe ‘stablishment. Come on.

(They bolt away down an alley.)

(The camera follows them bolting down many side streets. At some point they rush past a shabbily dressed man in a wide-brimmed hat. He raises his head to look at them; it is Norton. He watches them pass, then sets off back the way he had come. Cut to an Unsavoury Boarding House, Marlowe and Greville entering.)

MARLOWE: (to landlady) Good day, Frau Geritzoon. I’ve brought a friend.

LANDLADY: He looks a better class than your usual run of dodgy Jesuits and thievin’ rentboys, Kit.

MARLOWE: I’m sure he appreciates the compliment, Frau Geritzoon. Now if I were you I’d get right down to the jewellers on Wilhelmstrasse.

LANDLADY: What you nattering about? I don’t need bawbies at my age.

MARLOWE: Mm, well, I think you’ll find yer man Desiderius in a bit of a fix.

LANDLADY: What? Dezzy’s got ‘imself in trouble again? Well, Kit Marlowe, I’m moving but if I find you’re at the bottom of this one… (She bustles out.)

GREVILLE: (astonished) ‘Dezzy’? Frau Geritzoon? That woman...Erasmus…

MARLOWE: Has been secretly married for decades, yeah. Now, Master Greville, just where were we?

GREVILLE: You’re the one who should be answering questions, you depraved little fop. You leant over to me back in the tavern, muttered “Sidney” and put your thumbs down. Are you saying it’s all up with Philip, and what is your information, exactly?

MARLOWE: (off hand) Jus’ this.

(He moves to a corner of the room with a battered travelling chest in it and kicks the unlocked trunk open, Greville craning after him.)

Don’ stand there lordling, light a taper.

GREVILLE: Show some damned respect.

MARLOWE: Do as I say.

(GREVILLE, white and sweaty with anger and trepidation, does indeed light a taper as Marlowe picks up a large object from the box. It comes under the light – a mud-splattered, once elegant saddle, with a coat of arms on it.)

GREVILLE: Christ save me! The Penshurst arms, Sidney’s blazon!

MARLOWE: Picked off the corpse of a horse fortnight back. Acquired it for a pound. Wouldn’t mind some remuner…

GREVILLE: Like hell it was a pound, you slimy bastard.

(He is very angry and pins Marlowe in a grip against the wall, letting the taper go fall. We see an unknown boot come down on it.)

OFFSTAGE HUSKILY FEMALE VOICE: Steady, boys. You could start a fire like that.

(Flash to the newcomer. Dressed in young man’s garments with a wide-brimmed riding hat exactly like the one Norton was wearing earlier is a tall, light haired young woman with dark dark eyes and the evident lineaments of incredibly fabulous breasts. Penelope Deveureux – Stella – has arrived.)

(We cut to a ship leaving the docks of Rotterdam, and the camera follows a candle-light at one window in the bridge. Within this cabin, small but comfortably appointed, Norton, dressed only in a long dirty white shirt, slumps on a stool. Sidney stands looking out to sea, his back to his servant.)

NORTON: I still can’t believe she let me be took advantage of like that.

(Sidney smiles mirthlessly but offers no comment.)

NORTON: I mean, master Philip, I’ve seen my fair share, I can handle myself, you know I can, I mean to say, how old must this little leddy have been?

(Sidney turns, holding a silver bracelet towards the lone candle.)

SIDNEY: It is a strange kind of lady robber who steals only rags but leaves valuable trinkets in her wake, Norton.

NORTON: Oh, she dropped it whilst she was changing, accident that was, sure as winking. I know these women, master Philip, in debt, need to get away, so they do anything to get into men’s clothes. She’s be livid she dropped the bauble while she were at it. A harlot’s trick.

(Sidney draws a dagger and places it at Norton’s throat, while with his other hand he dangles the bracelet before the servant’s face.)

SIDNEY: That girl was not a harlot, fool. Don’t you know this ensign?

NORTON: Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but it’s been long enough since I were in England, and even when my stay were regular like, I didn’t spent it in overmuch study o’ books o’ heraldry.

(Sidney switches the dagger around and raps Norton with the hilt.)

SIDNEY: Essex, idiot, Essex! This woman was wearing a silver bracelet enscribed with the arms of Devereux.

NORTON: So she were the Earl of Essex’s fancy-girl, then?

SIDNEY: Once again, Norton, I am reminded that you serve me because of chance rather than merit. This is obviously a piece of baptismal jewellery, a christening-ring. (He sighs.) Describe her again.

NORTON: Didn’t see much of her, she came at me from behind and when she left she was kind of covered up in the best o’ my wardrobe. (Pause) But yeah, she seemed kinda pretty good-looking, far as a man could see, lots of yellow hair, nice duckies…

(Sidney places the blade at Norton’s throat again.)

SIDNEY: Eyes?

NORTON: (squawking out in panic) Black!

(pause)

Or as close to it as a man could…

(Sidney ignores Norton’s trailing sentence, looks out over the sea and bawls a name.)

SIDNEY: STEEEELLLLLLLLLLLAAAAA!

(Back in Frau Geritzoon’s lodging house. Stella is now in a white dress of simple but costly material, drinking warm sack from a wooden tumbler at a table, and weaving a needle through a piece of yarn; Greville and Marlowe sit at its other ends, eying her suspiciously.)

GREVILLE: What cause should we have, I ask again, to believe a word of your story, mistress? Certainly your English is decent, but the same can hardly be said of your habit…or...by your own account…your conduct.

MARLOWE: An Earl’s daughter of England dressing up tranny-like after robbing a manservant? Have things got that more exciting at home since I left Cambridge?

STELLA: I care nothing for your account, sirrah. I address myself solely to Master Greville. Now, Fulke dear, is this not growing ridiculous?

GREVILLE: (spluttering) What…

STELLA: We have seen each other as bare children, in the gardens of Hampton-Court. Am I then so changed?

GREVILLE: If what you say is true…immeasurably, yes. This is scandalous behaviour, madam. Quite outrage…

MARLOWE: Lemme see the letter again. (He snatches for a bit of parchment over which all three have apparently been pooring.)

‘My well-beloved W., Tell Burghley I died outside Mainz.’

Well, forgive me for spelling out the obvious, but your friend Sidney does not want to be found. Faking and broadcasting one’s own death is, well, an extreme measure…

GREVILLE: (rising) Marlowe, if you do not fall silent and remember your station there will be nothing faked about your death. (He draws his dagger.)

MARLOWE: Time for me to start flashing things about too, right? (He leaps up and produces not a weapon but a tightly furled slip of paper, which he hands coldly.)

GREVILLE: A letter of service and warrantage from Sir Francis Walsingham…

MARLOWE: Yeah, yeah, I’m a spy, an informer, an eye of the bloody government, okay. Don’t judge me Master Greville; they offer very reasonable travel expenses and the Cambridge degree is complementary…anyway. Something tells me your bloke wants the likes of me to think he’s dead. Until Penny here turned up, that little ploy had succeeded…

(Stella leaps up and pricks Marlowe in the neck with her needle. He collapses.)

STELLA: If Philip wants to travel unobserved by the Queen’s council, I intend to help him to do so.

GREVILLE: Did you kill him?

STELLA: I hadn’t the heart; just a sleeping-philtre. Tie him up tight and we’ll take him with us.

GREVILLE: Where are we going, my lady?

STELLA: After Philip, of course.

Venice, the Doge’s Palace.

(Through the state windows we see the figure of the Cardinal from earlier, gazing beadily out over the canal. Behind him are several Venetian counsellors in black robes, and a couple of men gorgeously dressed in fashionable costumes of the English court.)

FIRST COUNSELLOR: Eduardo, lord Windsor. Sir Ricardo Shelley. You are aware why you have been summoned, no?

SHELLEY: Of course there is the matter of the outstanding sum, Signor Contarini; and we promise…

CARDINAL: You promise! You promise! You English do nothing but promise. (He laughs, then returns to surveying the window.)

SECOND COUNSELLOR: My…lord…Windsor…sir…all we ask is a reasonable attitude. You know what to do when your…shall I say, your friend, arrives?

WINDSOR: All is in readiness, Signor Foscaro.

FIRST COUNSELLOR: Are you sure Master Sidney trusts you?

WINDSOR: Absolutely. We were at Oxford together.

SECOND COUNSELLOR: Well then, my lord Cardinale, we need not worry. (Turning to a third counsellor) Angelo! Tell the people at your palace to make a bed…prepared, for the young English gentleman…

(Cut to Sidney and Norton, in a gondola, progressing down the Grand Canal.)

NORTON: The greatest city in the world!

SIDNEY: I think not. The most beautiful, maybe.

NORTON: Where are we going, Master Philip? What are we doing.

SIDNEY: Waiting.

(A gun sounds.)

SIDNEY: (to the gondolier) Now take us to the Arsenale.

(Cut to Windsor and Shelley, surrounded by suspicious looking Venetian guards, waiting near the arsenal.)

SHELLEY: Is that him?

WINDSOR: I think so. He’s looking pretty shabby.

SHELLEY: Let’s go.

(We see the four men, Norton hanging back, converging, now on foot, towards the centre of a bridge.)

SIDNEY: Edward! It’s been some time.

WINDSOR: Welcome to Venice, Philip.

SHELLEY: Master Sidney. I am glad to meet you. I trust here you will find the calm you seek.

(A traghetto, a flat-bottomed boat that ferries passengers horizontally across canals, is followed, letting off three masked figures, two men dressed as harlequins, and a blonde, heavily powdered, masked woman…familiar looking…)

GREVILLE: How long must we keep this stupid game in play?

MARLOWE: Ah, Fulke, dontcha appreciate my hand with the costumes?

STELLA: Quiet, Marlowe. Remember the deal – if you cross us, you get the canal.

GREVILLE: Look! It’s them!

(We pan out. The three pursuers are less than a hundred yards behind their oblivious quarry.)

With…

STELLA: Is something troubling you, Master Greville?

GREVILLE: You could say that. Lord Windsor and Sir Richard Shelley! Philip is consorting with the most notorious Catholic exiles in the English nobility! What can he be up to?

MARLOWE: Just you stay quiet, lording, and we might yet find out.

(Cut to the dining room of Palazzo Foscari. A Counsellor, Angelo Foscaro, the English exiles and Sidney are sitting at ease upon several divans.)

COUNSELLOR: Well, you boys must have a lot to talk about from England; I shall bid you good evening. (He stands, smiling, and withdraws.)

WINDSOR: At last. I thought the old bore would never shut up about his panettone. So, Philip, when did you last receive word from your father?

SIDNEY: Over…three months ago. Nor was it news of the kind to bring me any happiness.

SHELLEY: Really, Master Sidney? But we hear that the country is quiet at last, with no small thanks to your father’s policy.

SIDNEY: It is not his policy that causes trouble; the Desmonds have been peaceful, the wild Irish are calm…but…

SHELLEY: The English lords in the pale?

(A silence falls.)

They still will not pay their taxes to the Lord Deputy, your father?

SIDNEY: They refuse him a penny, Sir Richard, and he cannot long pay his soldiers out of his own pocket. We Sidneys have never relied overmuch on riches.

WINDSOR: And never been too rich either, eh? I know the feeling. If you knew the tune of my obligations… (He starts laughing in a slightly forced manner.)

SHELLEY: Cut to the chase, my lord Windsor; lay our proposition before Master Sidney.

WINDSOR: Philip…

…how would you like to see your father wear a golden crown?

(Pause. Close up on Sidney’s face.)

SIDNEY: Go on…

(Cut to the corridor at the Palazzo Foscari’s entrance. Two servants are in reach of the door when it is rapped on heavily.)

SERVANT 1: Alright, alright! Relax! Who are you making such a racket?

MARLOWE: (offstage) Harlequins, harlequins for Councillor Foscaro! We claim the right of the Carnivale! If your master is a nobleman and not a miser, you will let us in…

SERVANT 1: Very well, calm down. (To his fellow servant) Fetch Giustiniano and the other guards, in case there’s any larceny. We don’t want funny business in front of the English visitors.

SERVANT 2: Understood. (He exits.)

(Servant 1 opens the door and is immediately knocked unconscious by a blackjack. Brief cut to Marlowe’s triumphant, grinning Harlequin painted face.)

(Back to the English gentlemen in the dining-room.)

SIDNEY: So, if I understand you – you want me to advance your expenses, and then…

SHELLEY: Then the Sidneys will be Kings of Ireland.

WINDSOR: The money will be invested in a galley of expert adventurers, lying at anchor now in Venice. We will carry soldiers and munitions, and communicate with the honoured Deputy, your father, immediately upon landing. The wild Irish are ready to muster, and the mean-spirited English lords shall pay…

SIDNEY: With death?

WINDSOR: I don’t see why not.

SHELLEY: Most certainly.

SIDNEY: (narrowing his eyes, looking at them sidelong) Who will be first to the scaffold…my friends?

(The other two start laughing.)

SHELLEY: Well, that’s easy.

WINDSOR: The principal rogue must go down, of course.

SHELLEY: That heretic scoundrel…

WINDSOR AND SHELLEY: The Earl of Essex!

(Sidney nods with apparent lack of concern. There is a wild female shriek behind the curtains, which startles all three men, and a crash as a woman sags to the floor. First to recover his presence of mind in the confusion, Sidney draws his sword and seizes the back of Shelley’s neck, holding the blade to his throat.)

SIDNEY: Sir Richard Shelley, you are an honourless, spendthrift, forsworn, degenerate traitor, and I will see you dead before I allow you to defame Penelope’s father!

(Windsor snarls and draws, aiming for Sidney’s undefended side. There is another stirring in the curtains and Greville, still attired as a Harlequin, puts a dagger through Windsor’s leg.)

GREVILLE: Not so fast, my lord.

(Windsor collapses. The recumbent female form, the powdered and masked Penelope, rises up from her faint, lifting her vizard…)

STELLA: Master Sidney. You are a far better man than I took you for. I truly thought you would let them arrange my father’s murder.

SIDNEY: (coldly) Then, Lady Penelope, you understand…nothing…of me.

(In his intense concentration upon her he has neglected to keep a secure hold on Shelley, who draws a dagger with a free hand and spins it towards Sidney’s back. Marlowe now emerges, making use of his slight, short frame to whack a fist into Shelley’s groin. Shelley falls back groaning atrociously.)

MARLOWE: Old Deptford trick. Were you wanting to see the Carnival, Master Sidney, or shall we be going, this time?

SIDNEY: I don’t know you from Satan, little man. What are you, some kind of poet?

MARLOWE: Takes one to know one.

(Cut to the central dungeon in the Doge’s Prison. Norton is chained to a stone chair. Watching him are two ranks of robed, hatted Counsellors, led by their Doge, Alvise Mocenigo. Among the Counsellors are Shelley and, leaning on a crutch and bandaged, Windsor.)

FIRST COUNSELLOR: This man was detained after Master Sidney’s flight with these…harlequins. Under…examination…

(Close view of Norton, who is sweating and weeping, looking weak, drawn.)

…he revealed his name as Norton.

(Among the Counsellors a flash of red in the darkness leads us to the Cardinal, who raises an eyebrow.)

SHELLEY: That is young Sidney’s manservant.

WINDSOR: Yes. A fellow of no account. You might as well let him go free, if you cannot catch the others.

SECOND COUNSELLOR: I think not, my lord Windsor. Signor cardinale, explain the situation.

(The Cardinal stands.)

CARDINAL: I understand Venice intends to maintain its good relations with the Holy See?

(There is some murmuring, but an emphatic nod from the Doge.)

CARDINAL: Then give me the servant. He is in my debt by the value of two thousand ducats.

(Brief discussion among the Counsellors.)

DOGE: Of course. Here in Venice, we take debts very seriously.

(Close up on Shelley and Windsor. They look at each other uncomfortably. Hands are laid on their shoulders.)

FIRST COUNSELLOR: (shouting) The twenty thousand ducats! Where are they?

WINDSOR: Signor Contarini…

SHELLEY: They are, invested in…

DOGE: They are invested in my prisons, and I shall send you there to collect their dividends.

(Laughter as the English Catholics are chained and led off, and Norton, still fettered, marched off with the Cardinal and his guards.)

End of episode

Captain Arcadia, last part of episode 1

2010-08-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

(Cut to the dining room of Palazzo Foscari. A Counsellor, Angelo Foscaro, the English exiles and Sidney are sitting at ease upon several divans.)

COUNSELLOR: Well, you boys must have a lot to talk about from England; I shall bid you good evening. (He stands, smiling, and withdraws.)

WINDSOR: At last. I thought the old bore would never shut up about his panettone. So, Philip, when did you last receive word from your father?

SIDNEY: Over…three months ago. Nor was it news of the kind to bring me any happiness.

SHELLEY: Really, Master Sidney? But we hear that the country is quiet at last, with no small thanks to your father’s policy.

SIDNEY: It is not his policy that causes trouble; the Desmonds have been peaceful, the wild Irish are calm…but…

SHELLEY: The English lords in the pale?

(A silence falls.)

They still will not pay their taxes to the Lord Deputy, your father?

SIDNEY: They refuse him a penny, Sir Richard, and he cannot long pay his soldiers out of his own pocket. We Sidneys have never relied overmuch on riches.

WINDSOR: And never been too rich either, eh? I know the feeling. If you knew the tune of my obligations… (He starts laughing in a slightly forced manner.)

SHELLEY: Cut to the chase, my lord Windsor; lay our proposition before Master Sidney.

WINDSOR: Philip…

…how would you like to see your father wear a golden crown?

(Pause. Close up on Sidney’s face.)

SIDNEY: Go on…

(Cut to the corridor at the Palazzo Foscari’s entrance. Two servants are in reach of the door when it is rapped on heavily.)

SERVANT 1: Alright, alright! Relax! Who are you making such a racket?

MARLOWE: (offstage) Harlequins, harlequins for Councillor Foscaro! We claim the right of the Carnivale! If your master is a nobleman and not a miser, you will let us in…

SERVANT 1: Very well, calm down. (To his fellow servant) Fetch Giustiniano and the other guards, in case there’s any larceny. We don’t want funny business in front of the English visitors.

SERVANT 2: Understood. (He exits.)

(Servant 1 opens the door and is immediately knocked unconscious by a blackjack. Brief cut to Marlowe’s triumphant, grinning Harlequin painted face.)

(Back to the English gentlemen in the dining-room.)

SIDNEY: So, if I understand you – you want me to advance your expenses, and then…

SHELLEY: Then the Sidneys will be Kings of Ireland.

WINDSOR: The money will be invested in a galley of expert adventurers, lying at anchor now in Venice. We will carry soldiers and munitions, and communicate with the honoured Deputy, your father, immediately upon landing. The wild Irish are ready to muster, and the mean-spirited English lords shall pay…

SIDNEY: With death?

WINDSOR: I don’t see why not.

SHELLEY: Most certainly.

SIDNEY: (narrowing his eyes, looking at them sidelong) Who will be first to the scaffold…my friends?

(The other two start laughing.)

SHELLEY: Well, that’s easy.

WINDSOR: The principal rogue must go down, of course.

SHELLEY: That heretic scoundrel…

WINDSOR AND SHELLEY: The Earl of Essex!

(Sidney nods with apparent lack of concern. There is a wild female shriek behind the curtains, which startles all three men, and a crash as a woman sags to the floor. First to recover his presence of mind in the confusion, Sidney draws his sword and seizes the back of Shelley’s neck, holding the blade to his throat.)

SIDNEY: Sir Richard Shelley, you are an honourless, spendthrift, forsworn, degenerate traitor, and I will see you dead before I allow you to defame Penelope’s father!

(Windsor snarls and draws, aiming for Sidney’s undefended side. There is another stirring in the curtains and Greville, still attired as a Harlequin, puts a dagger through his leg.)

GREVILLE: Not so fast, my lord.

(Windsor collapses. The recumbent female form, the powdered and masked Penelope, rises up from her faint, lifting her vizard…)

STELLA: Master Sidney. You are a far better man than I took you for. I truly thought you would let them arrange my father’s murder.

SIDNEY: (coldly) Then, Lady Penelope, you understand…nothing…of me.

(In his intense concentration upon her he has neglected to keep a secure hold on Shelley, who draws a dagger with a free hand and spins it towards Sidney’s back. Marlowe now emerges, making use of his slight, short frame to whack a fist into Shelley’s groin. Shelley falls back groaning atrociously.)

MARLOWE: Old Deptford trick. Were you wanting to see the Carnival, Master Sidney, or shall we be going, this time?

SIDNEY: I don’t know you from Satan, little man. What are you, some kind of poet?

MARLOWE: Takes one to know one.

(Cut to the central dungeon in the Doge’s Prison. Norton is chained to a stone chair. Watching him are two ranks of robed, hatted Counsellors, led by their Doge, Alvise Mocenigo. Among the Counsellors are Shelley and, leaning on a crutch and bandaged, Windsor.)

FIRST COUNSELLOR: This man was detained after Master Sidney’s flight with these…harlequins. Under…examination…

(Close view of Norton, who is sweating and weeping, looking weak, drawn.)

…he revealed his name as Norton.

(Among the Counsellors a flash of red in the darkness leads us to the Cardinal, who raises an eyebrow.)

SHELLEY: That is young Sidney’s manservant.

WINDSOR: Yes. A fellow of no account. You might as well let him go free, if you cannot catch the others.

SECOND COUNSELLOR: I think not, my lord Windsor. Signor cardinale, explain the situation.

(The Cardinal stands.)

CARDINAL: I understand Venice intends to maintain its good relations with the Holy See?

(There is some murmuring, but an emphatic nod from the Doge.)

CARDINAL: Then give me the servant. He is in my debt by the value of two thousand ducats.

(Brief discussion among the Counsellors.)

DOGE: Of course. Here in Venice, we take debts very seriously.

(Close up on Shelley and Windsor. They look at each other uncomfortably. Hands are laid on their shoulders.)

FIRST COUNSELLOR: (shouting) The twenty thousand ducats! Where are they?

WINDSOR: Signor Contarini…

SHELLEY: They are, invested in…

DOGE: They are invested in my prisons, and I shall send you there to collect their dividends.

(Laughter as the English Catholics are chained and led off, and Norton, still fettered, marched off with the Cardinal and his guards.)

End of episode

Occitan song

2010-07-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

Tell me how I find myself here, pale Fiammetta!
shaded in the draping, still solicitous for you,
after all, the leaves about your crown are only in a fetter
overseeing narrow birch and further vulnerable rue;
- so tell me how the gardener became a fire-setter?

and how the barkless branches take the brew;
Fiametta! when you've told me I will stand your ever-debtor,
even if I cannot help but think such upkeep is my due -

When the opening buds are burning but the petals will not die,
And we pass beds that are composted by whooping in their sleep,
You must show me, Fiammetta, where the brambles have to vie
for the chance to flourish gently and to confidently creep
around that bough that irrigates from savour back to sigh -

I'd slum in the silver garden shed beyond the bonfire heap.

To Charles Hepburn Johnston

2010-07-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

You knew that odd satiety
about the troublingly arranged
times between sad dubiety,
and smiled thinly, when things changed;
You had better ways to leisure
that were stitched with light to measure.
I have listened for your pace,
walking past our common place,
slowly come to a conclusion
about you and him and it,
chomping at my fraying bit,
that grace isn't in seclusion
(necessarily at least),
And that enough, if sparing, is far better than a feast.

Companion Pieces

2010-07-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

The Faerie Queene, Bk III, canto iii, stanza 50
as an Onegin sonnet

'The end is not,' old Merlin stuttered
(and the old fraud seemed quite unnerved),
If he saw ghosts, yet none he uttered,
But groaned and veered about and swerved,
As if to say 'Tudor succession
- in confidential confession -
Has flitted through the stable door;
It's Stuarts now, then Civil War.'
Well, Britomartya then, and Nursey
Recoiled back, as well they might
At such a startling sort of sight,
But Merlin, straightening out his Jersey
Adjusted to his former mien
As if unmoved by any scene.

Eugene Onegin, chapter 2, stanza 23
as a Spenserian stanza

Full neat as morning fitly doth she rise,
Lending my numbers (her lips warmly chaste)
The cleanness of her wheaten sapphire eyes,
The shining tressed bound, till Helga's waist
E'en braue Dan Petrarch would but haue defac'd:
As we in Virgil, or in Jeffrey read,
A goodliness, wherewith I once embrac'd,
Yet now must find it still most taedious grown,
So of the elder sister sing alone.

out of date thoughts on the Whigs

2010-06-03T00:48:00.001-07:00

It took the final election result of 2010 before I truly understood the early eighteenth century.

On the morning which marked the consummation of the New Politics, a noted, hirsute Liberal Democrat activist approached me over breakfast and shook me by the hand. This being Balliol JCR, I was the best he could do by way of symbolic Toryism; an underwhelming, motheaten tiger in a zoo more noted for its herbivore collection.

‘Welcome to government,’ I said, feeling uncomfortably far from satire.

‘The Coalition’ suffers from problems of definition more, I think, than from those of will. That bald ‘Coalition’ won’t do alone; it sounds dystopian, the government in a book by Cormac McCarthy or Magnus Mills, encompassing shades of the unsuccessful Mitchell and Webb sketch about the post-apocalyptic ‘Emergency’.

The first internet suggestion was the vapid ‘Change Coalition’, but the New Politics are after all supposed to be ‘historic’; other nerds put forward ‘The Churchill Coalition’ (because he was in both parties. Strewth). My instinct – after considering the social ramifications of ‘The Operagoing Coalition’ – was to go back rather further.

In 1710 the governing Whig Junto suffered a serious backlash for many reasons. Queen Anne had been convinced by her latest lesbian favourite, Lady Masham, that they were imperilling the Church, and the government had also unwisely tried to have the popular High Church preacher Sacheverell executed for sedition. That October a massive Tory majority was returned to the House of Commons for the first time since the 1688 revolution. It was under the control of two men.

Robert Harley, the new Lord High Treasurer, was an ex-Whig of Puritan descent. Henry St John, the Secretary of State, was a high-born, womanising Tory. They were by all accounts best friends, and they had a pretty handy set of spin doctors back at CCHQ too – Pope, Swift and so on.

They inherited a nation exhausted by the long, bloody and expensive War of the Spanish Succession, and to the fury of the patriotic Whigs but with the approval of Queen and country they put a stop it.

Their problem was that they ended up fatally divided over Europe – to wit, St John wanted the Catholic Stuarts to return and Harley didn’t. St John was about to win this argument by impeaching the Treasurer when, in 1714, the Queen died, King George came over and the whole government found itself in exile, the Tower, or at best obscurity, “men half ambitious, all unknown”.

I would accept that the resemblances between the Harley Ministry and our own present administration are superficial, though I would certainly welcome any sympathy for the Jacobite cause from Mr. Cameron, and would very much like to be employed to write poems, a la Pope & Swift, in his favour. But this pudding does nonetheless contain, after all, the proof.

When the pact was announced Signor Marco Meola’s facebook status read:

¾ Conservatives + ¼ Lib Dems = New Labour!?

I think he was nearly on the money but a few hundred years out, and I accordingly propose that we refer to our new government as the Whig Party.

Two clauses in the coalition agreement have upset a very large number of people. The core Tory membership is in ferment over Cameron’s promise to offer a referendum on AV; pragmatically, because it lowers the Conservative Party’s chance of governing alone; idealistically, because “to any true Tory the idea of the constitution being negotiable and mutable is itself a kind of sacrilege”.

We aren’t at the moment hearing so much about a more radical change that has been decided without a referendum – fixed-term, five year parliaments. This irritates people in two political directions – natural 17th century Tories who believe in a “strong crown”, a powerful executive; and Radicals who see it as diminishing the decision making power of the electorate. The 55% opposition requirement to topple a government is a similar kind of safeguard. In Melanie Phillips’s words, it “locks the parties in a fatal embrace”. It is a clause designed, in fact, to protect a junto or elite.

A weakened executive and a stronger oligarchy has been born, classic hall-marks of Whiggery. There have been complaints of “two white millionaires walking into Downing Street and announcing the New Politics”, that remind me of nothing so much as Pope’s and Swift’s complaints against their super-rich Whig rulers – “see, what huge heaps of littleness abound”.

So the Whig Junto, shadowed by a chaotic ‘radical’ opposition, is after more than two hundred years the beast that has lurched into being once more. I would not be surprised if it remained so for some time. The Whigs made Blair and Brown’s determination to retain power look amateurish. I’m fully expecting a wholly coagulated Whig juggernaut to sweep its grandiloquent consensus over even the next election.

What then of the Tories? Well, evidently those Conservatives who accuse Cameron of “abandoning Toryism” are quite right; he is a Whig Prime Minister, which does leave them in an awkward position.

After King George’s accession the Whigs were even more deeply embedded in power than they had been in Anne’s reign; Toryism was in fact a prescribed creed, practically tantamount to treason and for fifty years and more identified with the seditious Jacobite cause. The following choices faced the beleaguered Tories:

a) They could apostacise to the Whigs, as most did. This way lay mainstream power and patronage, vide Mr. Cameron. I am myself most attracted by this position. It will be so pleasant being, as I told that Lib Dem, in government; and many of my best friends, whether they know it or not, are in fact Whigs.

b) They could whisper against the government in secret and plot (in the event fairly ineffective) vengeance. Henry St John after an unhappy spell in exile returned to England and, forbidden his seat in the House of Lords, led the Tories from his secluded country villa into a sly media campaign to discredit the new Prime Minister Walpole. I’m not sure about the precise political parallels, but shall we intimate Mandelson and the Blairites here?

c) They could take the most gallant and romantic path and offer their swords to the Jacobite Pretender, James VIII and III, who resided at St-Germain in France. Here there seems to me a more precise modern equivalent. In Oxford itself, most Jacobite of cities, Ronnie Collinson, of the Union and, sometime, of Balliol is supposed to be circulating secret and treasonous propaganda against the Whig Coalition. He also at one point suggested that he was on the point of emigrating to New Zealand. He need not fly so far.

For there is still one “court-in-exile”, one legitimist claimant to the Tory cause; a man clearly uncomfortable with, defiant of, Lib Dem Whiggery; a man, whisper it, with an esoteric claim to the Throne of Britain itself. Bonnie Prince Boris resides in London. You say 1715, I say 2015…

Another Arcadia chunk

2010-06-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

Venice, the Doge’s Palace.

(Through the state windows we see the figure of the Cardinal from earlier, gazing beadily out over the canal. Behind him are several Venetian counsellors in black robes, and a couple of men gorgeously dressed in fashionable costumes of the English court.)

FIRST COUNSELLOR: Eduardo, lord Windsor. Sir Ricardo Shelley. You are aware why you have been summoned, no?

SHELLEY: Of course there is the matter of the outstanding sum, Signor Contarini; and we promise…

CARDINAL: You promise! You promise! You English do nothing but promise. (He laughs, then returns to surveying the window.)

SECOND COUNSELLOR: My…lord…Windsor…sir…all we ask is a reasonable attitude. You know what to do when your…shall I say, your friend, arrives?

WINDSOR: All is in readiness, Signor Foscaro.

FIRST COUNSELLOR: Are you sure Master Sidney trusts you?

WINDSOR: Absolutely. We were at Oxford together.

SECOND COUNSELLOR: Well then, my lord Cardinale, we need not worry. (Turning to a third counsellor) Angelo! Tell the people at your palace to make a bed…prepared, for the young English gentleman…

(Cut to Sidney and Norton, in a gondola, progressing down the Grand Canal.)

NORTON: The greatest city in the world!

SIDNEY: I think not. The most beautiful, maybe.

NORTON: Where are we going, Master Philip? What are we doing.

SIDNEY: Waiting.

(A gun sounds.)

SIDNEY: (to the gondolier) Now take us to the Arsenale.

(Cut to Oxford and Shelley, surrounded by suspicious looking Venetian guards, waiting near the arsenal.)

SHELLEY: Is that him?

OXFORD: I think so. He’s looking pretty shabby.

SHELLEY: Let’s go.

(We see the four men, Norton hanging back, converging, now on foot, towards the centre of a bridge.)

SIDNEY: Edward! It’s been some time.

WINDSOR: Welcome to Venice, Philip.

SHELLEY: Master Sidney. I am glad to meet you. I trust here you will find the calm you seek.

(A traghetto, a flat-bottomed boat that ferries passengers horizontally across canals, is followed, letting off three masked figures, two men dressed as harlequins, and a blonde, heavily powdered woman…familiar looking…)

GREVILLE: How long must we keep this stupid game in play?

MARLOWE: Ah, Fulke, dontcha appreciate my hand with the costumes?

STELLA: Quiet, Marlowe. Remember the deal – if you cross us, you get the canal.

GREVILLE: Look! It’s them!

(We pan out. The three pursuers are less than a hundred yards behind their oblivious quarry.)

With…

STELLA: Is something troubling you, Master Greville?

GREVILLE: You could say that. Lord Windsor and Sir Richard Shelley! Philip is consorting with the most notorious Catholic exiles in the English nobility! What can he be up to?

MARLOWE: Just you stay quiet, lording, and we might yet find out.

Captain Arcadia Ep 1 Part 3

2010-06-01T12:48:00.001-07:00

(We cut to a ship leaving the docks of Rotterdam, and the camera follows a candle-light at one window in the bridge. Within this cabin, small but comfortably appointed, Norton, dressed only in a long dirty white shirt, slumps on a stool. Sidney stands looking out to sea, his back to his servant.)

NORTON: I still can’t believe she let me be took advantage of like that.

(Sidney smiles mirthlessly but offers no comment.)

NORTON: I mean, master Philip, I’ve seen my fair share, I can handle myself, you know I can, I mean to say, how old must this little leddy have been?

(Sidney turns, holding a silver bracelet towards the lone candle.)

SIDNEY: It is a strange kind of lady robber who steals only rags but leaves valuable trinkets in her wake, Norton.

NORTON: Oh, she dropped it whilst she was changing, accident that was, sure as winking. I know these women, master Philip, in debt, need to get away, so they do anything to get into men’s clothes. She’s be livid she dropped the bauble while she were at it. A harlot’s trick.

(Sidney draws a dagger and places it at Norton’s throat, while with his other hand he dangles the bracelet before the servant’s face.)

SIDNEY: That girl was not a harlot, fool. Don’t you know this ensign?

NORTON: Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but it’s been long enough since I were in England, and even when my stay were regular like, I didn’t spent it in overmuch study o’ books o’ heraldry.

(Sidney switches the dagger around and raps Norton with the hilt.)

SIDNEY: Essex, idiot, Essex! This woman was wearing a silver bracelet enscribed with the arms of Devereux.

NORTON: So she were the Earl of Essex’s fancy-girl, then?

SIDNEY: Once again, Norton, I am reminded that you serve me because of chance rather than merit. This is obviously a piece of baptismal jewellery, a christening-ring. (He sighs.) Describe her again.

NORTON: Didn’t see much of her, she came at me from behind and when she left she was kind of covered up in the best o’ my wardrobe. (Pause) But yeah, she seemed kinda pretty good-looking, far as a man could see, lots of yellow hair, nice duckies…

(Sidney places the blade at Norton’s throat again.)

SIDNEY: Eyes?

NORTON: (squawking out in panic) Black!

(pause)

Or as close to it as a man could…

(Sidney ignores Norton’s trailing sentence, looks out over the sea and bawls a name.)

SIDNEY: STEEEELLLLLLLLLLLAAAAA!

(Back in Frau Geritzoon’s lodging house. Stella is now in a white dress of simple but costly material, drinking warm sack from a wooden tumbler at a table, and weaving a needle through a piece of yarn; Greville and Marlowe sit at its other ends, eying her suspiciously.)

GREVILLE: What cause should we have, I ask again, to believe a word of your story, mistress? Certainly your English is decent, but the same can hardly be said of your habit…or...by your own account…your conduct.

MARLOWE: An Earl’s daughter of England dressing up tranny-like after robbing a manservant? Have things got that more exciting at home since I left Cambridge?

STELLA: I care nothing for your account, sirrah. I address myself solely to Master Greville. Now, Fulke dear, is this not growing ridiculous?

GREVILLE: (spluttering) What…

STELLA: We have seen each other as bare children, in the gardens of Hampton-Court. Am I then so changed?

GREVILLE: If what you say is true…immeasurably, yes. This is scandalous behaviour, madam. Quite outrage…

MARLOWE: Lemme see the letter again. (He snatches for a bit of parchment over which all three have apparently been pouring.)

‘My well-beloved W., Tell Burghley I died outside Mainz.’

Well, forgive me for spelling out the obvious, but your friend Sidney does not want to be found. Faking and broadcasting one’s own death is, well, an extreme measure…

GREVILLE: (rising) Marlowe, if you do not fall silent and remember your station there will be nothing faked about your death. (He draws his dagger.)

MARLOWE: Time for me to start flashing things about too, right? (He leaps up and produces not a weapon but a tightly furled slip of paper, which he hands coldly.)

GREVILLE: A letter of service and warrantage from Sir Francis Walsingham…

MARLOWE: Yeah, yeah, I’m a spy, an informer, an eye of the bloody government, okay. Don’t judge me Master Greville; they offer very reasonable travel expenses and the Cambridge degree is complementary…anyway. Something tells me your bloke wants the likes of me to think he’s dead. Until Penny here turned up, that little ploy had succeeded…

(Stella leaps up and pricks Marlowe in the neck with her needle. He collapses.)

STELLA: If Philip wants to travel unobserved by the Queen’s council, I intend to help him do so.

GREVILLE: Did you kill him?

STELLA: I hadn’t the heart; just a sleeping-philtre. Tie him up tight and we’ll take him with us.

GREVILLE: Where are we going, my lady?

STELLA: After Philip, of course.

Sacral Scott

2010-05-09T07:36:00.001-07:00

It drew close to the end of night,
With red shades cast at Calvary,
The air kissed every cheek its bite,
The hour love was no more to see.

They mingled closer, all but one
With red shades cast at Calvary,
An aging woman to age come,
The hour love was no more to see.

They bundled what had been their sign
With red shades cast at Calvary
Let need and fear double design
The hour love is no more to see.

A friend was rich and gave his all
With red shades cast at Calvary
They crossed a riven woven wall
The hour love was no more to see.

Then no one dared to think of hell
With red shades cast at Calvary
Passing beyond the want to tell
The hour with love no more to see.

They wondered at the kind of part
When red shades come to Calvary
They took a passing sort of cart
And thought of love no more to see.

When some, and one within that line
Of red shades cast on Calvary
Fell thinking on the very time
Love had been felt and quick to see.

When some of them with barren hands
Drew redly about Calvary
Their thoughts freed themselves from demands
And such love fell about surely.

For St Cross

2010-05-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-05T06:23:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-29T04:31:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

“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

2010-04-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

'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...

From 'Finalist Madrigals'

2010-03-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

You walked into the library
Like you were walking into a cell
Laptop strategically dipped below a tome
Manufactured I think by Dell
You put your phone on silent
As you heard yourself breath hoarse
And all the boys dreamed that you’d be on facebook
You’d be on facebook (chat)

You're so lame
You probably haven’t noticed this song is a ripoff
You're so lame
I bet you’ve got JSTOR crisply bookmarked
Don't you? Don't you?

etc

Paene insularum

2010-03-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

I suppose there was a marsh once,

There, where I heard of Sirmio –

But winter asked for warmer work,

So I might have skipped on, to the Lesbia pages.

Do you remember the island of Ely,

The sort of place where they always make stands?

If our island was ever an island, like that one,

It’s gone underground.

Did you even go down to the river much, back then?

I think that you know about sensitive skin,

And that midges breath differently when in soft water,

Still bite as we blush, though.

I feel strongest in places I’ve almost forgotten,

You like sediment.

Constantine! I swear I'll never forget you

2010-03-13T05:44:00.001-08:00

http://www.cavafy.com/poems/list.asp?cat=1

Mad Tract

2010-03-12T04:50:00.000-08:00

Mammon, Saviour of Athens

“It’s something like the priesthood now,” my then tutor said a while ago, adjusting her cassock. She had heard rumours that I wanted to become an academic, and consequently wanted to enact a chat, and, I assume, a sanity check. For myself, I’ve always heard rumours that I wanted to become an academic, and rarely paid them overmuch attention.

“I mean,” she continued, “do you know what you want to do, what it is? It requires a sort of cold, full-on dedication now, of course. The gentleman-scholar doesn’t exist anymore.”

The chick had, naturally, got to the node of the matter. I’m aware that the gentleman-scholar doesn’t exist, that we’ve gone from Sliggers (see prior article) to sloggers, but I am young and foolish and, in my moments of reconciling myself to the Worship of Athena, I do like to think I could help to reverse that process.

In this article I will try and articulate how, by musing on what the academy was, what it is, and what it might become, in two more or less frightening versions of the future: in one of which I am a distinguished professor and probably the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, while in the other I have settled for becoming a strolling player, or something, and have not implemented my Plan to Save the Eggheads.

So we begin with what Athens was: et in Arcadia Minoo: the past world my tutor, correctly, intuited I am liable to sentimentalise. William Empson is lounging in bed with a couple of lady-boys and a Sheffield lecturer. CS Lewis is recovering from a hard evensong with the help of hot toddy. It is a golden morning, and a few golden minds are writing about the Golden Age of English Literature: “an age synonymous with the glory of two words, Aristocracy, and England” (thanks, CS). What distinguishes such a milieu? There are very few people there; some are extremely clever, and some are just the Earl of Colfax’s favourite nephew (see Trinity, ITV, out now on DVD). Very few of them are girls, partly because debutantes still exist (so that’s my ex-tutor catered for, I suppose). What is going for this age, other than the dress sense? It is this: the operation of a very powerful internal shame ethic. When one writes, one must write well what can be read well. Criticism is a kind of literature, not a sort of riot police force maintained by the taxpayer to curb literature’s excesses.

Only by our own era, of course, criticism – like every other arena of academic study – has become exactly that – a poor creature, bloated then straitjacketed by taxes, funded, and restricted, at every level. It is a historical period that is about to suffer, with the desolation of the higher education budget, intense withdrawal systems, but it has already done its damage. Scholars, no less than their gaily debt-gathering pupils, float about on mysterious money about which they know little and care nothing – on the academic level, unlike the undergraduate one, this ethereal benevolence does not come back to claim them in the form of debt. The fact is that very generous cumulative public funding makes the question of demand irrelevant to the publication of academic works. When academics could be trusted to enforce the laws of taste instead, the gap in necessary discriminatory control was filled.

When literary merit – which I would define, in the sphere of criticism, as a style obedient to the diktats of beauty and of clarity – became unfashionable, a curious situation was produced. The taxpayer was now supporting at the country’s universities a class of teachers to produce and publish work which could not conceivably interest him or her; jargonical, marginal, aggressively priced and pompously expressed.

It will be objected perhaps that I speak of the “literary” and the “critical” and yet apply my apparent disillusionment to all disciplines, including the sciences. I believe that the point self-evidently stands; it’s just that the cancer of elitist inexplicability, only in progress in the arts, subsumed the sciences rather longer ago. Science is fascinating and powerful, but there is a reason it is not the queen of dinner party discourse – the scientific community, well within recorded memory, decided, patchily then eventually conventionally, that an attractive writing style was, in their portfolio, a dispensable skill; so, to give energy to higher priorities, they dispensed with it. Rebels exist – Richard Dawkins’s maddest diatribes should and will still be read by a general public, because he is an excellent writer – but theirs is not the usual way.

In the context of the sciences this development is regrettable, as their skills become underappreciated and ever less competently taught at school level, laymen becoming, and staying, repelled by science very early on. But in the context of the arts, the abandonment of communication and elegance is more than this, it is – in a variety of thought where utilitarian value should not be of paramount importance – completely debilitating. Arts academics in the absence of taste become distinguished on the grounds of industry and originality. Industry means they put a lot of stuff on paper or maybe the internet, originality means they invert fashions and privilege the obscure over the good. A computer programme could fulfil all these functions; at times the last Vice-Chancellor of Oxford was, I recall, on the point of suggesting that it should do.

Here is my planned healing process; it comes in a simple step and later a more drastic one. First, it is not very hard to write interestingly and clearly, although when one is angry one tends to get a bit more interesting and a lot less clear; I apologise for the operation of that process within this article. Anyway, the scientists jettisoned, the humanities are jettisoning, the belles lettres because they developed a perception that style distracted energy from more important things. It doesn’t. Lucidity actually makes work easier to write as well as to read. Freud, Jung, Einstein and Rutherford were lucid. In the quasi-artistic worlds of political science and philosophy, Macchiavelli or Bertrand Russell have many lessons to teach to the aesthete. The tribe of academics at work on non-books for non-audiences, or as they would put it “monographs for supervisors”, are thereby leading harder and unhappier lives as a result of their doctrinaire idleness about style.

However, the regrafting of taste on a voluntary basis is unfortunately likely to be quite a slow process. I suggest that we, as a nation, encourage its secure advancement by, in the meantime, privatising all universities presses, thereby requiring every academic to seek some sort of commercial publisher. The internet would still exist as an output for the most doggedly vital, and yet commercially unattractive, research; the most recalcitrant biologists could cure malaria quietly on a nice blog somewhere; but they could abusing bookshelves while they were about it: unless of course they felt like expressing themselves in a way that would truly edify the public, incidentally repaying the debt they owed that public for their own education and careers.

The effects of this course of action would be alarming, especially in such an unruffled milieu as our beloved Oxford, but I believe ultimately beneficial. Supervisors and senior tutors would have to recommence rating and promoting their colleagues on quality in a general rather than a specialised sense. The university and the strange lands outwith it would begin to reflect each other a little more.

For the strange thing is that the legendary breed of jovial ivory tower dwellers, Lewises, Empsons, Trevor-Ropers, Bayleys, were actually more realistic, fleshly beings than the anaemic spectres who occupy their posts today. In the names of modernity, contemporaneity, originality and research rigour, academics today have firmly turned the ivory key; and if they do not have recourse to the Dinshaw Doctrine (they won’t, by the way), they may be turning it for the last time. In the post-Credit Crunch Crumpet landscape, the pillowing public money proved evanescent, the student debt powerfully unattractive to the young, and the intellectually enthusiastic sane enough to go anywhere but academia, I don’t see how the academy can retain any kind of primacy in education and interpretation. I don’t know whether the new priesthood will be teachers or TV personalities, but they won’t be hons, dons and smoking MA Oxons.

At a recent meeting of the Stubbs Society Sir Keith Thomas recently lamented the likely future downfall of academic history before popular biography. Well, Keithy, I say they get as they deserves.

Very old snatch of historical novel, 'Ctesiphon'

2010-03-12T03:06:00.000-08:00

China. Imagine it. An obese idea that we have caught in ridiculous fragments, silken drapery in hideous colours, stock stories of a timid jaundiced people without number. A commonplace in Roman poetry. Flatterers have conquered China a thousand times in inexorable odes to please their patrons; satirists have sent unlikely lovers there; historians say nothing, because nothing can be said with integrity of a place so hulking and inconvenient and shapeless and powerful. The Emperor of China is the most powerful of men, to whom gods send tremulous emissaries; there, an enterprising bishop; at the other side, a talkative mystic. Gods learn lessons in majesty from that man. But men can learn nothing of him or from him; oceans of silk and steel, a dais higher than the Jacob’s Ladder of the Jews, hide him from our sight.

I am riding a brownish mule, one among many. The mules are our Emperors at present, even though one of the riders is an emperor himself. We are dazed men (we made the women stay behind). We no longer have a city, we scarcely have a path, but we are going to China, towards it anyway.

None of us know very much about the Chinamen. But of this we are sure: they do not adore one God. And we Persians, we Zoroastrians, have had quite enough of the No God But God, though we are said to have invented Him. The Jewish people whom we delivered from Babylon long, long ago have written ghastly legends of monarchs with monotonous names and persistent woes. More melancholy than Israel ever knew came to us in a shorter space than the life of a fine horse.

I want gods like those dancing Greek creatures, gods of a shining, animal court filled with light and temper. But the more morose, the more without pity, the bloodier God is, the more I know that there is only one of Him and He cannot stomach even lieutenants, even angels.

Captain Arcadia Ep 1 Part 2

2010-03-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

Rotterdam, some months later

(A bustling and mercantile thoroughfare, through which an old man in a long, black, fur-lined gown and a faintly disdainful looking, fashionably dressed young nobleman are winding their way.)

ERASMUS: Is my fair city less than to your liking, Mr Greville?

GREVILLE: The clouds upon my thoughts are glum enough already without being augmented by the…stench of moneychangers.

ERASMUS: You are a young man of uncompromising disposition, I see. What is that worries you so? The grave state of decrepitude in which modern learning self-evidently finds herself?

GREVILLE: My troubles are of a personal nature, Erasmus.

ERASMUS: Aha! A love affair.

GREVILLE: No, no. If you must know, it’s about my friend Philip Sidney…

ERASMUS: Ah yes, I remember him, a most accomplished and promising young gentleman. A scholar of Oxford, Christ Church, I believe? Is his mother not one of the Count of Leicester’s sisters?

GREVILLE: The point is, for months he’s been missing, no sign of him anywhere, and I received disturbing word from…well, from an unreliable source, but…

(Loud commotion and shouts of “Thief, thief!” A nearby stall is in utter commotion. A pale young man dressed in black, wearing a flashy opal ring, is trying to extricate himself from a particularly angry knot of people with a red faced burgher at its centre.)

MARLOWE: I hold a commission from, from, the con- con- sistory court at Rh-Rh-Rheims, I am a, a theological scholar, a scholar and a…

BURGHER: A red-handed thief! That’s my best opal, you degenerate, on order to the Duchess of Brabant, went missing four days back…

GREVILLE: What an extraordinary chance. That’s him, Erasmus, the man who said he might have bad news about Philip.

ERASMUS: Allow me to sort out this unfortunate situation. My good man, (he lays a restraining hand on the angry burgher’s shoulder) you have perhaps heard of my repute. I am Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam…

(The burgher punches Erasmus in the face and the sage falls over. Marlowe has gripped hold of Greville.)

MARLOWE: Ey, the old man’ll be just fine. Scram now, and we’ll talk about your friend. I know a nice safe ‘stablishment. Come on.

(They bolt away down an alley.)

(The camera follows them bolting down many side streets. At some point they rush past a shabbily dressed man in a wide-brimmed hat. He raises his head to look at them; it is Norton. He watches them pass, then sets off back the way he had come. Cut to an Unsavoury Boarding House, Marlowe and Greville entering.)

MARLOWE: (to landlady) Good day, Frau Geritzoon. I’ve brought a friend.

LANDLADY: He looks a better class than your usual run of dodgy Jesuits and thievin’ rentboys, Kit.

MARLOWE: I’m sure he appreciates the compliment, Frau Geritzoon. Now if I were you I’d get right down to the jewellers on Wilhelmstrasse.

LANDLADY: What you nattering about? I don’t need bawbies at my age.

MARLOWE: Mm, well, I think you’ll find yer man Desiderius in a bit of a fix.

LANDLADY: What? Dezzy’s got ‘imself in trouble again? Well, Kit Marlowe, I’m moving but if I find you’re at the bottom of this one… (She bustles out.)

GREVILLE: (astonished) ‘Dezzy’? Frau Geritzoon? That woman...Erasmus…

MARLOWE: Has been secretly married for decades, yeah. Now, Master Greville, just where were we?

GREVILLE: You’re the one who should be answering questions, you depraved little fop. You leant over to me back in the tavern, muttered “Sidney” and put your thumbs down. Are you saying it’s all up with Philip, and what is your information, exactly?

MARLOWE: (off hand) Jus’ this.

(He moves to a corner of the room with a battered travelling chest in it and kicks the unlocked trunk open, Greville craning after him.)

Don’ stand there lordling, light a taper.

GREVILLE: Show some damned respect.

MARLOWE: Do as I say.

(GREVILLE, white and sweaty with anger and trepidation, does indeed light a taper as Marlowe picks up a large object from the box. It comes under the light – a mud-splattered, once elegant saddle, with a coat of arms on it.)

GREVILLE: Christ save me! The Penshurst arms, Sidney’s blazon!

MARLOWE: Picked up the corpse of a horse fortnight back. Picked it up for a pound. Wouldn’t mind some remuner…

GREVILLE: Like hell it was a pound, you slimy bastard.

(He is very angry and pins Marlowe in a grip against the wall, letting the taper go fall. We see an unknown boot come down on it.)

OFFSTAGE HUSKILY FEMALE VOICE: Steady, boys. You could start a fire like that.

(Flash to the newcomer. Dressed in young man’s garments with a wide-brimmed riding hat exactly like the one Norton was wearing earlier is a tall, pale, light haired young woman with dark dark eyes and the evident lineaments of incredibly fabulous breasts. Penelope Deveureux – Stella – has arrived.)

I diversify to TV drama

2010-03-02T00:45:00.000-08:00

Apology for Prophecy (Majority Ode)

2010-02-28T03:24:00.000-08:00

(to my loving parents; Claudia Fitzherbert; Toby Buxton; Xavier Yvo Buxton-Fitzherbert; and Allegra Fitzherbert; those of the blood or non-blood who put in an appearance or sent elephantine envoys

The roaming halves have reserved themselves for supplementary birthdays and subordinate odes)

When Tipu rises twenty-one
The elephants will fleshly be
From ‘jet’ to pearl they’ll be transposed
Wash-wallowing the Arabian Sea

And they will carry a loud set
Of kings and queens and minstrelsies
And discord richly trailed will drape
About, till peace reclaim the trees

In Madhya Pradesh. There will ride
‘Grim Dante’, with his settled stare;
Let on that howdah lie a man
Who gardened, ere engrained, his glare

His siesta ne’er unavowed,
Let him sprawl in some queendoms’ sight,
When Tipu rises twenty-one
Love shall step forth in plural rite

And God knows who’ll have married who,
Or where the complex things will knot,
Whether Sister and Hood will strive
With Bolognese pinko rot

But CS Lewis long ago
Pointed out practicalities
Relating to old Edmund’s art –

‘Behold the start of Britomart!
For she is English and bourgeoise
She wonders who could fit the bill
With maximum of pomp and fuss…’

One doesn’t quite know now indeed
How it may be – but the lights yet
Will flicker, Tipu twenty-one,
Microhard, Apple serpentined,
The globe in Toby’s verdant debt.

Catullus Chooses

2010-02-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

That one is stunning for us all;
I’d like to stand stunned, first, myself
- a witness vouching in that hour
For pallor like that, gait, height, all.

I’ll codify each separate carried
Point about these vital matters,
I’ll reference them properly –

But not for me. There is a difference
That raiments around tenderness,
That renders one languescent staring
Only wearing, one a chain.
When I am standing and she isn’t
Sure I sense justification
Both times; but this first and other
One is not my cause for stunning.

And that’s because she is all salted,
Looks like frost and thaws down drifts,
There is no border and no country
In her state that knows the worn,
Or cannot fight it, or is wan –

I couldn’t witness you then darling
In the stunning gaze parade
For I’ve been stunned and brenned and bonded
To the astral sleeping staid.

Nod to the Smiths

2010-02-03T01:38:00.000-08:00

There were times when I could
Have murdered her
But the fact is she died
At eleven
Which wasn't amongst them

De Angelorum

2010-01-05T02:03:00.000-08:00

It is just sentiment that crawls
About my head, around my bed,
Roughly proceeds, ends up scraping
The barking farm dogs far way

Chaps till the lips it's harping on
Are less lipsticked than, battered, mine;
Drinks till the 'eau de robinet'
Ten atoms to one, settles wine

And sentiment before novels
Meant much to think about; and still
It sounds like love let in on mind
Bred to angelic oversweep

I buy angels so long before
I let God in the basket-case
And even if they won't be there,
They're needed for, they thrill, the chase:

The old chant is a confused thing,
The mothers' loving heresy
The gives four dead, if wise, men wings
What then would Luke, the doctor, think?

Did he attain a case-study
With relevance to the doctrine
(Aquinas' sapling) of the pure
Untouchable, or Plato's sap?

What about fathers' heresies?
There's one about the grail, sure,
Which makes us see the golden throng,
The red, last, the transparent one -

Then she is one, my sentiment,
A neutral virtue fledged to pause,
Her sometime silver shimmer steel,
Under the overshadows' force.

And another - pseudo-Waugh?

2009-12-29T06:04:00.001-08:00

Golddigger

My father, Henry Golding, admired the novels of Evelyn Waugh, never read another writer after them, and was heartily sorry he had ever had the misfortune to encounter the written word before them.

Of that canon, he said he liked A Handful of Dust best, really liked The Sword of Honour best, and laughed most conspicuously when reading Scoop. Nevertheless it was after a conceit at the beginning and end of the Master’s second novel, Vile Bodies, that he determined he would name his daughters. The Pentecostal angel choir, the angelic voice of Chastity, directed his wishes. He wanted four daughters, and outdoing even his teacher’s choice of abstruse virtues, decided that they should be called Integrity, Dignity, Liberality and Diligence.

After securing a wife with the correct mixture of courage and complacence to allow him to implement his scheme, Henry engendered Integrity and Dignity. My mother, Mrs. Golding, fell pregnant a third time and gave birth while re-reading Ivanhoe. Henry was ushered through the hospital, throwing all feigned male indifference to the mysterious rites of Juno aside. His excitement built as he perceived the little creature had a gloriously dark head. Integrity and Dignity were fair in a monotonous yellow way, and Henry Golding, my father, that is, must have felt translucent with pride that he could forge a dark-haired daughter also.

No doubt she would be more trouble than her placid sisters, this dark Liberality. Those half-blind kitten eyes would plague her benevolent father’s existence, but he was ready for that, expectant and gleeful at this third, precious, unruly...but, oh, what aberration. Dark Liberality proved to be Henry Golding the Younger. Furthermore, my hair grew sandier as I reached adolescence.

I am a vain person, and have wanted to write my biography for a fairly long time, in fact ever since I worked out the difference between the words “autobiography” and “biography”. But I have noticed that most autobiographers almost always make those heroic colossi, themselves, look heavy-handed, portentous and unbearable; while a secondary character is capable of annexing some of the glitter shed by even the basest of pens.

So I am writing the biography of the younger of my two sisters, Golddigger, as everyone but her father called her since some distant playground, where the social concept of Golddigging was unknown and someone called Dignity Golding demanded a little attention. Golddigger has turned out to be a most unfair name with regard to its connotations, as my sister inherited a good deal more than I did, and has spent a good deal of her time ducking rich men. These things are in the hands of the Fates.

No, this isn’t working. It’s the first-person narration that’s the problem, though I have flirted with omniscience, with that silly comment about my father’s translucent pride for example. No, all these facts and jokes and bitternesses are yoked to my tongue, and I seem a bore already and will seem a boor by the end.

The solution has struck me. I like the first-person narration well enough; why should I not narrate as Golddigger? Yes, from now on he will be a discreet enough figure, my brother, narrow-faced and sympathetic at odd moments, a distant, failed young thing with a tinge of nobility. Only I must learn to mention him less.

Another novel beginning from Eton, pseudo-Poe

2009-12-29T05:59:00.000-08:00

Soleil D’Or

Everything could be ruined this afternoon, I thought in the early morning. But of course you have to remember that everything could be ruined most afternoons. It very often is, but I suppose we survive somehow, jettisoning dignity or comfort or earnestness or morality or pride. Yet I had no wish to behold any such unravelling; to be present when a certain pair of my friends I had rather not meet each other met each other; when certain truths I had rather not be illumined were illumined. I felt a great deal less shame in the act of a coward, ringing the Soleil D’Or Hotel, Cannes, than I would have done at the supper of Pervis, and Grunte, and the shared knowledge of Grunte, and Pervis.

For such reasons I took my holiday. The time was not irregular, fortunately enough; the schools were disgorging their burdens, and, though I had no children, the egoism of the parents who smugly hold the power of this world would easily forget this, and assume that, as they were compelled to move at half-term, so too was I.

I wondered for some minutes if I ought not to take with me a companion. But the chaperone I found most congenial was the cause of my migration in the first place, and I am no Antony to flaunt my Cleopatra; indeed I always hoped to be more of an Octavius. Even Octavius had an Imperial Cupboard filled with skeletons; I was only unfortunate in that my Imperial Cupboard had rattled the harder. Besides my little Corinna of Drury-Lane (you see I am a well-read man! enough to condemn anyone in the City), I could have chosen my sister; but that would, I think, have been a metaphorically masochistic course, (dear Corinna verges on the physical) for we are that type of sibling that scourge each other to reassure ourselves of the affinity of our blood.

I resolved, then, to go to Cannes alone. It was of crucial importance for my peace of mind, of course, that I should have left England by the time I knew Pervis to be meeting Grunte, so I left on one of those absurd airlines that still present you with tattered “frills”, coleslaw and Red Leicester around lunchtime, but have the great merit that they have been altogether abandoned by the banking classes. I departed with a fairly secure hope that I would be observed by no one who mattered. I was not quite sanguine enough to be sure that I would not meet someone; but this was the situation I aimed for, equipping myself with a newspaper and a volume of the Letters of Queen Victoria. I have long traced with affection the harmony of that Monarch’s mindset with some of the more sensational reporters.

Thus I was irritated, and unnerved too, I must own, to be addressed by name at the check-in desk. I looked up reluctantly from a condolence letter to Louis-Philippe, and nodded in acknowledgement, but I was relieved when I recognised the face.

“Why, Edward, it has been some time.”

“You haven’t changed,” the other replied. There was justifiably much of envy in his voice, for the same could not be said of him. I had left Edward Mutton a sharp graduate, ambitious and original. He had made an Acherontic descent, into schoolmastering; he was inflated and gnawed down at the same time, his cheeks shining with involuntary tears. But most happily of all, he was of no consequence. He might even, I thought with a little anticipation, prove amusing.

“You’re going to Pisa?” I suggested, thinking of a likely destination for a man of refined taste. Pisa is the gateway to Florence, that lodestone of Inglesi italianati.

“No, to Cannes,” he corrected laughingly. “I’m on your flight.”

This confounded and irritated me out of measure, though I tried not to make that perfectly obvious. Cannes? What would Edward’s kind do in Cannes? Cannes was for the rich and the dissolute; those who fell outside that lofty class could find no real satisfaction there, only a great deal of debt. Perhaps Edward wanted to be rich and dissolute, but that was a separate state altogether, best provided for, I reflected, by Nice.

“Ah. Where are you staying?”

“Oh, I don’t know the town well...I followed some recommendations...a little place called the Soleil D’Or...I wonder if you know it?”

It was that reply which made me realise that my escape was to assume a very different form from that which I had envisaged. Edward Mutton was a schoolmaster, but fate had shifted me into a position where I could not but educate him.

To prove I still do poems - and love ones at that

2009-12-21T04:26:00.000-08:00

No socket yet but fails, my love,
Aren't batteries born to give?
The nurselings of the human tongue -
Small miracles, a larger one
A wonder we can talk at all,
Even in screeds and palmistry.

I know my love we are not trained,
Not all of us, to make our tracks -
We're sealed to the human tribe
Whose currency is puzzled loss;
Yet when we have paid as we went
Still we'll have screeds, and palmistry.

Novel fragment 2: late Eton vintage. Potential?

2009-12-21T03:57:00.000-08:00

The Countess of the Leeks

St. David’s Day comes at an awkward moment, a crisp time, fertile only with deadlines. The saint’s leek is not a product of unlashed cornucopia, green, disproportionate, inevitably phallic, a thyrsus to be battered about by a leering, tasteless Green Man. Instead it is doomed to be yoked, until the Day of Judgement, to the potato; and it forms that most institutionalised of green soups, often made worse by some lofty claim to be “vichyssoise”.

Tamara served some into a bowl for the man at the front of the line. The kitchen’s St David’s Day Special vichyssoise was not a soup-like enough soup to spill much, which was a mercy; it just propelled itself downwards as if magnetically repelled by the stainless steel ladle. The notion rather pleased Tamara, but she was unsure whether stainless steel was even magnetic, and she let the concept be submerged in apathy and leek.

The alcoholic named Arthur who was now taking away the soup-bowl was not technically a beggar, but a pauper. He had told her this on her first day and had never failed to remind her since then.

“Pauper, not a beggar. I know these things. I have a Law Degree.”

“2:1?” Tamara suggested. This was a ritual. She knew he would say Double First, but she had herself got a 2:1, so this was the guess she offered. She did not like to deviate from patterns.

“Double First,” Arthur replied stoutly. “I came top. I’ve told you before.”

He had always been ungrateful about being fed, which Tamara thought quite admirable. She was prepared one day to be bitterly ungrateful, given the chance.

***

She hated being charitable more every week, but she couldn’t resist turning up to the kitchen. She was mesmerised by the way her co-caterers – yes, they called each other that, my co-caterer here, our co-caterer Katy, in one euphonious case – seemed to drain energy and happiness from exposure to misery. Not even dramatic misery, not Botswana or Barnado’s, just greyness and soup and sometimes croutons.

Throughout her professional week, Tamara showed the industry and pleasantness that had won her plaudits at school and university, jobs at every interview, and occasional disoriented men, in drastic cases, for her ugliness was not of the sort then marketed as beauty. Everyone relied on her at work, whatever work happened to be. On the Sunday evening following her stint at the soup kitchen, she did not go directly back to her flat in the evenings. She would put on a navy blue waterproof with a hood and walk to the off-licence where she purchased a bottle of vodka and a grey packet of cigarettes, which she would consume throughout the night (she was not susceptible to either substance at any other time).

She draped the hood of her coat over her head while still standing among the bottles and the packets, invariably the only woman in the shop, not counting the teenagers and one harassed, respectably dressed red-headed wife (or ex, or widow; she wore two rings, one thick and gold) who stopped by, more or less monthly, and bought ten packs of Silk Cut, paying with three £20 notes. Tamara noted and counted the appearances of this rare but regular visitor, a fellowwoman, sister and twin, recognised as such by Tamara because of the searing, ugly exhaustion on both their faces.

On the eleventh, and last time that the red-headed woman and Tamara met at the off-licence, they happened to talk. There wasn’t usually much conversation there; the shopkeeper was a Muslim, who sold and shortchanged the refreshments of Shaitan with indomitable sullenness, though occasionally youths of his blood would drop by on motorbikes, quick to smile, their eyes glinting in Tamara’s direction. She found this flattering to an extent – Anglo-Saxon men didn’t bother extending the privileges of the fairer sex to its less fair constituents – but she had a morbid horror of Muslims, especially at night, which had once led her to vote for the British National Party; so she never invited them further by speaking. She was in any case incapable of initiating speech in this place. Here she was not Tamara Kellwinch MacDonald, imperturbable and as efficient as stainless steel. She became for twelve hours a creature of flesh, dependent on poison’s maternal caress.

A combination of extenuating circumstances brought this exception to the rule, a conversation, into being. The red-headed woman spoke first, so Tamara only had to react, to reply, which took less effort, needed less dignity. They were outside the range of any obstructive third party, alone in the cold and dark of the street, providing for each other the only sources of light and warmth. But none of this mattered particularly; Tamara had been waiting for the red-headed woman to make an approach for eleven months, and whatever and whenever she had spoken, she would have been attended to.

It started with a satisfied intake of breath, but that was a sign in itself. Tamara knew that the other woman knew it was perfectly possible to smoke happily and silently; the sound meant the stranger wanted Tamara to know that she was happy, which probably meant she was about to talk.

“Don’t know what I’d do without that place...” The comment, meaningless in itself, was fascinating because the woman’s voice was nothing like her face. It was beautiful, soft and contented. Tamara looked through the miasma at the woman’s features, wondering if they had ever been beautiful, soft or contented, but after her examination she doubted it. There was the class thing, as always, but Tamara had always seen that the woman was upper middle-class, 1a socio-economic, whatever; she wouldn’t have guessed that she had a beautiful voice as well. She had expected the whine of a generous alimony.

So she said something she herself found unexpected. “I’m there every Sunday evening. Like evensong at a church.”

The red-headed woman found this very funny; her laugh burst into an alarming cough before she staunched the wound with tar. A little worried, Tamara came closer and made as if to pat her back, but the older woman waved her off impatiently. She gave the girl a shrewd look, one of her eyes half-closed, and then whispered, as if she was uttering something indecent, “Are you a Catholic?”

Tamara laughed now. “Yes. Haven’t been to church since I was confirmed, though.”

“It’s often the way,” the red-head reassured her. The talk now lulled, but in the clear expectation that it would pick up again after the ash had been shaken from its tip. Tamara now felt she had the right, too, to ask personal questions.

“What’s your name?” she wondered, nervousness apparent. She often thought it strange that any human communication was possible, when discovering a name, the chrism of real understanding, was always so awkward.

“Isabel,” Isabel answered, and then glanced to her hand, where her two rings pressed hard upon the cigarette’s malleable side. “MacDonald.”

“That’s my name too, Tamara Kellwinch MacDonald.”

“Kellwinch?”

“Yes, it is funny, but don’t laugh, it’ll set you coughing again...”

“What a good girl you are, my dear Kellwinch. I hope you aren’t good enough to acquiesce to the Government and give up, otherwise I suppose we won’t meet next month.”

The audience was over – Isabel walked firmly to a small, dark car, and Tamara listened to the departing engine. Then she thought for a moment, returned to the off-licence, and gave back the bottle of vodka, much to the shopkeeper’s irritation.

***

Tamara regarded herself as a facilitator of light industry. This could grant her a certain comfort when she needed it, even pride, like being a captain of light infantry. After leaving university, she had helped draft advertisements for paper napkin installations. Then she had become involved in designing paper napkin installations. During a health-scare she had persuaded institutions to convert paper napkin installations – some of which she recalled from the previous phase of her existence – into cleaner heat-emitting drying machines; on the rise of Green Awareness, she had joined the advisory board of Flaxen, a company devoted to stopping carbon-emitting drying machines and replacing them with recycled paper napkins. The environmental Flaxen paid less well than she had expected, as if ideological virtue was included in remuneration.

But talent was recognised, and the company threw about titles and responsibilities like some mediaeval king, compensating for his meagre treasury. So it was that Tamara, after less than a year, found herself with few equals in the Flaxen offices, Manchester, and only two superiors; Harold Green, (surely a surname born of deed-poll?) and Will Blackford, his more visible lieutenant. Above these somewhere, a London office lurked, which, if it had been at all interesting, would have been mysterious. Flaxen made the bulk of its profit out of tedium.

“Hello, James,” Tamara said. Her exalted position’s only extra salary was that she could call Jamie James and he would still have to smile at her. But it wasn’t a pleasure to be exploited too often. This small nastiness had been earned by a long career of niceness.

Short story of Eton vintage (north Oxford, domestic, autobiographical)

2009-12-21T03:47:00.000-08:00

In More Danico

From the highest window of the vertical house, the abandoned apples were still visible to the practised observer. Edith counted six. She had thought there had been six and a half, or perhaps a sixth, merely the day before. Was she witnessing the swift and ineluctable processes of Nature, in the ruthless form of biodegradation? Or did urban foxes eat fruit? And why had six perfectly good apples-Coxes, she was inclined to think-been left in their cramped, treeless garden in the first place?

She heard the front door opening, followed by several sounds and shriek, cat or child she was not certain. It was an interesting place for sound, this house. Everything was overheard. She and Harold had been quite ignorant of this fact early in their, marriage, taken in by the discreet, calm look of the Georgian walls, imagining a haven of secrets. But before a week had passed there, each had fallen into the trap of listening to sour confidences. They were both more careful afterwards.

“Edith, Edith, where are you woman?”

That was how he stressed it, as if he was enquiring about her gynaecological anatomy, not her location. Harold’s syntax was peculiarly Danish when he was puzzled. Edith did not bother answering; she wanted to hear for how long he would rail before he began to ascend the stairs. Her smile had the cruelty of serenity about it as she stepped out of her high-heeled shoes and threw herself backwards onto the bed. But the petulant squawk of a disturbed cat destroyed her stratagem. It really was a squawk, and it came from Edmund, who really did, at certain moments, resemble a disconcerted cockatoo.

“Upstairs? What are you doing?”

Edith was a woman of expedient emotion. She began to cry, at sufficient volume to reach Harold in the front hall, but without losing any measure of dignity. She played with her hair as she did so.

“Stop that woman, stop that. No need. None.”

Harold tripped over a pile of books arranged on the stairs for later transportation to Magnus’ bedroom as he hurried upwards. A copy of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, a third edition that Edith was quite fond of, struck a glancing blow against an inopportunely arrived cat, Edwin, who let out a loud protest, clearly giving it to understand that he would not be on speaking terms with Harold for some time. Harold ignored the animal, but thoroughly condemned the books. He was always irritated by those little turrets of matter he could not thoroughly analyse or understand. He regarded them as fortifications against his movements. Particularly the English ones. He could talk English perfectly well of course, whatever his wife might say to the contrary, but his literary tastes remained solidly Danish.

But now the treachery of this bookish booby-trap was combined with that underhand womanish attack, weeping. It was embarrassing and it was un-English. Honestly, Harold thought, anyone would think it was his woman, not he, who was the foreigner...but he could not put off the conflict any further. He had to face his own guilt within and deny everything without, as usual.

“I’m here woman, here, shhh...” He was half way up the stairs now, on a pale uncluttered landing.

“But are you here in the Danish manner? Or in the English manner?” Edith replied, now, shoeless, coming down the stairs to meet him. “And where is your wife?”

“You are my wife, as far as it matters,” Harold spluttered in exasperation.

“Maybe. But you married Astrid Ranaldsen last month. And you will leave me before this month is gone. I was your Danish marriage. But she is your Danish wife.”

Harold bubbled with useless anger. It was only fortunate the boys were away at school. This was quite unseemly. He had intended to time and to control and to ease and to oil this matter. Now this idiot of a little woman thought it her duty to wrack and to spoil and to dramatise and patronise. He was the offender. But that did not stop him from being appalled at how much Edith was enjoying this.

“I’ve made your sandwich for the train,” Edith added quite naturally. “Ham. With the Jarlsberg you always like.”

***

The queue at the station was, as would be expected in the circumstances, an unpleasant affair, but hysteria was made still harder to stave off by the presence of several Frenchwomen, old, proud, mothers, grieving, glamorous wives, haughty sisters complaining about England, all in the most fashionable mourning black of French femininity..

“There was a party of French businessmen on the train, you see, madam,” a platform attendant explained to Edith. “From Grenoble, which happens to be twinned with this town. Tragic, really.”

“Yes,” Edith replied politely. She was wearing her best grey suit.

“Goddard, Anne,” the loudspeaker announced, “please proceed to the forensic team to offer immediate assistance.” A fat woman with swollen red eyes left, abdicating the front of the line to Edith.

“Do you have kids then?” the platform attendant asked, cultivating further polite conversation in the context where it is perhaps most impolite.

“Yes,” Edith answered.

“Godwin, Edith, please proceed to the forensic team to offer immediate assistance.”

“Bye then,” the platform attendant remarked. “Business as usual, that’s my motto, or the terrorists have won, ent they?”

The forensic team was, Edith could only assume, so named in order to brighten up the process of corpse identification, rather than to fulfil a semantic function, as the sight that greeted her was scarcely a cooperative one. Doctors, of nurses, or non-gender-specific forensic personnel, swarmed in increasingly dirtied white coats-not by anything so dramatic as blood, but by sweat, and the miasma of filth that British stations acquire through decades of bombardment by chewing gum and cigarette ends-swarmed, in any case, like flies competing for refuse, over the dead, leading silent relatives between the messes of failed biological structure. All the identifiers seemed quite lost, and far more dead than the vibrant butcher’s displays of those who were.

“Madam,” one of the swarmers started, “could you help us decide which one of these was your husband...? The bodies from his compartment were over here...”

Edith looked at the closest one to her and said, “What luck. I’ve found him already. That’s him, no doubt about it.”

“Harold Godwin, passenger GY096, seat D4, British-Danish dual nationality?”

“Absolutely,” Edith replied, and Guillaume Nord, passenger M6265, seat D6, French nationality, was packed up into a specially provided Health Service container, which was in turn wrapped in a black bag. Edith, helped by a couple of porters, got her new, unswervingly faithful, husband into a taxi and set the course for the vertical house, in the front garden of which six Cox apples still decayed.

Novel fragment: "The Don", crime, Oxford, gritty, man

2009-12-21T03:44:00.000-08:00

And so they agreed to wait there longer. It was not raining much, so the MCS boys in their white to grey nylon, down in the neat field where the river somehow wasn’t, paused in stalled lines, drizzled but taut, tauter than the ball which would be replaced tomorrow. Ez drooped over their side of the bridge and extended his light eyes, his mouth unrolled in idleness, his fat tongue undermining and overhauling an irking strip of lodged saltfish from Rice N’ Peas.

“Who do you reckon”, Padraig asked him. At a further distance from the bridge’s rampart, he was yet taking more in. “Count the blonds, blonds are strong.”

Ez did not give away whether he thought anything of the tip or not. He said “Lot nearer us. Nearer the teacher, right. Four on them.”

“Four? Boy, your mind’s not on this.” Padraig gave an exaggerated, pointed, lashed out kick. His brown shoe brushed Ez’s calf and the dusty gum from its pad gripped into the wedges of the jeans.

“Maybe,” Ez said, slashing his tongue from gulf to gulf, severing the saltfish’s last tenacity and spitting in the solid competence of victory, “not. But I’ll still win. You taking?”

“I took that ten minutes ago. My lads scored third minute, that counts.”

“You can’t start ahead.”

“Can’t?”

“The situation was less than fully assessed. Unsafe.”

“Fuck off. Two ahead now, mine slamming yours. You should stop backing the yid looking ones, Ez, it’s like I say, blond is strong.You see where they are, you like what you…”

A bus was passing back down to beyond the roundabout. Ez got onto it. Padraig gathered his sinuous burden off the bench that had broken his fall. Beneath it lay the saltfish scrap, a new human tooth claimed, chipped at its side. Padraig gulped back the ichor and felt a bit drunkened by it, on top of recent happenings. Three goals, he thought, blond is strong. He put a battered hand in a harpooned canvas pocket and clawed. Wallet, two cameras, keys, keys to home, receipt, bag, phone. All of the techy metal was shiny enough to make Padraig look like a devout touching up his relics. He rang Mad, and began to walk the opposite way the bus had gone, into the city with a mediaeval heart.

[[In the process of being rejjed by Trinity News...]]

2009-12-21T03:41:00.000-08:00

VISIONS OF TRINITY

So what does it mean, then? There’s the Matrix, obviously. Charming girl. Not much in the way of conversation, but that’s probably a qualification rather than otherwise for sexual tension with Keanu Reeves. Moving down the scale of macro-importance, the Trinity is the intellectual core, or if you like the bitter pill of thought, within Christianity. It has long dissuaded buyers of what is otherwise considered a popular spiritual product, and its rebarbative complexity has engendered offshoots as varied as Arianism, Monophysitism and Islam.

More interestingly, Trinity is the brand name that adorns three ancient collegiate institutions; and also the target ITV2 selected when deciding to nail posho British tertiary education. Why so, we wonder; but not for long. Kieron Quirke and Robin French, the writers of Trinity (late undergraduates, needless to say, of Oxford and Cambridge) needed a single word name (snappier), equipped with esoteric, sinister aspects (more commercial, cf Dan Brown), and possessed of some ambiguity (less vulnerable to litigation). What better choice than a medieval college named after a theological concept, whose very country of origin is tricky to place precisely?

I come from Balliol, Oxford, myself. We are next to your namesake and we have an extremely boring relationship with them. Despite being a larger, richer and more popular college, Balliol is plagued by a barely hidden architectural inferiority complex, and so chooses to uphold an ancient bloodfeud with Trinity (Oxford) which the other lot have, by and large, grown out of. It is a bit like Orwell’s Ten Minute Hate in 1984, or the pervasive British nostalgia for evil Germans, sly French and red Russians; our loathing of Trinity keeps us strong and gives us something to talk about, in theory, when all else fails.

So when Trinity emerged on ITV, it was an instant hit round my place, but a slightly nuanced one. Should we be thrilled that our traditional rivals were being pilloried on telly every Sunday by means the most absurd stereotypes imaginable (“I know girls like a bit of rough, but in my experience they prefer a nicely laundered waistcoat”)? Or should we envy them the attention and cachet of exemplifying such glamorous evil? I am myself firmly in the latter camp. I’d love to see a TV series encompassing class-tormented sex, fascistic medical experimentation and rad tailcoats called Balliol, though I’m not sure the ratings would be as high.

Of course Quirke, French and their various directors lacked the spirit to actually approach one of the Trinities over the question of shooting locations (despite those friendly, tempting Irish tax-breaks on artistic enterprise), and so Royal Holloway was picked. In Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin alike the disapproval will have been felt, for Royal Holloway is suitable neither in terms of architecture, nor context, for the accurate representation of any Trinity. All of our Trinities are old religious foundations engrained within a town (Trinity Oxford was founded to resist the Reformation, Trinity Dublin to support it, but that’s by the by). Royal Holloway looks like a secluded, Victorian Gothic public school experiment. The TV series lost out on any town/gown opportunities for their plot (internalising these instead through the Dandelion Club/meritocratic freshers contrast), and bowed to a strangely alien structural cliché. The result is that our beloved Trinity aristocrats behave like students of Christ Church in buildings that look like Keble, or (perish the thought) Girton, Cambridge (a weirdly feminine castle entirely erected from blood red stone), buildings the Bullingdon Club wouldn’t deign to vomit in.

These aesthetic quibbles aside, I must confess what must already be obvious, that, as Professor Maltravers, played by the immaculate Charles Dance, admits somewhere in the last episode, “I love Trinity; the Dandelion Club is my life.” I love the half-implemented way that Trinity is actually made to function as an “internationally recognised centre of learning” (the best school leavers in, at least, Britain seem to head there), despite retaining academic serfdom which must lack a certain efficiency (the President of the Dandelion Club, viewers are constantly reminded, doesn’t have to do any work at all). I love the skewed vision of the academics which results in Maltravers apparently teaching medicine (he is supposed to have discovered a vital cancer treatment which murdered an arbitrary bunch of babies) as well as English (he retails Shakespeare and mauled Tennyson effortlessly and demands coursework in King Lear from Dorian), or in Dorian and Rosalind for some reason having votes on the college’s governing body. I hate the two idiots, ‘Angus and Raj’, and can’t bear to watch them, but I enjoy the fact that, like all true gimps, they possess inexplicable computing skills.

And though I may have focussed so far on the obvious butts of ‘Bridgeford University’, i.e. my establishment and its hated sister in the fens, I don’t think the miasma and atmosphere of Trinity is without debt to Trinity Dublin, either, though it may be a matter of indirect and knock-on effect rather than deliberate reference and resonance. Take the two characters in Trinity who between them decisively wrest the show into their hands: Dance’s Professor Edmund Maltravers, and Christian Cooke’s Dorian Gaudain. I would contend they are in at least one sense – the intellectual sense - Dublin-born.

It’s all in the name. Without Oscar Wilde, there could have been no Sebastian Flyte (Evelyn Waugh’s pretty boy is obviously the king of Dorian Gaudain’s particular sub-category). The philosophy the Dandelion Club under Gaudain espouses (“a society dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure”) and Charlotte Arc rejects (“God, you’re boring: do you think about anything other than waistcoats and girls?”) is expressly Wilde’s own, and Trinity is able, for reasons of cultural context, to express its homoerotic side far more explicitly than is possible in Wildean drama (see the sometimes agonisingly heavy-handed love affair between Ross and Jonty: “We were lovers. You didn’t know that because you didn’t know him”). As for Edmund Maltravers, it should always be remembered that Wilde came to Oxford already a Trinity graduate, and a protégé of one of its most famous academics, John Mahaffy. Mahaffy it was who inducted Wilde into the details of Platonic homosexual ideals; and while Trinity’s Maltravers and Dorian Gaudain lack a relationship of any such intensity, there is suggestion of some close, at least, mental affinity between Maltravers and Richard Arc (“He had the most beautiful mind I have ever known”).

Nor, as it happens, is TCD without precedents for well-written, murderous trash. I direct the reader at once to a great, almost forgotten novel of Terence de Vere White’s, Lucifer Falling. This features the core struggle of Trinity – old guard academics vs modernisers – with the more spectacular, conspiratorial elements (weird science, building a master-race, etc) excised; with less nudity and more sexual agony. Basically, this novel (which is complete with a panicky disclaimer from de Vere White that “this is not intended to be a picture of Trinity Dublin”) toys with an archetype Trinity has gestured to without ever fully incorporating it – the Lecherous Lecturer. The ITV show allows its dons some kind of love life, with a triangle between Dr Gabriel Lloyd, Dr Angela Donne and (the late) Richard Arc, and a brief attempt by Rosalind Gaudain to seduce an academic’s “sexily honed brain”. But Lucifer Falling is from a seedier hand, less reliant on a youthful audience and happy to linger on the pains of middle-aged amours. It also contains, more like Trinity in this respect, a dramatic, well-timed and attuned killing:

It hit him between the shoulder blades, shattering his spine into several pieces. The bust was undamaged. The College has it in the Library now.

(For a less distressing literary take on your hothouse, there’s always Joyce.)

Aestheticism, mentoring and murder: Trinity would be nothing without Trinity (yours). Hold your heads high and grab that ITV internet player if you haven’t already.

[Rejjed by Cherwell and Isis]]...

2009-12-21T03:39:00.000-08:00

Stornoway at the Sheldonian, 31st Oct

In one of those feeble bits of filler copy that consitute G2, I recall once reading some loser whose proudest vaunt was that he had known Joy Division when they were Warsaw, back in a Salford establishment called Eric’s. If all else fails, I fully expect to eke my moments through by reiterating, similarly, that I knew the most lyrical, melodic body of musicians in Britain back when they were just Stornoway, performing to a humble diehard audience of 600 or so Oxford students and residents in the Sheldonian Theatre, with only an orchestra apiece to back them up.

The brag, I accept, falls a little flat. Stornoway have arrived already, and I cannot discover them, only depict them as accurately – and hence as glowingly – as I can. In the invidious classifications of their industry, this band have easily been subsumed under the banner of the “alternative”, and it is important to express first just how effective an alternative to the alternative Stornoway in fact are. Their lyrics in such beautifully assembled songs as Boats & Trains and Fuel Up make sense by the standards of music, poetry and fiction, are largely audible, always articulate, and unfailingly moving. Their instrumentality falls into a number of broad approaches; the slow moving, quiet backdrop, the frenetic, almost military jig, and in the case of The November Song, relatively rarely played and harder to find online than much of the band’s output, a solo vocal effectiveness more reminiscent of singer-songwriters and troubadours than a band at all.

That last number, which I had never heard before, is written and performed by Brian Briggs, a man with one of those names welded for alliterative fame who nevertheless seems to have a taste for a tranquil private life. Especially given that he was performing to his core following of chronically romantically unfortunate Oxford undergraduates, Briggs took a risk in displaying a chanson d’amour of inner contentment and advertising it as such, even, it must be said nauseatingly, dedicating The November Song to “everyone in the audience lucky enough to have a soulmate”. It is a proof of the song’s quality that it overrode even this reviewer’s scepticism, and instead of acting as a tonal gloat captured the idea of love as an all-important but vulnerable aspect of life.

Brigg’s November Song preamble also displayed an element of Stornoway’s characteristic technique that is evident in their name; a folkloric connection to imaginative geography, that leaves every place name to embody a significance that is emotional, literary and traditional all at once. When Jarvis Cocker sings “she came from Greece”, he is gesturing to a vague idea of spivvy opulence. A folksong like Fairport Convention’s Sir Patrick Spens mentions Aberdeen for legendary reasons without significance outside tradition. Stornoway go for the heritage and the associations at once. November Song’s connection to the Pembrokeshire hills associates successful love with isolation from the world, but Briggs was also clearly, specifically, in the Pembrokeshire hills at the time and wanted to pin them down. It is this specificity about Stornoway’s songwriting that has allowed them to create what might be called the local national anthem of Cowley, Zorbing. When this band name a place they hallow it.

The magnetically popular Zorbing and the far more lyrically accomplished On The Rocks were deployed in what Briggs called “a really experimental moment”. The band were thrilled to be in the Sheldonian but aware of the changed atmosphere it imposed upon them; playing under a restored Baroque ceiling three centuries old with strict orders against standing or stamping in the audience. Stornoway reacted with an appealing combination of reverence and subversion. They combined operations, and shared their platform, with the Oxford Millennium Orchestra, one of whose violinists they are in the habit of borrowing. But Briggs kept a thumbnail on his rock-star’s honour by leading his audience in a group scream at the event’s conclusion.

As for the orchestral contribution, it was a musical experiment but perhaps also a qualitative risk. In a way that felt slightly allegorical of Music Today, our “alternative” pop heroes never failed to prove themselves more competent musicians than the smartly accoutred ensemble. The Millennium Orchestra momentarily resembled a classical bribe that had bought Stornoway the Sheldonian, and their warm-up act of some drearily rendered Mendelssohn and rather better Vaughan Williams instigated some audience impatience. But they redeemed any such charge by the excellence of their support to Zorbing and, particularly, On the Rocks. When an obviously deeply affected Briggs muttered it was the “best night of his life”, few in the audience had any doubt he was referring to the unforeseen and overwhelming success of this peculiar synthesis.

I’ve long had doubts about whether Zorbing deserves its place as the most widely circulated and reputed part of Stornoway’s achievement. When overlistened to, the song exposes wilfully trite rhymes and emotional truisms that fall short of much of the band’s originality. The Oxford resonances will ensure this song never fails to be welcome round here, however.

To secure their national standing (and this is not an absurd statement – Stornoway have just had a spin with Jools), the band are more likely to hit home with the song that provoked the wildest positive reaction from the audience, the funny and frightening We Are The Battery Human. This reminds its hearers of Stornoway’s consistent protest credentials; an early masterpiece, not alas performed in the Sheldonian, was the fabulously unmusical Good Fish Guide, a ranting sermon upon what fish we should and shouldn’t eat. We Are The Battery Human strikes simultaneous targets – by imagery, of course, shackled poultry, but explicitly, in a Luddite and Romantic vein, the present servitude of humanity to technology – “We were born to be free/…Range”. It has, inevitably, become a hit on the internet.

Administrative Decree

2009-12-21T03:34:00.000-08:00

I've so many bits of unpublished nonspecific article/ etc that this website is going, very shortly, to feature prose for the first time.

Actually, I suppose strictly speaking it features prose for the first time now.

Fairy story

2009-12-15T05:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T04:39:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-30T03:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-13T01:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T01:53:00.000-08:00

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

2009-08-31T09:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-30T03:34:00.000-07:00

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.

The Last Frittata

2009-07-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

I hope, and (though I would prefer
Writing to saying so) believe,
The supper that I left to you
Is beautiful (off the record
It is, trust me, quite beautiful).

I made it, as, of course, you know,
'It's a fact you'd be first', indeed,
'To acknowledge'. Not, perhaps, foremost
In specifying - but I asked
for neither, nor for memory,

As I was making a beautiful supper
To last you some time, anyway.

Who's She?

2009-07-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

Can she know it's against them,

Her long-term interests,

Craning forward her bright and her versatile neck,

Can she know that it baulks her,

That short-term advantage,

As she blocks, sidle-shouldering

The sauce of the fleck?

That hers is the meal, the least of the thing,

As hers is my service, hers my forced restraining,

As mine the maintaining, the spoon and the washing

For her clutch's gelled fattening?

He knows nothing about that, the long term advantage,

I'd clean up some cleaning and dine here and now,

This is pleasure; why hang up on sameness and order?

It doesn't stop ordure; human, confess now

How more than disgust took to staining your brow.

Hard to be a flynn

2009-06-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

When I first listened to you you were overplayed and worn
In a room I thought so beautiful it justified my scorn
And I mean I barely heard you as I stared about as well
And wondered if I’d ever yet be touched by any hell

It took Christmas and tinniness
It took being alone, still
That drive to claim a corner -
You constituted firmly lobes from someone else’s mind
You colonised your sceptic with a lacing of unpride
You made him wonder if he’d heard his hell

And sure I overplayed in turn and made distinctions then
And some died for much longer and some got better when
They’d been born a wee bit stunted but they geared themselves up well
So all in all I got convinced you sang me from your hell

I saw you once by accident yellowly in your voice
And I thought you might yourself be hell by choice

I got in pride and stumbling and found I irked again
I couldn’t even take a bare refrain

I met aspirant seraphs who warned you were going down
And I met all further loving with a screeching kind of frown
I thought you’d bought plots in heaven and could be none of mine
But I heard the current while I blanked the shine

It took all the dim faces
It took the bench’s spaces
I saw her staring sharp devoted fear,
And the virtues joying at last sealing swell
Flynn you’re mine on demand
Flynn you’re mine by free will
We’ll wander hand in hand then into hell.

a subtle gratualy in the rights of melancholy

2009-06-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

sgalli gp in babylove
no, suppose not
ang' ae bat thee, proversial
eyelick. All ov,
are you drunk
mine is none since fri
are you drunk
no, suppose not

sgalli gp in babylove
atch was drunk sat think – hmm?
scar and chilled weirdly unin-
terediesting estuff.
Hard dod to see
This as a tragedy…

you were looking very Social,
today. is an uncomfortabable
fake – as john keats said, or bryron
etc – what are you
Talking about? There’s not a joy –
i'm rwiting this in the mittle of the great automn tragedy,
there’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away

mine is none since fri. Radio 4, in the very existence
Of a bee orchid, ang ae bat thee
Proversial eyelick - ! – radio 4
Guitarist iaian large! Suppose not,
- Boring – Bryron - sgalli gp
In babylove?

The Course of True Love (under commission)

2009-05-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

He was telling his tall story in the kitchen again

She could tell it right back, it was got quite that

Systematic. And since it was stodgily beautiful

She felt free to make out, well, enigma variations

Course I could feel the current.

You're leaving out the glaciers again,

darling.

Have you ever had that feeling

When the storm glowers its worst

Shines in its own bale

And you're soaked to the bone like an oxo-cube

And you sort of, when it comes down to it, want more...

Come now, it was only a showery spell,

Angel-features.

Viciousness

2009-05-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

Well, my unendearmented,
You know about bad nights.
Well, then, I elected one -
Left the double rights –
Took the doubled duvet down
To a sofa dell –
Thought about the evening time
Said nothing, which was well.
I think you got my adjective,
Lasting, mistaken yet,
For I am always viscous,
As you'd struggle to forget.

To the pure

2009-05-05T03:13:00.000-07:00

You were, then and now, scaling the verandah
Where we diced up scones, and took solace in cream.
Then you wound your way into a cool salamander,

To lie, just refolded, lapped up at a seam –
And that pause was dreamed of, for fanning your spread,
And your photo cheek had to sheen in teapot steam.

Like a hangman’s last darling you dangled your head
As you sparkled the supplement, azured the air –
Why are blue movies blue? Where’s the sky in the bed?

By endemic illogic I had to be fair
And give you a fighting round rolling with blood,
Sense a holier scent in your papery hair,

So, later, strung out to the asthmatic thud
Of a Dell’s shaky breathing, you made your own case,
Shot down causes and worship; your critical dud

Left a page to be turned at a sobered down pace,
Slowed by understanding the point of the chase.

Villanelle - "After Sasha"

2009-05-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

It was no causal embering of the heart –
No pattern falling out, no steps outlaid;
It was where you and I would love, and part.

Nor as it had been by the page’s art,
The culture section where Miss Grey lay, splayed,
When embers swam and coursed my idle heart.

Congealed time must end by rapid start;
The consequence drew out my gasping, flayed,
Caught from the place where we’ve been used to part.

A strong line froze out a precision dart,
A complementary light lay thinly made;
But riot bellows blaze my, still your heart.

She was notorious, the queenly mart,
As she lay printed, the cruel pinner maid,
I dropped her where I tried to live and part.

A slimline guide to ways to writhe and smart?
She was a type perfected for and paid –
A causal muse, who smudged this ashing heart,
The hour you and I learned to love, and part.

For Mr. Goodwin - Footnotes to Narnia

2009-04-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

"It is a combination, and a mixture
Of ways they might have never met,"

I have failed to confirm or disprove any meeting between CS and TS.

"So going past, nodding at the beige tower, past."

Identification here imprecise and of secondary importance but in order of likelihood: Magdalen Tower, Tom Tower, the tower above the gates of Balliol, that tower above your current room.

"The face of all obedience in Jadis's spire"

"It is I, Jadis, Queen of Charn!" Jadis, variously described as of Giantess heritage, and as descended from the union of Lilith, first wife of Adam, and a Djinn. Warred with her sister for the dominion of Charn. Destroyer of Felinda, Sorlois, and ultimately Charn itself. In her subsequent career, a claimant to the British throne during the reign of Queen Victoria; and more successfully for some hundred years Queen of Narnia, Empress of the Lone Islands and Chatelaine of Cair Paravel. Reign curtailed by murder at the hands of Aslan. Alias the White Witch. Known princes consort: Andrew Ketterley, Edmund Pevensie. The spire probably represents a part of Jadis's picturesque Narnia mansion, with its noted collection of statuary. For a convenient representation, bring to mind the black spire of Exeter.

"Fumigation of the one's old common-room pipe smoke,
The other's butts."

Smoking is in the works of CS Lewis invariably a marker of moral rectitude - note the indictment of the Scrubb parents, as "vegetarians and non-smokers".

I The Burial of the Dead

For this part cf 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' and 'The Last Battle'.

"A harsh thaw they made of it, melting
Boundaries in spring, in summertime lives..."

Both works contain noted martial scenes. Lewis's description of death as "the beginning of the summer holidays" should also probably be noted.

"So sagt mir wo die blumen sind?"

German, "Where have all the flowers gone?", see Joan Baez chanson, recording on 'Farewell Angelina'.

"A coin,
With its mortal majestic composition.
A Lion. And a Unicorn."

Respectively, Aslan, Jewel the Unicorn.

"Le canevas banal, the wardrobe unparadis'd."

See Charles Baudelaire, 'Au Lecteur', John Milton, putative titling of 'Paradise Lost', end of 'The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'

II A Game of Chess

For this part cf. 'The Silver Chair'

"The Chair he sat in, like a burnished cage"

Cf. William Shakespeare, via Mr. Eliot

"Soberly looked on by green Puddleglum"

"The honest Marshwiggle" of 'The Silver Chair'; a gangling, web-footed, damp humanoid most noticeable for his propensity to be as pessimistic in prosperity as optimistic in danger.

"The Marshwiggle of Magdalen's Common Rooms."

It should be recalled that Magdalen was CS Lewis's college; this, not Miss Anna Popplewell, is the intended reference.

"Troubled beside the verdant kirtle's shade.
Unguent incense burnt to Lamia's change."

These lines refer to the Lady of the Green Kirtle, arguably Lewis's most compelling heroine, surpassing even Jadis, "the White Witch". The so-called "Green Witch"'s ancestry is entirely mysterious, though she is noted as "Northern" in origin. Golden haired and rosy cheeked, the Lady rode upon a white palfrey, dressed in a kirtle "as green as poison", and constantly escorted by a knight in black, visored, with a sable blazon. Her voice was "soft and lilting", and she acted in a sympathetic and courteous fashion. She was killed while in the form of an emerald green snake by Prince Rilian of Narnia, her erstwhile captive, and the son of one of her victims. Literary and cultural inspiration for the Lady stems from figures including: Malory's Morgan Le Fay; Spenser's Duessa and False Florimel; Coleridge's Geraldine; Keat's Lamia; the phenomenon of psychotherapy; and the atheist theologian Elizabeth Anscombe. It remains only to be added that she is the present poet's ideal.

III The Fire Sermon

For this part cf. 'The Horse and His Boy' and 'Prince Caspian'.

"A gentle prince is pricking on the plain"

Cf. Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene I.i.

"The loitering heir, presumptive Caspian,"

Prince Caspian was actually technically Narnia's heir apparent. The author preferred the word presumptive's cadences.

"The horse, tired out, recalls another mounting.
Eugenides's spurs, lei lei lei, lei lei lei."

The poet violently denies improper intentions and is prepared to consult his lawyers.

"With automatic neck now cranes the boy,
Bold as Lord Leicester, pecks Miss Popplewell."

Cf. Mr Eliot; 'Prince Caspian', Walden/Disney film adaptation. This rather petty and irritating reference to Miss Popplewell is this time fully intended by the poet.

IV Death by Water

For this pat, cf. 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'.

"The Talking Mouse Reepicheep sort of drowned"

Of all Narnia's animal denizens, the effect of Reepicheep upon the consciousness of readers has perhaps been most lasting. A walking metaphor for the glories and limitations of chivalry, Reepicheep is an exceedingly courteous and gallant Mouse. Though his survival in this novel is doubtful, he lives persistently in even contemporary literature, and was cited in one of the novelist Philip Hensher's metaphors in 'The Fit', 2004.

"The Seven Lords plot
Was rent up in some hasty paragraphs."

It really was. The ostensible driving quest of the novel was a search for seven missing, beautifully named Narnian lords. I will try to list them - Revilian, Roop, Octesian, Dorn...the poet's powers of recall prove insufficient. Anyway, their plotline soon enough drowned in theology. Perhaps they themselves had done.

"Gentile or (Messianic) Jew"

I feel all these appelations have intimate bearing upon my esteemed recipient.

V What the Thunder Said

For this part, cf. 'The Magician's Nephew'.

"The older world's blood sun"

The world of Charn, destroyed by Jadis, who unknowingly acted as Aslan's instrument. "Deities do not flinch from genocide/In matters of buggery or of pride"

"Tolosa dolosa"

Cunning Toulouse; the insult of the Albigensian Crusaders.

" - dying Egypt - "

Shakespeare and Eliot in another semi-amicable collaboration, multched in present bastardisation.

"burst guinea-pigs while ye may -"

Debt to Herrick semi-acknowledged

"And I say the sooner the better"

Lewis's view on the forthcoming return of Arthur Pendragon.

FINIS

From From A View To A Death

2009-04-15T01:48:00.000-07:00

My children, I have to announce a hiatus

Though sure shan't be long, nor sharply adhered to;

Yet several concepts convene on a gap -

You'll need a wee Prelude, or yet antiPrelude,

So I'll trace it from pretext to fact.

When I came to Oxford - came again to Oxford -

(not as if you'd ever been so far away,

you might say - well fair Slough is an hour and a half)

For some reason I thought that poems must be witty

Like Pope, or beautiful like Byron, but not serious

With sturgeon-like light novelled glory.

And when I resorted to them, it was due

To rejection, by my own journalistic face,

My prose weight, and then, smarting, by you,

Fairest readers to come. How such a lot came

From an appeasing sonnet from Balliol Bar...

And I cannot leave out my one true lover's role,

Who urged me on in envy, more striding than sorrow,

The captain and catcher of dreams - find him here:

www.sammyamjay.blogspot.com

For I felt, sure, he catches them, but then he's puzzled.

He allows them to float about flustered in cages,

And watches, ands loses the scientist's thrill,

Lets experiment drop, and puts it down to nature -

But I want to wright them and would shine them wrought

If my Thorspastic iron hands could only pin 'em.

But the catcher's last dream caught him up good and proper,

And he never now handles that butterfly net.

The centre, the vortex of shaping art guilt

Is now he who was here, I think:

www.ollyrowse.blogspot.com

- that's not important -

the thing is, that splendid tyke's written a Play

And for sheer Love and Horror I'll crank out one too.

Those form one real reason - now time for some fake ones -

I can't ride with Guido! I'm not in the 'Sphere

I wield no power, not spitfire tins,

But Victorian railings spitespiked and fast rusting.

Well, back to the truth - the BBC offer

Twenty thousand pounds to a short story handler;

And if dreams elude me, maybe I can do coins,

And similar beasties. I shot off some prizes,

Antonio's argosies, then said goodbye

To Melpomene, Thalia, maybe not Clio

(Clio looks like you, Kirsty;

Becky, Euterpe's got your job, but the track record

Of Urania's better, and closer, with Sidney,

Mary Wrath, etc.)

Goodbye to the less than nine scholarly muses:

The anecdote chorus line, damsels sure met

In the forest wide, lucklessly tracked -

For I dreamt a comical story last night,

post too much Northanger:

not brilliant in itself, it folded these lines:

"Have you children?" "Stewart,

I'm a virgin." "So sorry.

Must be awful for them."

Six-Part Madrigal

2009-03-24T03:28:00.000-07:00

The library at Gesualdo

Encased a cardinal’s cavilling Greek,

Which traced the first states, took issue with Mill

In defining tyranny, where tyrants go,

And who put them there – not vultures, but meek

Citizenry, the championed, men who aspired

To grow behind trellises, happily hired –

Splicing freedom and aphids in one freshened kill

They blooded their soil, to water their dill.

And their champ looks on from his window-ledge.

He’s aware, with a shiver, of that wafer wedge.

The prince makes his next choice:

Shopping at Venosa, relishing the line

That was led out to meet him, straightforwardly, twelve,

And of them eight tall, but three fair.

He wears out a man in livery’s high voice,

Separating from men boys, from their kin kine,

Whose task lies beyond barks to stack and to shelve –

They will reign in his country, once shod –

Who champions tyrants? The hand at the rod.

Four will stand, staged, gradated, deployed on the stair,

Oubliette’s lock fastened to a pair,

And that Dolomite club, brackish prevalent tool,

Becomes (vide Starkey) the Groom of the Stole.

His confessor froze in alarm

At how little the melody succumbed to calm.

A change was expected – a requiem mass

Nearly paid for, by proxy, at least, come to pass…

But those seculars only got longer and lusher,

Just as whores, branded, will step up their blusher.

Changed in other ways,

The prince keeps far from Naples, within the curt nave

Where he’ll become stone when he dies,

His long handbones crossed at groin, girt.

Nervy credit consents to cut out court farce;

Newly when stained with new panels, he pays.

Guilt fired the fools lodestars crave,

The crucifix slides and the devil’s dam fries,

Though not via hairshirt.

The thoughts of defenders, laid on:

What sort of a despot keeps quite a wide farm,

Confines dealings to quavers not caused by decrees,

But by spinets and lutes?

We could personalise fantasy on his tongue:

If a prince and a count is born free,

How can his mane suffer such bourgeois rom-com

As a wife after ‘fulfilment’, a ‘lonely’ rival?

Is this music a great man’s mind’s pelted muck?

Donna Maria, we posit, broke rules

Of Christian wife’s place, of high merit’s desert

With her flirty yoke. Cleave down, recur, blade,

Cleave to repetitiousness of true republics,

Reflower tyrant woman in that mortal hymen,

And wrap duke in juicy democratised princess.

Strokes are naïve as brutal:

And people like you always love a red story;

Attracted by horror, you yet spray it white,

‘Till Josef’s a raconteur, Cromwell a card.

But Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa,

And Count of Conza, is pungent for a poet;

His power so petty, his title so pure,

His sphere of action puts fat Harry to shame:

And sensitive too: his use of chromatics

Unknown ‘till his famous admirer, Igor.

Soaring art from repentance bought through little blood,

By Renaissance standards, you’ll aver. But would

You have heard of Gesualdo, were he twice as good

If he’d not sliced Maria and Fabrice so sure?

The artists have fêted the voice for the act,

We’re inclined to suspect. So let’s hear from three.

“This great, if disequilibrated, composer”,

Said Igor; and Aldous afterwards perceived

“That fantastic character out of a Webster

Melodrama” – at least he was honestly in it

For gore.

I saw Gesualdo weep,

One night at Ferarra, his new princess

Still, readied for his leap,

Her face too cautious for distress.

Believe me, the damned man wept from his heart,

And I knew now that princes could stab their own art.

The unmoved donna shone,

With such beauty as passion could only distort,

The unruptured mask more befitting the don,

Stern disregard, of a tyrant’s sort.

But when he fell silent and drew himself high

She arranged her young mouth in a sought after sigh.

They say he slew his child,

Testing its lineage on Gesualdo’s stone.

Don’t accuse me of delight in rumour so wild –

This is true reportage in a madrigal’s tone.

Four years ago Carlo killed wife, rival, son,

And so swears your true English lutenist, John.

Washing through

2009-03-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

I just want, I lied, to be clean,
Clean beyond stay or delay, clear browed,
Tilting back my sweetened locks to catch the breeze’s curls,
Soft with coldness’s linen imprint, armed with dustless thoughts.

Ideally, thenceforth, I would take the good
Encompassed in my pair of reboots, and I would
Lighten my touch, open my hand, let I be We,
Short-circuit this bedraggled Them as She.

I would like to move by choice,
I desire the freedom to give
Away desires. I want to please the minds I like,
I’d like to like the minds I don’t.

You’d launch me through country air into a pool,
A splash, all-inclusive, an ordering rule,
And my renewed step would be as true, as straight
And crisp as a cheque with our names and the date.

The Chronicles of Narnia, by CS Eliot

2009-03-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

It is a combination, and a mixture
Of ways they might have never met, while stumbling
My deeper sense of commandment, and going past,
So going past, nodding at the beige tower, past.
The face of all obedience in Jadis's spire
Might, going past again, compel a passage, much like
Fumigation of the one's old common-room pipe smoke,
The other's butts.

I The Burial of the Dead

A harsh thaw they made of it, melting
Boundaries in spring, in summertime lives,
So sagt mir wo die blumen sind? A coin,
With its mortal majestic composition.
A Lion. And a Unicorn. But the wreathing of those leaves,
I'll tell you, leak their way to there.
Le canevas banal, the wardrobe unparadis'd.

II A Game of Chess

The Chair he sat in, like a burnished cage
Was dimmed by asphalt wrought on lava-glass,
And worked around his wrists in gentle vines,
Soberly looked on by green Puddleglum,
The Marshwiggle of Magdalen's Common Rooms.
Troubled beside the verdant kirtle's shade.
Unguent incense burnt to Lamia's change.

III The Fire Sermon

A gentle prince is pricking on the plain,
The loitering heir, presumptive Caspian,
Musing upon the prince his cousin's birth.
The horse, tired out, recalls another mounting.
Eugenides's spurs, lei lei lei, lei lei lei.
With automatic neck now cranes the boy,
Bold as Lord Leicester, pecks Miss Popplewell.

IV Death by Water

The Talking Mouse Reepicheep sort of drowned
But forgot nothing, brought up liquid, sugared
Civility. The Seven Lords plot
Was rent up in some hasty paragraphs. Enchantment, though,
Reformed elsewhere. Gentile or (Messianic) Jew,
Leave Reep aside; think Eustace Clarence Scrubb,
See what characterization, then, can do.

V What the Thunder Said

The older world's blood sun shows up their blushes
And old fountains with old griffins cannot spew even dust.
There are so many pools; some dry up.
Charn, Felinda, Sorlois, Jerusalem,
London to be as dust when brandy rains down too - so -
Tolosa dolosa - dying Egypt - burst guinea-pigs while ye may -
DA. And I say the sooner the better, as the toffee-tree sprouts page.

Imitation of Propertius XVI

2009-03-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

BLUE BOAR GATE

Don’t sneer at me: I’m used for conferences,
Have hosted Conrad famed for horrorshows.
Extended theses stapled fast shot out,
Through my bar-code, dewed with postgraduate sweat.
But now each night the frivolous deface me,
With snow, song, stagnation: thus I cry out,
But my voice falters at Rebecca's keen,
And hacks at butts cast from her chilly palms.
I can’t allay her dreams, nor tame her steps,
Nor pry her from close perturbation,
But nor can she deny her doubt’s ingrowth,
As deadlines deaden passing evenings down.
My code repeated red, announces him,
The long-haul, scrabbling raider, sans supplies.
No more than he unlocks me can I him,
His whine holds real hurt inside its dross.

MINOO

I hate the scuffed old fob and bright metal,
I hate you: where’s your right to slam me back?
How dare such architecture limit me?
Don’t you once recognise redemption’s chance?
Oh, won’t a refuge one night warmly cave
In to my coming, sparing Iffley routs?
Old Tom’s is bought, avuncular as fat,
Harley, Hermes, Kilcanon watched me pass -
But this misnomered annexe spurns me yet,
Abstract, and ugly, lacking statured soul.
If my wrong guesses, triggering their bleeps
Might chirp their mulling on her inner phone,
Though evasive as meaning, light as wit,
Weary as spans, and indistinct as ink,
She’d yet start open barely slept in eyes,
And over all dismay, would laugh, at least.
And sure therewith Katya and Amy mount
Their mirthing fortress; I type to the wind.
Mundane code, only obstacle: well, sole
One that is visible, not in myself.
You chose an obtuse target to frustrate,
Earnest as erring; I could have raised you
To Parnassus of architecture; why
Did you decide to force me to this siege?
I have already beautied you in mind,
Egregious Boar: as an Arne Jacobsen,
A Catzian wonder, I’ve oded you out!

BLUE BOAR GATE

Mannered like that, checking his references,
He turns and leaves to give Mia the next.
This muse is untouched because unaware:
But he’s upset. The boy gone mad, I swear.

Propertius carmen XVI draft 2

2009-03-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

'Once I was cast open for massy triumphs,
Like the door of Tarpeia, so famously chaste.
Those gold-inlaid cars thundered right past my porch,
Mildewed with the streams from prisoners’ tears.
Now each night I’m scarred up by the wasters’ scraping,
As their base knuckles hammer, I always complain,
My voice close to choking through putrid love-garlands,
Or sputtering torches, whose bearers she’s quenched.

'I can’t bear, nor yet bar, her bordello soirees,
Those wits on her guestlist who smirk at my frame,
But nor can she pretend a frail shred of honour,
For in foulness she can keep in step with the times.
Penned ‘twixt truth and truth that lead moan pins me down,
A sadder blocked suitor – long queuing, long lost.

'I can never unwind, hinges neither, by him,
For his words are as bitter as (I confess) sweet.

'"So, door, crueller door, at bottom, than she,
Why to me are you dumb, granite-hard, slammed clam-tight?
Why not loosen your latch and requite my amours?
Don’t you know what to do when you’re slipped a good word?
Won’t this appeal of mine be ceased, ever,
By any grant, except a stony, rough rest?
I lie in night's caress, I know the stars’ grasp,
I’m grieved by cold daybreak, coldly grieving for me -
You alone keep inhuman, never lean to man’s comfort,
Unfazed, ever kind as a Trappist confessor...

'"O, if only my whimper, thrust through some covert leak,
Might strike first at her lobe, hammer, anvil, and drum!
Allow then for the chance that rock Sicily's softlier,
That she puts to scrap iron, obsolesces steel,
She could not yet manage to dim those bright eyes,
Her heart would lurch up in raped sighs and wrenched tears.

'"But softly now – soft she is draped on his shoulder,
And my words whip up only a slight nightly breeze.
If you’re not my sole block, you are yet the nearest,
As you’ll never be conquered by my tributes, door.

I’m not like the others – for I never mocked you
In a lampoon – no poet so honoured dull wood;
So why do you freeze me out, rasping and pleading,
As I keep up my regular back-alley vigils?
I’ve made, you should know, you such ground-breaking poems,
Stooped down, I have kissed your worn step’s every inch,
I’ve brought you prized offerings, with low devotion!"

'Stuff like that, known by rote to all you lovestruck wretches,
He gasps out when he’s finished me to puzzled larks.
So what with her teasing, and the lover ever
Soaking cheek, step and air, I foresee no end.'

Rider's Fable

2009-02-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

One slap on his slab of a broad slovened back
Barged him onto a saddle and back into glee.
He stared round the King's Horse, and the King's Horse's horses -
Bright rumtinted men, coursers' limpid grave eyes -

"Wilt thou ride?" said the Colonel to tall Williamson,
"Ay, perhaps." "Well, but take him too." "Ay..."
"Yes, we'll ride," said the rider,
That rider to be.

And Williamson, taller than he, laughed less loud,
And as they walked back through prompt, apt winter cloud,
Muttered "Damn you! The Devil! What made you say ride?"
"The joy of the hour - take heart", rider cried.

And walked rider stoutly across mundane marsh,
And he rammed on the oakhold and yelled "Woman" out,
"I'd have now your pasty, I'd take now your pleasure,
And fain would I steer you, curved from a harsh dawn."

"The pasty is cold, for I don't take your meaning."
"Then tip me some liquor and I'll make that clear."
"What clear and what liquor?"
"The ichor of parting -
Sold high with my Colonel
Tomorrow I'll ride."

"That you won't," smarted lady.
Rider: "Am." Lady: "Aren't".
Rider - "Bread up my saddle"
Lady - "Saddle? God knows
It's a bridle thou'rlt keen for before even sits."

Rider belted the lady,
And reddened himself,
Kicked Williamson, buckled his edged life-preserver,

And watered, provisioned and marched
To the public house - ever "I'll ride!"
For he'd pluck the most hardened prayermen from their stooling
For the joy of the bawling "Dost thou hate me? I ride!"

But before even sat, limped single to woman:
"'Tis fear lone can salvage the flailings of pride."

Chain Alley/Iffley Road Ballad

2009-01-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

What do you fear, my young man and handsome,
Clashing with an engine,
With a nineteen-sixties hardback in your hand?

Sure you fear ink won’t kiss you
They can’t but forget you,
Less than Arnochan’s sixties old tome of your hand.

Further do you fear, o young man and courtly,
So hurrying curtly,
Your substitute scarf round the bones of your neck,

They cannot but scrape such hashed frames of the tarmac,
Where no countenance breathes,
And none can infer your best drape on that neck.

Perhaps you are fearing, straight young man and hurried,
Her wistful judgement,
That she can’t but, while straightening the greyening light

Straiten from her head what might have been as well,
And were you even it,
Youth stiffening from possible light?

Then say for us too that you fear, lorn young man
Lettering services,
How will the wake invitations spill out?

Where will the space be and how firm the driving,
If they shine, will the mourners enshadow your time?
Can a tightrope bloat into a rout?

Don’t dwell in your blood on the fear, good young man
That the devil is idle, as veiled and viled
Indolent, indifferent, and not of your set –

For God will not spare you and no soul will swathe you,
As the driver is cautioned
And self-regard waxes round your heart in jet.

Swan Burning

2009-01-05T03:02:00.000-08:00

So splashes can be seamed, and riot
Purely elegant; so discomfited widening
Glances harmonise with wild, ordained wings.
The train-left gelled-out form ennobles water,
Whatever branches snagged flaxed quills.
And other rivery things fear neckpace, or bustle
Dully, surlily, fast, and only
Some slime and weed ties fast in eddies,
With burlesque taste for what is true.

On the bank to keep in sight
You have to mud ankles to face,
Have to slough and fool about and paddle,
In non-change-of-state mirey stuff,
To keep looking at that which is better than solid,
Looks like air and looks at earth,
At you - the hiss hangs in the wet.

And the language is barred,
And the chase is barred,
The bank is discouraged, the forest reserved,
Chopped down forest for Bagehot Queen.

But it crosses the mind with bright surety -
Suppose you rode full princelily, bore on leopards
And lilies 'midst leopards and swans, were named Henry,
Or Edward, or Lionel, or Thomas of Woodstock,
Suppose better you reared your own fledgey throat,
Careered on that richened muck, spoke without words,
Turn away still would she. No nature, no Queen murkifies,

That affair is not banned, but disallowed wholly,
In a sacred and lace disacknowledgement.

'Go, for thy stay, not free, absents thee more'

2009-01-05T02:50:00.000-08:00

I now begin to understand the gap between some gaps,
And the way that some are dreared, and others
Can't weigh down at all.

It depends what's being stared at, I think I clock it now,
Like an underbelly dancing on a kitten or the pad
Of a spider in a readverted glass.

And if the grapnel has attached to definite repast
Then a gulf of week or hours is only a varied step,
If the eyes that lit up parting can prolong that mutual suck,
Like a purring Aztec idol licking up obsequined blood,
Then well - but if you look on long at the retreating head
And it sinks in that the head replaced the eyes and will be eve -

Lie through singular warm ages when you needn't quite be there,
More there then than when poising on that farewelled immanence.
If you said in fourteen lifespans you would come straight back for sure,
What a warm-drink haze of waiting could be boiled up and borne.

Theme owed to Rowse and socks to Jay

2008-12-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

These two I stole a week or so ago
I alternated, rearrayed, three times,
Like cavaliers recouping between raids –
Rest in the drawer, nay, on the floor
And air your flair and on.

There is a price in order; it becomes
Uncertain if the heel mounts its height
Or ankle does not sag, or length not mar,
Proportion, decency, and protocol
Stand in their peghung pasts.

And now this morning they ride ere the flood
Will foil the maturation of their joys;
And they display their innards to the noon,

So that my steps crunch hundredworth feelers
To rugs and planks; I’ve donned a pair of squid
Nudging around the bottom of the sludge,
Timidly querulous. They teach me how
To fold up morning yet evade the now.

Living

2008-11-20T01:35:00.000-08:00

Every day I grow more like a butcher,
From a saw-dust puffed out stage for musical,
Garnering the red cheeks and the wares, he worships them.

Basso celebration of the dried out gammon –
Bloodied fillet caught up in refrain,
Crowned with rashers, lamby sceptre, early rising
Greets him, greets that daily killy tang.

I used to handle stuffs with care
And rank up sausages in style
I never wasted offal then
Each bone told a fair tale.

But the voice grows compulsive
For the red germs at the raw,
A shelf collapsed last Monday –
Ill stacked upon the Sunday –
The shanks now need a saw
Even custom grows repulsive.

He’s slowed down with the commerce and he’s in it for himself,
He sort of takes a bath. Earlier, redder, rise, baptised with ham,
The morning folding out like pudding skin,
A gamey pre-luncheon becomes tartare;
We lurch about through mince skeins and blood pie.
When routine becomes metaphor, it gets
Hard to hold back. He blames the suffragettes.
I think it went back longer, mammothwards,
But mercy for that steak –

It is, when we come down to it, a piece of meat.
It is our friend. Don’t land it woman’s name.

Experiment with Eugene

2008-11-17T08:21:00.000-08:00

Is it so shocking in such times to fail
To heal that slashed goodbye with a buy?
When RBS's lunging can't avail
To stem or succour, can bull hearts ride high?
The envelopes I picked up can't conceal
Through friendship this cold thriftiness, this deal;
Now, though the postponed tack embraces paint
Those Stuart faces betray August's taint.
Donne's sermons caught to Spitfire my style
Were all their shelf could proffer, yet too dear.
In all, each time I wrenched my card, too near,
In spite of Scots wool or stationer's aisle,
Your stare was felt unhidden in my hide,
I knew I bought things while crunched from your side.

Experiment with 'Cesco

2008-11-16T15:43:00.000-08:00

Those scars, my scourge, have scabbed from jam to whey,
Their flint infection settled, but obscure,
So set for moulding, they could yet seem pure
Enough to point the proper, straightened way.
For all I ever planned, still yet they may:
A gap's slid out for a tongue to abjure,
The quarry should have learnt to hop the lure,
A witness of the portioning of past prey.
But weals fasten something as they sink,
Slivers and thorny specks iterate flesh,
And thought looks to the rigour of the sense.
What use then to so much as think to think,
When such a hurt is only cheap as fresh,
And the least quenching salve's the mere defence?

Symptoms

2008-11-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

I see them billow after I half-close
My lashes – sailing scraped out buoyant skins
Of avocado, armaded and stern,
Or smooth or pitted, bannering the sight,
Becoming colder, creamier, but vague,
Possessing stink of wonder and the end
Taking the passage via that throwaway
The starkened mounding, on one way, in fact
To pinnacles. Between plasma and blood
The mind-multching accomplishes enough.

Killing and Raping Mummy

2008-11-10T02:34:00.001-08:00

Picture this – I’m gay in December
Picture this – freeze the cold weather
You got clutched in religion, you'd take off the lids
And, oh, your head is beautiful.

I’m in the phone-booth and don’t wanna cross a whore,
Mounting like a fugitive. Your cigarette
Is tentative. A bucket of the ocean, oh,
Like a cabinet of wax, yet, oh
Your head is beautiful.

Nippy

2008-11-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

Was not the hounds that wore Actaeon out,
Tubbily biscuit-sated, fondly warm,
Kitchen-scrap merchants cut back for the shoot,
It fell out so.

The earth-born hunter, straying for a mark,
The queen at chaste ease in her ordered park
(Whose order is a forest, eases such
As boars might shun and tigers barely touch);

Actaeon takes the crazy pavementing
Over a root above a cache of snails,
The hoof, the green-gyration, and the trails,
Unknown to Cynthia’s lodge’s casementing –

(Which is of glinty moss and blue-black sedge)
- it is a morning outing, and in light
Vegetable-dappled, is she blotched aright,
So that the lunatrix spreads in hell’s hedge –

She sees him see. Grey eyes gulf out. She smiles in courtesy,
But shivers with such mortal effort, sways half down and coughs,
A bronchial clarion whose sympathy spins him from his firm seat –
“And love?” he says in quiet.

The trigger wording for the bloody batch,
And baying as they ferry on a catch,
Their fast-bred haunches and their slavening jaws.
The nymphs, Actaeon eaten, became whores.

To Sir Philip, Qualified Thanks

2008-10-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

Dear, why make you more of a blade than me?
If it do splash, I plunge, I plunge unsung;
It it hang well, better still am I hung;
If it be long, yet but a blade can be.
Heavy it is, yet lighter worth than me;
It swings, my dance thy own step oft does prove;
Displayed, perhaps it bolsters you above,
But undisplayed is my soul fetched to thee.
Yet while I languish, it that post-room tips,
That lap doth lap, nay wins, in spite of spite,
This cumbered mate grinds on thy sugared hips,
Alas, if you grant only such delight
To witless bars, then love, I hope, since wit
Becomes a log, will soon ease me of it.

And Why

2008-10-11T02:17:00.000-07:00

I love him with the kind self love
That makes you love Pierre; King George;
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke;
I love where Willy Yeats fucks up.
Yellow Christmas a time ago
This man, of men, my sympathy’s
Chief holder, in Mummy’s ex-street,

Met Oscar, and was shone on, just like us,
Stammered and glowered and told Cyril stories.
Two men who saved their stock against the tide,
But Wilde? What could fat Oscar have thought?
Seeing a countryman who couldn’t work
A room, but breathed the truth,
If rarely spoke it.

To the dead man I love

2008-10-11T01:39:00.000-07:00

Soon I will pass Auberon Waugh
En route to the stark calling point
The make or break of William Yeats,
Delay and worship of the cruel,
The pity of Miss Florence Farr,
Olivia unrecognised
(For love ain’t letters)

– lack of fruit
In cruelty’s chase, then, schadenfraud,
Your life vested in John MacBride;
Relish each drunk spat frown and kick,
Get hold of history’s verdict,
Get Maud in France (so by the by
And fly-by) and Iseult –

Named for Blanchemains? The stand-in, yes,
So much for “natural declension
Of the soul”. But you you saved,
Razed down Responsibilities,
Workmanlike gentle double helix,
Through compromise and fudge.

Note

2008-10-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

The birthdays of my legends I
Leave unrecorded - please assume
Nine of the clock and eight hours' sleep
A silent and a vile room.

What Milady Means

2008-10-11T00:58:00.000-07:00

Once wide, the slopes began to lap
Inwards a bunch of years ago;
So that that sidereal pair
That dances and dances so well
The ur-self and the fancy-girl
Underwent passes.

And for the rest it is substance
That overtook her hazy hair
Made it infested and frayed down.
But my night’s lady’s still of night,
For all she steps in faytour’s mould,
And has seen through my softliness.

She was my handmaid and she knows
None better, how to sneer.

Head Office

2008-10-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

An inhouse style guide
Makes a killing
During suicide.

Dodge the Bullet

2008-10-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

When things like love one cares about
Jar one's jaw in beyond endurance
One lies in bed glumly awake
And howls against one's phone insurance.

A long time ago and hardly revised

2008-09-18T09:27:00.002-07:00

The two of us almost bumped straight

Into the two of them. But it was alright,

Because neither boy nor girl looked back at us.

They had not gone far past us as I steered

My mother about the pharmacist’s corner.

The Diet Coke and the change in her handbag,

The silence was silenced - we both now had something to say.

Normally, when people-watching,

I look at women first. Man’s Descent makes three markers,

Sex, age, then aesthetics. The girl had a right

To demand a conspicuously furtive glance;

Her long hair had fine brown brightness,

She was smiling and natural and unconcerned.

I did look at her first, but scarcely at all.

For with her was one I felt I knew well,

I disliked him, disliked me, as I watched him.

He was my age, and made me feel short, dark, stumbling,

Away from a race contemptuous of fear,

Stout hearted, steel toned.

Looking at the girl was soothing, half-attainable,

But the blond boy’s morning aimed scowl fixed my stare.

I knew him then, I knew his sort!

Within sixteen guesses, his name as well,

And I wanted to use some honourless means,

Poison or deceit or book-learning,

Atomic science, verses, to leave him dead

And take his girl. If there is Progress

Such longings engender it.

And deftly I helped my mother to make way,

To absolve that envy by the gift of a pavement,

And we trudged on, past the chemist’s.

“I thought I knew that boy’s face,” I said.

I was her familiar, as I saw the same vice

Bundled under our verb.

“How strange,” she said, “I thought I knew the girl’s.”

Restaurant

2008-09-18T09:27:00.001-07:00

Well, it’s a new place, said she, I’d rather not.

The reviews are good; yet a quiet evening,

I said. She said, yes, no problem with booking,

I’d just rather not; is that alright with you?

Then a ring percussed from the tall white door.

I opened it now to a man, a threatener

In a brown leather jacket with brown leather hair.

They looked at each other to tell what had passed,

He stared at the both of us, hands in his pockets,

She blinked first, and I spoke to the blackened beau.

What do you think of the new place in town

With its sparkling white décor and pulverised meat?

The newcomer meddled a grin of drugged slyness.

We’ll eat at that cool place called fury tonight.

Red Watch

2008-09-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

My raging was diagonal

The sleep was only of a kind

My last thoughts placed me as a boor

My post-last kicked the duvet far

A rat at salami

A man at his tongue

Far too angry, far too ready, and only faded

From consciousness in that the words were dismissed

Till I arched my tense frame and rolled and shouted

“I shall not be sold to Mrs Lascelles”

Woke to a contortion and to a rebellion

And passed to fabliau non-sleep.

(I recall, however, that Mrs Lascelles’s

Husband’s first name was Charles).

Out of curiosity

2008-09-16T02:29:00.000-07:00

Mister George Harnett,

I have a query,

With reference to your soul.

We've not really talked ever

(By my intendment

I slide choppily from your way).

This morning a sober clarion rang,

And I woke to the skein of your unfathomed mind.

Let's get to the washing up, Mister George Harnett.

The ur-Harnett, for the present author

Is smiling. His foot rests upon conquered contentment.

Some kind of noble truth he has passed,

He sold laughter for that hard-wearing smile.

Does it only amuse you, George Harnett esquire,

This oddly ruled turfworld, is it to be pinned,

Wreathed and contained by a lordly smirk,

And a bundle of creased, or perhaps folded blue?

I do not know you, good Harnett,

But do explain

If your mirth is germane

To time's drawn, aching slash,

To Russia, the mother of Lermontov,

Hardening in a grey turgid pipe,

To war beyond weapons?

If amusement can cover

The Cabinet's writhing

The BBC owes you one, Mr. Harnett.

Which sage cast you thus,

A formed man of power,

With banalised faults and no chance for surprise,

So gallant in peace and so hardy in war?

Was it OUCA and the Royal Air Force, or were

You born lumpen?

Drug

2008-09-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

Well, as if it were that,

I pause for its coming,

I stand at its parting,

For its sight the better,

Avert neck, dart eyes.

I wish it were her, but it's not them, at least.

It's definiteless though deictic, and as

It hamstrings ken, spits, too, at the Infinite.

A substitute nymph

Plywood splints what was better.

Earns thanks without asking, taking or deserving.

O would it were beauty!

Would then it were love.

But that walker wears poetry's name.

'Please Explain'

2008-09-04T02:17:00.000-07:00

Do you ever have those nightmares

Which though horrid are compelling

Enough to book a postchaise

Foam-flecked worn-down attempt?

I have chartered that compartment

For a restive shop-soiled sleep

Because a detail usually needs firming up.

Let me stop you there, my darling,

Let us step that jig again,

Why exactly are we lost for good?

What was the nature of...ah, well,

This was one of the silent movies.

I want to know my wreaking hands

Have full possession of the brute

Aggression, gone unspent by day.

Did I really smash the fat old liar's

Spectacles again?

It's not the rollercoaster stab

Which I've never invited. No:

It's about truth in falsehood, checks,

Corroborations, or exactitude,

A veering hope of pardon or vision.

I want, often, a re-run with sub-titles.

Days, a ditty

2008-08-04T03:37:00.001-07:00

It's a natural sort of gambolling, a kind of alchemy,

That while I stretch across the land I urge to thrill the sea,

That when I'm sunk and spring in that I leap aloft to thee,

And am wettened and become dried down, punctual for milkened tea.

Getaway

2008-07-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

I walked alone along the road,

By day, as if I had Sherlock

Tracking my progress (also had

To hide I’d murdered you).

(to be continued)

Saul in Endor

2008-07-22T04:28:00.000-07:00

THE WITCH

What could have brought you here so grown?

What cart conveys you tall?

How did you hem that diadem

Beneath my overhanging hall?

THE KING

Why, my dear, aren’t you used enough to kings?

WITCH
Not ones like this, nor ones I knew before,

When I first started scaping hollows out,

Between the dances, and they got ahead.

What magnet snares a magnate, save a whore?

KING

Small trouble of that kind, dear, nowadays.

ENDOR

Then it is harps and daughters, politics,

The brazen champ, the bachelor crown prince,

A strangler’s order, a Philistine’s march…

SAUL

All these have cantered past my care long since.

HER

This is no tripper’s resort, as you know,

Old pal; you had to slop in soup of gore,

Yours and a hound’s and some stray vassal low,

You deigned to hurl my way. When previously

You’d always hedged, and stayed and put about

You were too sick to pass a pace with me…

And now you come just for the sake of it?

HIM

Believe it.

SHE

You will die before the day.

ME

At night, and here. A votive chunk of clay.

Passport Renewal

2008-06-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

A conscious smile is hard enough to pull

Off, but I did it, sort of pretty well,

For Snappy Snaps, where I once saw a dame

From Atalanta chat God with the Turk.

The screen is grey, the shirt is checked, the bars

Of black marking out rims, squares, teeth

Between the edges of that cheeky smile,

That smiling cheek that forswore dignity,

That looked as if it cared about Darfur

(Or Zimbabwe. More current). Eyes go ho

Ho ho, I am aware of this ridicule,

And I accept it, because I am British,

Microchipped in with civic mockery.

Turns out that doesn’t play out. Service with

A smile, but the citizen must stand

Taut and oppressed, looking just as he feels.

Take two. Cheaper. I see her hesitate,

My Slovenian handmaiden, and then,

She develops a fourfold look that could

Recruit for Zanu-PF. Even, should.

Such Is The Breath

2008-06-07T03:33:00.001-07:00

No one, then, loved America like George –

Not Washington, not Bush, the uber George –

The Royal George, the Bennett-destined King.

She spurned him lengthily; he could not know

That he must renounce her, nor could he plan

For it. He looked with certainty at maps,

A real, if an amorous, kind of love.

“Bring me Lord North.” “Your Majesty.”

“Ah, North. Good, just the chap.

Tell me about this stretch over here,

The colony I see is named Maryland.”

“My liege, of Marilyn I’ll tell you all.”

“Marilyn!?

Wait, North, you mean to say

That all the time I’m miscarried that name?”

“You are incapable of such, Sire. Recall indeed

The English language is your fief, the stress,

Orthography, doctor, dictionary, all.”

“Shut up, North. Don’t you see this matters to me.

I have plans. When we have hanged the troublemakers there

I want a summer-palace high in…Marilyn.

The Queen mentioned it quite the other night.

The climate’s good, the people sturdy folk,

Protestant, and unplagued by dicing-dives,

Which pleases me; I’ll curb the Princes’ debts.”

“The plan is feasible, certes, my liege.”

***

A King has Sport, and Rights, and Breath,

And optimism is a fitting train.

I’ll bite a warning into my cheek’s side,

But still when morning smudges indistinct,

I’ll frame your daughters’ lineaments;

Solve their quarrels, sort their rooms.

Downy Sent Down

2008-06-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

Ten bairns headed to Buckinghamshire,

The watery jaundice and swart nebulae,

With Mummy, now used to her parenting role

Being wielded by men in a truck –

She barely extends chiding wings any more.

One maid high up at the Raven Hotel

Climbing the Balliol Jowett-reared eaves,

Victorian Gothic, Edwardian pleasure,

Where Mummy could never have guided her,

Never so well as a battel-free beak.

Another slip last thought of the strange affront,

The loud, black-fletched boy, like a boisterous brother,

Swelled by Mummy’s intemperate spoiling,

Deprived of feathers and gorged on power,

The scent of the cooing snatch echoing around her.

Mummy screeched her off, did her bit by the rest,

Especially those seven hardy drake sons,

She can feel quite proud as she stretches her neck

Back to non-intervention, and pecks at a butt

She managed to ply from the gardeners’ woe.

The girls may come back with broods of their own –

If they’re up to it – judging by 8 and 11…

In any case, the lads will get strong, greenheaded,

Grow up to be drakely, and plump, and perhaps

Like Daddy, or Uncle, will help Balliol’s rowing.

Explanation of my college room's relative bareness

2008-06-07T01:57:00.000-07:00

People express surprise upon

The starkness of my shelves.

I’ll pin it down between ourselves:

I am famous for reading

And I cannot.

Sure, pragmata also there,

I don’t care much for lugging things.

If it were only the teeth-grinding,

The arched cat-maundered shoulders – but

The blaming also, the incompetence,

The damage. No, no carrier I.

But this too is misleading. What I want

Or wanted, lay at first in carrying,

In hitting, running. The black reading-lamp

Was step two, the caste-marker,

Could not be shaken off.

I never treasured them, the blocks,

Never relished their smell. They were

A substance to block out non-time,

A sharp, negative means.

Why should I fill the chasms

With the cowls that kept me down and in,

In for the count, but quarantined?

From the Fairy Castle: The Artist's Tales

2008-06-02T02:24:00.000-07:00

He was a tall sort of a man

A weathered one, a frayed, and wild,

And measured, but a hearty fastbreaker.

His name I knew. But why had I

Expected the dissembling colour here?

What do you do, you principles,

You moral mariners, when having met

Belial, you find all you ever sought?

What if you swoon before the black K’aaba

And wake in a Palladian garden?

A grey sort of a man, he was

To look at, dark red as you heard

His voice, slow, keeping back the best,

His laugh, disdaining worse.

Cold eyes with warm attention – if

A carnivore, one of our blood,

With fur and cubs and eddying temperature.

He etched, his wife related, their girl hid,

Not his stories, but those about him, wrothe,

Familiars, warnings, dark-quilt bedroom slippers.