(in memoriam Charles Causley, 1917-2003)
How the landscape sags and settles,
flat as lager going stale,
said the pimp with the chestful of medals
from his bed of mica and shale.
Looks to me like it’s bolt out of Lisbon,
provided we’re both facing east,
said siphoning Joan from her silicone throne,
taking hold of her periscope beast.
With a jerk and a bone-rattling rattle,
the duo hemmed and paced,
off cross the moor, both as alone
as a shrouded soul misplaced.
May I pilgrim here beside you?
asked a compass-clocking third.
I’ve a flask of rum and shall offer you some
on the soul-bearing wings of a bird.
The mist with its fissures and frolics
ineluctably gathered them in.
They thought they heard cries and whispers
and a flute, fluteing ragged and thin.
At first only rumors and hearsay,
backed up with a punch in the gut.
Then a first-hand account that kept going around
like a wheel at home in a rut.
The sky went effing Nubian
with a suddenness that shocked
a nest of napping starlings
into pre-flight, primed and cocked.
Foxtails whipped down foxholes
like geysers in reverse
and the spread-eagle girls with their counterfeit pearls
shook the witchcraft in their purse.
The once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm
ran pounding down the moor,
gobbling temples and towers and aqueducts
and making room for more.
Shall we run for our lives? asked the pilgrim.
I’m a mouse, not a man, said Joan.
It’d be wise to abscond while there’s time to respond
but the storm beat down like stone.
Bedeviled and bedrizzled
by the knicker-drenching rain,
they huddled in their misery
and shuddered in their pain.
Here was blackbird with its wing torn off,
here was lambkin, broken-backed,
pimp and gal and tagalong pal
and bones going crickity-crack.
It looked like a scene from The Tempest,
or the one where the husband goes wild,
with just a touch of the old king’s test
as to which is his lovingest child.
How best to get from here to there
and then back again to here?
For a royalist hare and a commonwealth bear
and a Father’s Day gift for Lear?
A wraith dropped down from the stormcloud
and circled low as plague.
Its intended design writ large and loud,
its angle of entry vague.
No peace in those tongues of English fire,
the flightless peculiarly English dove.
The three had expired, beyond all desire,
in a morris dance led by a wraith called Love.