(in memoriam Francis Berry, 1915-2006)
Warn the plump complacent bird,
warming itself between worm and
cloudburst; caution the posse of mice
to turn back now, to live and magnify
a skirmish into glory,
a backwoods raid revised to read
imperial tremor, a campaign
to launch an epic on.
From small and mocking hurts
spring sometimes mighty malice.
A rancid little emperor whose
shriveled paw, burnoose, and sjambok
bred insult, scorn, and titters.
The emperor regards himself in a
dripping mirror, rebukes the sun
for its too familiar manner.
His voice is high-pitched, his
body armored, pearl in black jelly.
He admits his dreams are vile.
This, he has learned, is how
the prayer must begin,
six words to oil his passage
into dry judgment, an orison’s
abbreviate throat-clearing, by which
to worm it in, and with a little
patience, slip out again, no
longer volatile or suspect. But why
the pause, thus lubricated and resigned?
Why now this teardrop
of quaintest self-respect?
That he has abased himself
in the slums of his own mind
is no comfort, is no precedent.
Temperament may well explain
these things, elucidate the oracle’s
rudest riddle. It is the iron
in the metaphor where he sees
contrivance, finding tin more hopeful,
or, generous as victor-by-default,
the oxlike ore of lead.
Stag and trident in the banquet halls,
fasces and quiver on the steps
curving down from the corpse-white church.
The Virgin Mary walks in his garden,
the stars in Her loosened hair
like snow blown in the eyes
of the hastening blue-eyed berserkers.
The Almanac speaks of Her as it
strays to surround each Viking word,
violet snood to mask the geldings.
Her face is porcelain and white
as milk, his garden given over
to squatting believers, ringing raingreen
birds and lunging lilywhite lambs.
Sororal darkness halves the southern sea,
the witless hard-on is crowned
at every turn of the careless moon.
A grinning crocodile churns up
a cloud of blood. Turnstile of straw
and bone and beyond,
a sunken amphitheater promising Room
for Flagellants and Curse-Bearers.
A set piece for a snipped choir.
He would lie beside Her, humble himself
for the suffocating cushion of silken peace.
Ink broods in its cylinder,
cries to be spent and doesn’t care how –
valley, summit, desert without end,
an ant-swarm of words
to describe the impossible sorrow.