I
Far from the madrigal snout
of a Jacobean springtime,
the Duchess of Newcastle hums
a Homo natus de muliere.
She stifles ignorance in her bed,
dreaming a style that changes and shines,
and always in her favor.
Some know-it-all
craves a word or two alone,
with hinted excavations of her parents
and her parents’ time,
is rising even now, unbidden, on the stairs
with a proposal for the tidying of her ruins.
II
Lie back and dream.
III
Of cows disputing Poussin against Rubens
or other painters whose lesser works
they find themselves in, mooing a pasture
cut smooth enough for boules.
The walking tour
concludes with a jog through the jeering streets,
a clubfoot stumble onto tea-room shag,
the clink and clatter of sudden cures for false fevers.
Passion brides the welcoming estate,
the garlands on the gateposts done up
proper and still, the cakes and punch
exhaling sweetness over the servings
loafed on glittering platters,
fish formed into half-moons,
rabbits flayed and made bovine in shells of mint jelly.
Frisk the out-of-doors tabletop with snow,
noose the servant girls with wintry scarves
and call it early Christmas.
IV
The cat’s cradle ricochet of Newcastle’s dream
has room for everything!
A blanket toss, a hornpipe reeling round
the kiln’s red wedge, the public scissoring
of a forger’s tear-bunged nostrils,
the slicing off of a flirty lock to stem the tide
of suitors.
In the paddock edged with dizzy stars
of blue thistle and green ash,
the ewe totters in its clotted coat.
V
A clock thrust sounds starvation’s hour,
the call of God’s good work
adds bounce to the outgoing galleon,
balanced on a shining wave and captured in a woodcut.
The rapiers of warring families are scabbarded
and hung in decorative arch,
torchlight animate upon the yellowed tusks
of boars brought down in plumper days,
sleeves and scabbards then a job of winks and mirth,
as cousin sank to rest in kissing cousin.
VI
Newcastle lifts her hands
to form a director’s frame,
measuring the approach of icebergs
like battlements on the move,
ungripped from the age-old, world-
worried sheet, quarter-mile shavings
slipping into icy blue, vanishing
beneath the mist and roar,
white and blazing castles
of cast-up foam.