(in memoriam Peter Levi, 1931-2000)
Tamar is crackling scarlet faced with lighter rose,
complected blend of crème and cerises. Her appetite
has furred its belly across the marble floor,
slunk low from morning’s girlish dizzy heights. Around
her throne the wolves show fang and bib,
blink her to paralysis in their golden eyes,
salting her tender, bridal red with promises of
abundant roe. A day-moon fills the oval window
with light as jittery as turtledoves, the head-
over-heels of the eloping fleet, crested with
the question mark of the green and royal
plume. She is weary of alms-giving, weary
of the wolves, the velvet jailers offering invisible
pearls washed up by the flood of humpbacks,
wintering on. The infidel ambassadors address a spot
upon her tuffy collar, thirsty in her crimson
silence, foaming in the tangle of their challenges,
defiant, sorrow-mouthed, this exotic moue of distress.