Velvet for your temples.
Raven-cap. And at your throat, a pendant,
turned from linnet-heart, half-ribbed,
to hop against your Adam’s apple whilst you
hum demented pilgrims back to life.
She goes up each day to the tip of the tower and looks out
for Truth—ham-fisted intruder that he is, copper-buttoned,
careening through scratchy cornfields, slowing
at violet patches of heather, bee-sprung
and violent. He would shun her at first, shear her
to her underwear, that was clear. She had to make a
mental dance not to mind—not to quease at—
his undoubted clumsiness, upturning her routine,
maladroit for a season. Autumn is best—moist decay
twisting through brakes, summer tweeting its guts out.
Hildebilde, come hither, she calls her man-maid:
look, see, the horizon’s a prim rose drawing us in
to an adult colouring challenge. Amalgamate
to speculate. Seven varieties of untruth dwell in the castle,
subfunctional. The untruth dwells in hands, chins, cloaks,
misty cupboards, and on the breakfast bar. How is it
that the King, for all his corpulent confidence, cannot
curtail it and daily offers his daughter’s feigning hand
to good upright men, but few come, and when they do,
they turn ungood, subvert into their worst-version selves,
flannelled over in grey, with monkey motifs, clean
out of linen and riddling words. Manflux. Individuaries.
The Queen has the get-going-grey of a graceful elder whose
earnest purpose is to please, to turn the mirror otherwise
and away, casting her beholders in various grave but
gilding lights. Images lovely and undone. The hoolie hall
holds hallelujahs and woolly tunes for melodising
in the evening, when curtains are pulled, and rugs adjusted
to be safe from sparks. Who’ll do for you,
one of the soft men intones. The smells are trickery
twice round the block and into your nose with a
whisper and half a quart of cologne, piquant.
Back for a time and sunning itself in the old garden
like a pregnant baby blackbird, the grass hot and sappy,
Truth is touched. Only thee and me untouched!—
the Queen murmurs to a newcomer, lately come,
come long since. Her voice turns to a whisper:
Though I cannot completely vouch for thee...
i.
So Mother Abbess delays a few days in the selva,
adventures alongside the laity
in toucan-touched rainforests, tickled
by tigerlight striping her habit. She turns frissonista
at the thought of real terrorists laired up with jaguars
and monkeys; brushes breasts against copaiba,
pretty malva, thick-set cedar. Steers the tour-guide
past poisonous pencil snakes, then strikes out
for her own territory, the desert, and the slick
monastic show she runs on the skirts
of a shanty-town, at the edge
of a tip, rubbing shoulders with rubbish.
Presents her travelling companion—
ii.
the father. Clicked into guest-quarters,
he’s corn-fed and watered by pale nuns who
come and go with purple chicha, iced lemon,
and a yard broom to keep the steps clear
of sand; their eyes dart low, bright blue. He thirsts
for his arum lily, his daughter
transplanted, imagines her
growing twisted, amongst similar.
He asks questions, raises eyebrows
in Spanish, flicks copper roaches
from pillows. Ticks off gold mornings
throbbing with scarlet-tongued flowers. Activities
are arranged: the beach; Museum of the Sea. He glimpses her
three times a day through the grille.
iii.
The daughter, inside the enclosure, dreams
of peacocks and snow. Rises earlier, collides
with a junta of nuns who, as if playing chess, devise
urgent sweeping, singing, and scaling of fish;
keep her busy. No visits. His ticket expires.
Ceremonial farewells: they hug;
she smuggles a shell to her mother
(give nothing
