Alchemisland

Third day of Mucré, our King is in the forest

A busy time to be a florist

The mews and awnings like old prose florid

To allergy sufferers abhorrent, torture ironical

To the botanist, a much needed shot in the arm

After a Winter boxed in, the gelidness like old sin

Lingering long past its remit

Frost scattered on the path during Summer’s zenith

Ten years ago one would not have dreamed it

Every year the fluxsome seasons are changing

And different seeds grow, different arrangements

Of painted flowers to please owlish angels in whose names

The churches, schools, the shacks of fools, the hospitals are created

The names of those blest, Abou Ben Adhem

I watch a flower arranger settling her hems into place

Which to her knees were raised as she hung a conveyance

Every space for growth blazes with shameless shades

Of joy-conveying growths displaying themselves

Baneful after a painful, boring Winter

Spent with tedious Hades locked up in Tartarus, interned

Dill grows at the foot of her idol

In her hedges, dog rose rising like the Nile

At Sirius’ heliacal rising, an ocean horizon from Thebes to Heliopolis.

---

First a faint voice, drawing no alarum

Defrayed by the void, obscured from origins

Wolves baying but faraway cannot wreak harm

Make way make way

His arms waving

My men take arms

I calm them with a hand

Likely some mad farmer

And another mad farmer

Encroaching on his land

Down my men stand

Glad of rest, powering down

Glowering down from the walls of the town of towers

Betwixt dog and wolf hours, His retinue in goldshower

Like a cloud devouring upon descending are not this hour’s flowering.

---

He reaches the entryway, sweating and wretching

Wonder has he some infection quarantine warranting

Here I am Lord Declarant and shall be your querent

I would ask your name if it weren’t a falsehood’s birth 

Sers, he huffs, holding a wall to avoid falling in the dirt

Spent utterly and physically inert

When he falls, I fight an urge to stay him

Lest my dirge be heard in that avoided church.

I stand over him birch tall

Asking what name were you born under?

He shouts that highting’s of no import

Listen I implore you!

Reaching into the armhole of his lovely quilted doublet

Produces a scroll rolled up, thereon ink abundant

Written hurriedly from its muddy composition

At the message’s foot and lip

Filth where its scripting hand gripped and lifted

That soft, looping signature of the king’s officer Odacer

Unmistakably signing off

So much said in a single line

You can say ‘future’s off’ but how concisely

Can such a thing be said nicely

Perhaps tonally, apter being blunt and icy

Half for show, I unfurl from my sleeve a kerchief of comical capacity

Showing a clown’s sagacity at the moment of reverence

I am a born bastard, they already think me dastardly

I wipe forced tears from my cheeks, rubbing dried rivers off maps

I straighten the lap of my strides which have buckled pridelessly

As I knelt to have the herald surmise the bill’s veracity

Indeed, with much ferocity my chin zoomed to his brow

And looking down, seeing his fear, I counted it true.

---

The King, thought fair and ferocious, armed with ferrous quotients

Is beyond the authority of potions and unguents

You must gather an audience from among you

And spread this news like fire through dry gorse

I see that is taken away, given somewhere nice to bathe

He will be paid handsomely, having task performed manfully

Thankfully, these smallfolk are not a rebellious rabble

They have no loyalty to title or family

They would have full plates, and avoid battles

Whichever primate provides an epoch thus

His name remains alive when his bones turn to dust

I trust my dispatch of this news will hardly blunt humor

They pay lip service but hearts kneel to Rimmon, only human.

---

I am given recourse to read the report a third time and fourth

Repetition and articulation the greatest memorious forces

My eyes drifting across the page like a sage’s rapture

No expression could capture my expression after

Shocked as an actor at the heartsnapping moment in a tragedy

Most loving of three daughters born to Lear will not speak

It is of that magnitude in calamity, in vanity delaying dispatch

And delivery of that news.

---

Gather the slaves

The slathering parade

I am much dismayed

Fraying news to convey

But this day, fey

The King is dead

Whilst boar hunting

He was gored violently

His ripped gorget

King blood bore forth

Indeed a sight full sore

Your King armed with spear and sword

Without fear as befits a lord

Went forward toward the boar

The hog taking advantage

Slipped his lance, flanking

The King turned, advancing

But it was too late alas

The boar bore down

Terrible horns drowning

In royal blood, astounding

Extent and ruin of his wounds

Your King in some deep womb

Found strength still to wound back

Plunged his spear into its back

The animal thence made panic

Doing rounds of the glade manically

Until it slowed, as if manacled

Then fell prone, lain low, vanquished

Your King wished to repay your years of fealty in your positions

Though you will never be risen sorts – your ambition is forbidden –

He has willed you each a pittance, to spend as you will

Admittance to His coffers commences at the burial of his coffin

I expect to see you all then soon in my office

Having finished the docket I’m reading from

I recline my head and leave, feeling headstrong

As if that phrase was a complement to my poise

A great noisome din arose, to my sensitive ear like Uncle’s poison

Blood still on my sleeves, colour of a Castilian rose.