Mordeo mordentem.
I
Given you’ve long forgotten me
amid brown boats and spring sunshine
it is now time I – properly –
(Let me take a swig of French wine
Or a draught of Brakspear beer:
What reason remains to adhere
To the habits of a lifetime?)
begin to spit out the butt-ends
you left rammed in my rabid teeth.
May you read this among your friends
while my helpless wrath descends.
Thus, this May-Day gift I bequeath.
Now, here is what I want you
to do.
Now, go and curl beneath Kermit.
A childlike, one-wild-night hermit.
A model of self-preservation.
(Let me eschew each last reservation:
I do not write for your delectation).
Prepare a mug of Lady Grey.
Such a Lady deserves no less,
After all. Let the steam shimmer
and swirl, and lurch beneath your light:
despite all your hats in the way
the phantasmagoria may
provide occasion to impress
(Though Humbert’s ghost grows ever dimmer,
Though Humbert’s ghost will growl, grimmer)
upon you what dies in the night.
Respite, I thought, would come
behind brittle barren bushes.
On occasion, a chagrined cheek
might betray, my hypocrite lecteur
that you had not perhaps become
ever more distant, week by week
(This is, I know, mere conjecture)
to what whines while the river rushes,
to what you left in the bulrushes.
But never mind that: I well know
that I prevaricate
far too much, and deliberate
and equivocate
like Hamlet. That you made clear long ago.
And I also well know
that I am boorish, uncultivated.
Dancing penguins delight not me;
I speak in coarse innuendo
like a lout, inebriated.
I am bemused by botany.
And how I am inadequate!
Monochrome, monotone sequel.
Merely the smoke without the fire,
a week-old, weak-willed cheap thrill.
II
Well then, my pride-pulled, strong-willed dear
a churlish gust just blew in here,
it cleared this musty maudlin air
shattering your sultry snare.
I said I should write a sonnet.
III
May you get married in Cologne
to the drone of Buxtehude
while your grim groom looks the brooder
and I, Narcissus, dine alone.
May you through spring’s kiss see regrown
dead lilacs, dry brooks the nuder,
murmur that he looks the cruder,
and see your figure with a groan.
Then wonder where the poet walks.
(I, Narcissus, still dine alone)
Wonder if he recalls your eye
when he walks between blurring stalks
and you, lovelorn, do wander by
under the spreading chestnut tree
where I loved you and you sold me.
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.
Jack
jacknmoran 