The HyperTexts

Bob Zisk: Unleashed

This is a recurring column in which Bob Zisk publishes poems by poets who appeal to him, and will no doubt appeal to many readers as well, along with poems of his own creation.



September 2026:

For this installment I am posting five English Country House poems and two short, contrasting pieces. All the Country House poems, perhaps with the exception of The Description of Cookham, are well known. All follow a pattern of praising the beauty of the owner's estate and extolling the tranquillity and leisure afforded by the lord's harmonious care of his lands. All, but especially the Jonson and Marvell poems, draw phrasing and imagery from the poets of ancient Rome. Indeed the Romans have left us a word which captures the humane sort of enjoyment found in the celebrated country houses of great men. That word is otium, and the English leisure scarcely scratches the surface of the Latin word.

The poems are:

The Description of Cookham by Aemilia Lanyer

To Penshurst by Ben Jonson

To Saxham by Thomas Carew

Upon Appleton House by Andrew Marvell

Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough by Andrew Marvell

Remembering SC-1-B-1 Buried in the Potters'  Field on Hart's Island by Bob Zisk

Angel of God, My Guardian Dear: A Fairy Tale by Bob Zisk



The Description Of Cooke-ham
By Aemilia Lanyer

Farewell (sweet Cooke-ham) where I first obtain'd
Grace from that Grace where perfit Grace remain'd;
And where the Muses gaue their full consent,
I should haue powre the virtuous to content:
Where princely Palace will'd me to indite,
The sacred Storie of the Soules delight,
Farewell (sweet Place) where Virtue then did rest,
And all delights did harbour in her breast:
Never shall my sad eies againe behold
Those pleasures which my thoughts did then vnfold:
Yet you (great Lady) Mistris of that Place,
From whose desires did spring this worke of Grace;
Vouchsafe to think vpon those pleasures past
As fleeting worldly Ioyes that could not last:
Or, as dimme shadowes of celestiall pleasures,
Which are desir'd aboue all earthly treasures.
Oh how (me thought) against you thither came,
Each part did seeme some new delight to frame!
The House receiu'd all ornaments to grace it,
And would indure no foulenesse to deface it.
The Walkes put on their summer Liueries,
And all things else did hold like similies:
The Trees with leaues, with fruits, with flowers clad,
Embrac'd each other, seeming to be glad,
Turning themselues to beauteous Canopies,
To shade the bright Sunne from your brighter eies:
The cristall Streames with siluer spangles graced,

While by the glorious Sunne they were embraced:
The little Birds in chirping notes did sing,
To entertaine both You and that sweet Spring.
And Philomela with her sundry layes,
Both You and that delightfull Place did praise.
Oh how me thought each plant, each floure, each tree
Set forth their beauties then to welcome thee!
The very Hills right humbly did descend,
When you to tread vpon them did intend,
And as you set your feete, they still did rise,
Glad that they could receiue so rich a prise.
The gentle Windes did take delight to bee
Among those woods that were so grac'd by thee.
And in sad murmure vtterd pleasing sound,
That Pleasure in that place might more abound:
The swelling Bankes deliuer'd all their pride,
When such a Phoenix once they had espide.
Each Arbor, Banke, each Seate, each stately Tree,
Thought themselues honor'd in supporting thee.
The pretty Birds would oft come to attend thee,
Yet flie away for feare they should offend thee:
The little creatures in the Burrough by
Would come abraod to sport them in your eye;
Yet fearefull of the Bowe in your faire Hand
Would runne away when you did make a stand.
Now let me come vnto that stately Tree,
Wherein such goodly Prospects you did see;
That Oake that did in height his fellowes passe,
As much as lofty trees, low growing grasse:
Much like a comely Cedar streight and tall,
Whose beauteous stature farre exceeded all:
How often did you visite this faire tree,
Which seeming joyfull in receiuing thee,
Would like a Palme tree spread his armes abroad,

Desirous that you there should make abode:
Whose faire greene leaues much like a comely vaile,
Defended Phebus when he would assaile:
Whose pleasing boughes did yeeld a coole fresh ayre,
Ioying his happinesse when you were there.
Where beeing seated, you might plainely see,
Hills, vales, and woods, as if on bended knee
They had appeard, your honour to salute,
Or to preferre some strange vnlook'd for sute:
All interlac'd with brookes and christall springs,
A Prospect fit to please the eyes of Kings:
And thirteene shires appear'd all in your sight,
Europe could not affoard much more delight.
What was there then but gaue you all content,
While you the time in meditation spent,
Of their Creators powre, which there you saw,
In all his Creatures held a perfit Law;
And in their beauties did you plaine descrie,
His beauty, wisdome, grace, loue, maiestie.
In these sweet woods how often did you walke,
With Christ and his Apostles there to talke;
Placing his holy Writ in some faire tree,
To meditate what you therein did see:
With Moyses you did mount his holy Hill,
To know his pleasure, and performe his Will.
With louely Dauid did you often sing,
His holy Hymnes to Heauens Eternall King.
And in sweet musicke did your soule delight,
To sound his prayses, morning, noone, and night.
With blessed Ioseph you did often feed
Your pined brethren, when they stood in need.
And that sweet Lady sprung from Cliffords race,
Of noble Bedfords blood, faire steame [sic] of Grace;
To honourable Dorset now espows'd,

In whose faire breast true virtue then was hous'd:
Oh what delight did my weake spirits find,
In those pure parts of her well framed mind:
And yet it grieues me that I cannot be
Neere vnto her, whose virtues did agree
With those faire ornaments of outward beauty,
Which did enforce from all both loue and dutie.
Vnconstant Fortune, thou art most too blame,
Who casts vs downe into so lowe a frame:
Where our great friends wee cannot dayly see,
So great a diffrence is there in degree.
Many are placed in those Orbes of state,
Parters in honour, so ordain'd by Fate;
Neerer in show, yet farther off in loue,
In which, the lowest alwayes are aboue.
But whither am I carried in conceit?
My Wit too weake to conster of the great.
Why not? although we are but borne of earth,
We may behold the Heauens, despising death;
And louing heauen that is so farre aboue,
May in the end vouchsafe vs entire loue.
Therefore sweet Memorie doe thou retaine
Those pleasures past, which will not turne againe:
Remember beauteous Dorsets former sports,
So farre from beeing toucht by ill reports;
Wherein my selfe did alwaies beare a part,
While reuerend Loue presented my true heart:
Those recreations let me beare in mind,
Which her sweet youth and noble thoughts did finde:
Whereof depriu'd, I euermore must grieue,
Hating blind Fortune, carelesse to relieue.
And you sweet Cooke-ham, whom these Ladies leaue,
I now must tell the griefe you did conceaue
At their departure; when they went away,

How euery thing retaind a sad dismay:
Nay long before, when once an inkeling came,
Me thought each thing did vnto sorrow frame:
The trees that were so glorious in our view,
Forsooke both flowres and fruit, when once they knew,
Of your depart, their very leaues did wither,
Changing their colours as they grewe together.
But when they saw this had no powre to stay you,
They often wept, though speechlesse, could not pray you;
Letting their teares in your faire bosoms fall,
As if they said, Why will ye leaue vs all?
This beeing vaine, they cast their leaues away,
Hoping that pitie would haue made you stay:
Their frozen tops, like Ages hoarie haires,
Showes their disaster, languishing in feares:
A swarthy riueld ryne all ouer spread,
Their dying bodies half aliue, halfe dead.
But your occasions call'd you so away,
That nothing there had power to make you stay:
Yet did I see a noble gratefull minde,
Requiting each according to their kind,
Forgetting not to turne and take your leaue
Of these sad creatures, powrelesse to receiue
Your fauour, when with griefe you did depart,
Placing their former pleasures in your heart;
Giuing great charge to noble Memory,
There to preserue their loue continually:
But specially the loue of that faire tree,
That first and last you did vouchsafe to see:
In which it pleas'd you oft to take the ayre,
With noble Dorset, then a virgin faire:
Where many a learned Booke was read and skand
To this faire tree, taking me by the hand,
You did repeat the pleasures which had past,

Seeming to grieue they could no longer last.
And with a chaste, yet louing kisse tooke leaue,
Of which sweet kisse I did it soone bereaue:
Scorning a sencelesse creature should possesse
So rare a fauour, so great happinesse.
No other kisse it could receiue from me,
For feare to giue backe what it tooke of thee:
So I ingratefull Creature did deceiue it,
Of that which you vouchsaft in loue to leaue it.
And though it oft had giu'n me much content,
Yet this great wrong I neuer could repent:
But of the happiest made it most forlorne,
To shew that nothing's free from Fortunes scorne,
While all the rest with this most beauteous tree,
Made their sad consort Sorrowes harmony.
The Floures that on the banks and walkes did grow,
Crept in the ground, the Grasse did weepe for woe.
The Windes and Waters seem'd to chide together,
Because you went away they knew not whither:
And those sweet Brookes that ranne so faire and cleare,
With griefe and trouble wrinckled did appeare.
Those preety Birds that wonted were to sing,
Now neither sing, nor chirp, nor vse their wing;
But with their tender feet on some bare spray,
Warble forth sorrow, and their owne dismay.
Faire Philomela leaues her mournefull Ditty,
Drownd in dead sleepe, yet can procure no pittie:
Each arbour, banke, each seate, each stately tree,
Lookes bare and desolate now for want of thee;
Turning greene tresses into frostie gray,
While in cold griefe they wither all away.
The Sunne grew weake, his beames no comfort gaue,
While all greene things did make the earth their graue:
Each brier, each bramble, when you went away,

Caught fast your clothes, thinking to make you stay:
Delightfull Eccho wonted to reply
To our last words, did now for sorrow die:
The house cast off each garment that might grace it,
Putting on Dust and Cobwebs to deface it.
All desolation then there did appeare,
When you were going whom they held so deare.
This last farewell to Cooke-ham here I giue,
When I am dead thy name in this may liue
Wherein I haue perform'd her noble hest,
Whose virtues lodge in my vnworthy breast,
And euer shall, so long as life remaines,
Tying my heart to her by those rich chaines.
FINIS

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To Penshurst
By Ben Jonson

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,
Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;
Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told,
Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile,
And, these grudged at, art reverenced the while.
Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air,
Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport;
Thy mount, to which the dryads do resort,
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made,
Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade;
That taller tree, which of a nut was set
At his great birth where all the Muses met.
There in the writhèd bark are cut the names
Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames;
And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke
The lighter fauns to reach thy Lady’s Oak.
Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,
That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer
When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends.
The lower land, that to the river bends,
Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed.
Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops,
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney’s copse,
To crown thy open table, doth provide
The purpled pheasant with the speckled side;
The painted partridge lies in every field,
And for thy mess is willing to be killed.
And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish,
Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish,
Fat aged carps that run into thy net,
And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,
As loath the second draught or cast to stay,
Officiously at first themselves betray;
Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land
Before the fisher, or into his hand.
Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry, with the later plum,
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;
There’s none that dwell about them wish them down;
But all come in, the farmer and the clown,
And no one empty-handed, to salute
Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.
Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,
Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make
The better cheeses bring them, or else send
By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend
This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear
An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.
But what can this (more than express their love)
Add to thy free provisions, far above
The need of such? whose liberal board doth flow
With all that hospitality doth know;
Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat,
Without his fear, and of thy lord’s own meat;
Where the same beer and bread, and selfsame wine,
This is his lordship’s shall be also mine,
And I not fain to sit (as some this day
At great men’s tables), and yet dine away.
Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by,
A waiter doth my gluttony envy,
But gives me what I call, and lets me eat;
He knows below he shall find plenty of meat.
The tables hoard not up for the next day;
Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray
For fire, or lights, or livery; all is there,
As if thou then wert mine, or I reigned here:
There’s nothing I can wish, for which I stay.
That found King James when, hunting late this way
With his brave son, the prince, they saw thy fires
Shine bright on every hearth, as the desires
Of thy Penates had been set on flame
To entertain them; or the country came
With all their zeal to warm their welcome here.
What (great I will not say, but) sudden cheer
Didst thou then make ’em! and what praise was heaped
On thy good lady then, who therein reaped
The just reward of her high housewifery;
To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh,
When she was far; and not a room but dressed
As if it had expected such a guest!
These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all.
Thy lady’s noble, fruitful, chaste withal.
His children thy great lord may call his own,
A fortune in this age but rarely known.
They are, and have been, taught religion; thence
Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence.
Each morn and even they are taught to pray,
With the whole household, and may, every day,
Read in their virtuous parents’ noble parts
The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts.
Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see
Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.



To Saxham
By Thomas Carew

Though frost and snow lock'd from mine eyes
That beauty which without door lies,
Thy gardens, orchards, walks, that so
I might not all thy pleasures know,
Yet, thou within thy gate
Art of thyself so delicate,
So full of native sweets, that bless
Thy roof with inward happiness,
As neither from nor to thy store
Winter takes aught, or spring adds more.
The cold and frozen air had starv'd    
Much poor, if not by thee preserv'd,
Whose prayers have made thy table blest
With plenty, far above the rest.
The season hardly did afford
Coarse cates unto thy neighbors' board,    
Yet thou hadst dainties, as the sky
Had only been thy volary;      
Or else the birds, fearing the snow
Might to another Deluge grow,
The pheasant, partridge, and the lark
Flew to thy house, as to the Ark.
The willing ox of himself came
Home to the slaughter, with the lamb,
And every beast did thither bring
Himself, to be an offering.
The scaly herd more pleasure took,
Bath'd in thy dish, than in the brook;
Water, earth, air, did all conspire
To pay their tributes to thy fire,
Whose cherishing flames themselves divide
Through every room, where they deride
The night, and cold aboard; whilst they,
Like suns within, keep endless day.
Those cheerful beams send forth their light
To all that wander in the night,
And seem to beckon from aloof      
The weary pilgrim to thy roof,
Where if, refresh'd, he will away,
He's faily welcome; or if stay,
Far more; which he shall hearty find
Both from the master and the hind.      
The stranger's welcome each man there
Stamp'd on his cheerful brow doth wear,
Nor doth this welcome or his cheer
Grow less 'cause he stays longer here;
There's none observes, much less repines,    
How often this man sups or dines.
Thou hast no porter at the door
T'examine or keep back the poor;
Nor locks nor bolts: thy gates have been
Made only to let strangers in;
Untaught to shut, they do not fear
To stand wide open all the year,
Careless who enters, for they know
Thou never didst deserve a foe;
And as for thieves, thy bounty's such,
They cannot steal, thou giv'st so much.



Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax
By Andrew Marvell

I.
Within this sober Frame expect
Work of no Forrain Architect;
That unto Caves the Quarries drew,
And Forrests did to Pastures hew;
Who of his great Design in pain
Did for a Model vault his Brain,
Whose Columnes should so high be rais'd
To arch the Brows that on them gaz'd.

II.
Why should of all things Man unrul'd
Such unproportion'd dwellings build?
The Beasts are by their Denns exprest:
And Birds contrive an equal Nest;
The low roof'd Tortoises do dwell
In cases fit of Tortoise-shell:
No Creature loves an empty space;
Their Bodies measure out their Place.

III.
But He, superfluously spread,
Demands more room alive then dead.
And in his hollow Palace goes
Where Winds as he themselves may lose.
What need of all this Marble Crust
T'impark the wanton Mose of Dust,
That thinks by Breadth the World t'unite
Though the first Builders fail'd in Height?

​IV.
But all things are composed here
Like Nature, orderly and near:
In which we the Dimensions find
Of that more sober Age and Mind,
When larger sized Men did stoop
To enter at a narrow loop;
As practising, in doors so strait,
To strain themselves through Heavens Gate.

V.
And surely when the after Age
Shall hither come in Pilgrimage,
These sacred Places to adore,
By Vere and Fairfax trod before,
Men will dispute how their Extent
Within such dwarfish Confines went:
And some will smile at this, as well
As Romulus his Bee-like Cell.

VI.
Humility alone designs
Those short but admirable Lines,
By which, ungirt and unconstrain'd,
Things greater are in less contain'd.
Let others vainly strive t'immure
The Circle in the Quadrature!
These holy Mathematicks can
In ev'ry Figure equal Man.

VII.
Yet thus the laden House does sweat,
And scarce indures the Master great:
But where he comes the swelling Hall
Stirs, and the Square grows Spherical;
​More by his Magnitude distrest,
Then he is by its straitness prest:
And too officiously it slights
That in it self which him delights.

VIII.
So Honour better Lowness bears,
Then That unwonted Greatness wears.
Height with a certain Grace does bend,
But low Things clownishly ascend.
And yet what needs there here Excuse,
Where ev'ry Thing does answer Use?
Where neatness nothing can condemn,
Nor Pride invent what to contemn?

IX.
A Stately Frontispice of Poor
Adorns without the open Door:
Nor less the Rooms within commends.
Daily new Furniture of Friends.
The House was built upon the Place
Only as for a Mark of Grace;
And for an Inn to entertain
Its Lord a while, but not remain.

X.
Him Bishops-Hill, or Denton may,
Or Bilbrough, better hold then they:
But Nature here hath been so free
As if she said leave this to me.
Art would more neatly have defac'd
What she had laid so sweetly wast;
In fragrant Gardens, shaddy Woods,
Deep Meadows, and transparent Floods.

​XI.
While with slow Eyes we these survey,
And on each pleasant footstep stay,
We opportunly may relate
The Progress of this Houses Fate.
A Nunnery first gave it birth.
For Virgin Buildings oft brought forth.
And all that Neighbour-Ruine shows
The Quarries whence this dwelling rose.

XII.
Near to this gloomy Cloysters Gates
There dwelt the blooming Virgin Thwates;
Fair beyond Measure, and an Heir
Which might Deformity make fair.
And oft She spent the Summer Suns
Discoursing with the Suttle Nunns.
Whence in these Words one to her weav'd,
(As 'twere by Chance) Thoughts long conceiv'd.

XIII.
'Within this holy leisure we
'Live innocently as you see.
'These Walls restrain the World without,
'But hedge our Liberty about.
'These Bars inclose that wider Den
'Of those wild Creatures, called Men.
'The Cloyster outward shuts its Gates,
'And, from us, locks on them the Grates.

XIV.
'Here we, in shining Armour white,
'Like Virgin Amazons do fight.
'And our chast Lamps we hourly trim,
'Lest the great Bridegroom find them dim.
​'Our Orient Breaths perfumed are
'With insense of incessant Pray'r.
'And Holy-water of our Tears
'Most strangly our Complexion clears.

XV.
'Not Tears of Grief; but such as those
'With which calm Pleasure overflows;
'Or Pity, when we look on you
'That live without this happy Vow.
'How should we grieve that must be seen
'Each one a Spouse, and each a Queen;
'And can in Heaven hence behold
'Our brighter Robes and Crowns of Gold?

XVI.
'When we have prayed all our Beads,
'Some One the holy Legend reads;
'While all the rest with Needles paint
'The Face and Graces of the Saint.
'But what the Linnen can't receive
'They in their Lives do interweave.
'This Work the Saints best represents;
'That serves for Altar's Ornaments.

XVII.
'But much it to our work would add
'If here your hand, your Face we had:
'By it we would our Lady touch;
'Yet thus She you resembles much.
'Some of your Features, as we sow'd,
'Through ev'ry Shrine should be bestow'd.
'And in one Beauty we would take
'Enough a thousand Saints to make.

​XVIII.
'And (for I dare not quench the Fire
'That me does for your good inspire)
''Twere Sacriledge a Mant t'admit
'To holy things, for Heaven fit.
'I see the Angels in a Crown
'On you the Lillies show'ring down:
'And round about you Glory breaks,
'That something more then humane speaks.

XIX.
'All Beauty, when at such a height,
'Is so already consecrate.
'Fairfax I know; and long ere this
'Have mark'd the Youth, and what he is.
'But can he such a Rival seem
'For whom you Heav'n should disesteem?
'Ah, no! and 'twould more Honour prove
'He your Devoto were, then Love.

XX.
'Here live beloved, and obey'd:
'Each one your Sister, each your Maid.
'And, if our Rule seem strictly pend,
'The Rule it self to you shall bend.
'Our Abbess too, now far in Age,
'Doth your succession near presage.
'How soft the yoke on us would lye,
'Might such fair Hands as yours it tye!

XXI.
'Your voice, the sweetest of the Quire,
'Shall draw Heav'n nearer, raise us higher.
'And your Example, if our Head,
'Will soon us to perfection lead.
​'Those Virtues to us all so dear,
'Will straight grow Sanctity when here:
'And that, once sprung, increase so fast
'Till Miracles it work at last.

XXII.
'Nor is our Order yet so nice,
'Delight to banish as a Vice.
'Here Pleasure Piety doth meet;
'One perfecting the other Sweet.
'So through the mortal fruit we boyl
'The Sugars uncorrupting Oyl:
'And that which perisht while we pull,
'Is thus preserved clear and full.

XXIII.
'For such indeed are all our Arts;
'Still handling Natures finest Parts.
'Flow'rs dress the Altars; for the Clothes,
'The Sea-born Amber we compose;
'Balms for the griv'd we draw; and Pasts
'We mold, as Baits for curious tasts.
'What need is here of Man? unless
'These as sweet Sins we should confess.

XXIV.
'Each Night among us to your side
'Appoint a fresh and Virgin Bride;
'Whom if our Lord at midnight find,
'Yet Neither should be left behind.
'Where you may lye as chast in Bed,
'As Pearls together billeted.
'All Night embracing Arm in Arm,
'Like Chrystal pure with Cotton warm.

​XXV.
'But what is this to all the store
'Of Joys you see, and may make more!
'Try but a while, if you be wise:
'The Tryal neither Costs, nor Tyes.
Now Fairfax seek her promis'd faith:
Religion that dispensed hath;
Which She hence forward does begin;
The Nuns smooth Tongue has suckt her in.

XXVI.
Oft, though he knew it was in vain,
Yet would he valiantly complain.
'Is this that Sanctity so great,
'An Art by which you finly'r cheat?
'Hypocrite Witches, hence avant,
'Who though in prison yet inchant!
'Death only can such Theeves make fast,
'As rob though in the Dungeon cast.

XXVII.
'Were there but, when this House was made,
'One Stone that a just Hand had laid,
'It must have fall'n upon her Head
'Who first Thee from thy Faith misled.
'And yet, how well soever ment,
'With them 'twould soon grow fraudulent:
'For like themselves they alter all,
'And vice infects the very Wall.

XXVIII.
'But sure those Buildings last not long,
'Founded by Folly, kept by Wrong.
'I know what Fruit their Gardens yield,
'When they it think by Night conceal'd.
​'Fly from their Vices. 'Tis thy state,
'Not Thee, that they would consecrate.
'Fly from their Ruine. How I fear
'Though guiltless lest thou perish there.

XXIX.
What should he do? He would respect
Religion, but not Right neglect:
For first Religion taught him Right,
And dazled not but clear'd his sight.
Sometimes resolv'd his Sword he draws,
But reverenceth then the Laws:
For Justice still that Courage led;
First from a Judge, then Souldier bred.

XXX.
Small Honour would be in the Storm.
The Court him grants the lawful Form;
Which licens'd either Peace or Force,
To hinder the unjust Divorce.
Yet still the Nuns his Right debar'd,
Standing upon their holy Guard.
Ill-counsell'd Women, do you know
Whom you resist, or what you do?

XXXI.
Is not this he whose Offspring fierce
Shall fight through all the Universe;
And with successive Valour try
France, Poland, either Germany;
Till one, as long since prophecy'd,
His Horse through conquer'd Britain ride?
Yet, against Fate, his Spouse they kept;
And the great Race would intercept.

​XXXII.
Some to the Breach against their Foes
Their Wooden Saints in vain oppose.
Another bolder stands at push
With their old Holy-Water Brush.
While the disjointed Abbess threads
The gingling Chain-shot of her Beads.
But their lowd'st Cannon were their Lungs;
And sharpest Weapons were their Tongues.

XXXIII.
But, waving these aside like Flyes,
Young Fairfax through the Wall does rise.
Then th' unfrequented Vault appear'd,
And superstitions vainly fear'd.
The Relicks false were set to view;
Only the Jewels there were true.
But truly bright and holy Thwaites
That weeping at the Altar waites.

XXXIV.
But the glad Youth away her bears,
And to the Nuns bequeaths her Tears:
Who guiltily their Prize bemoan,
Like Gipsies that a Child hath stoln.
Thenceforth (as when th' Inchantment ends
The Castle vanishes or rends)
The wasting Cloister with the rest
Was in one instant dispossest.

XXXV.
At the demolishing, this Seat
To Fairfax fell as by Escheat.
And what both Nuns and Founders will'd
'Tis likely better thus fulfill'd.
​For if the Virgin prov'd not theirs,
The Cloyster yet remained hers.
Though many a Nun there made her Vow,
'Twas no Religious House till now.

XXXVI.
From that blest Bed the Heroe came,
Whom France and Poland yet does fame:
Who, when retired here to Peace,
His warlike Studies could not cease;
But laid these Gardens out in sport
In the just Figure of a Fort;
And with five Bastions it did sence,
As aiming one for ev'ry Sense.

XXXVII.
When in the East the Morning Ray
Hangs out the Colours of the Day,
The Bee through these known Allies hums,
Beating the Dian with its Drumms.
Then Flow'rs their drowsie Eylids raise,
Their Silken Ensigns each displayes,
And dries its Pan yet dank with Dew,
And fills its Flask with Odours new.

XXXVIII.
These, as their Governour goes by,
In fragrant Vollyes they let fly;
And to salute their Governess
Again as great a charge they press:
None for the Virgin Nymph; for She
Seems with the Flow'rs a Flow'r to be.
And think so still! though not compare
With Breath so sweet, or Cheek so faire.

​XXXIX.
Well shot ye Firemen! Oh how sweet,
And round your equal Fires do meet;
Whose shrill report no Ear can tell,
But Ecchoes to the Eye and smell.
See how the Flow'rs, as at Parade,
Under their Colours stand displaid:
Each Regiment in order grows,
That of the Tulip Pinke and Rose.

XL.
But when the vigilant Patroul
Of Stars walks round about the Pole,
Their Leaves, that to the stalks are curl'd,
Seem to their Staves the Ensigns furl'd.
Then in some Flow'rs beloved Hut
Each Bee as Sentinel is shut;
And sleeps so too: but, if once stir'd,
She runs you through, or askes the Word.

XLI.
Oh Thou, that dear and happy Isle
The Garden of the World ere while,
Thou Puradise of four Seas,
Which Heaven planted us to please,
But, to exclude the World, did guard
With watry if not flaming Sword;
What luckless Apple did we tast,
To make us Mortal, and The Wast?

XLII.
Unhappy! shall we never more
That sweet Militia restore,
When Gardens only had their Towrs,
And all the Garrisons were Flowrs,
​When Roses only Arms might bear,
And Men did rosie Garlands wear?
Tulips, in several Colours barr'd,
Were then the Switzers of our Guard.

XLIII.
The Gardiner had the Souldiers place,
And his more gentle Forts did trace.
The Nursery of all things green
Was then the only Magazeen.
The Winter Quarters were the Stoves,
Where he the tender Plants removes.
But War all this doth overgrow:
We Ord'nance Plant and Powder sow.

XLIV.
And yet their walks one on the Sod
Who, had it pleased him and God,
Might once have made our Gardens spring
Fresh as his own and flourishing.
But he preferr'd to the Cinque Ports
These five imaginary Forts:
And, in those half-dry Trenches, spann'd
Pow'r which the Ocean might command.

XLV.
For he did, with his utmost Skill,
Ambition weed, but Conscience till.
Conscience, that Heaven-nursed Plant,
Which most our Earthly Gardens want.
A prickling leaf it bears, and such
As that which shrinks at ev'ry touch;
But Flowrs eternal, and divine,
That in the Crowns of Saints do shine.

​XLVI.
The sight does from these Bastions ply,
Th' invisible Artilery;
And at proud Cawood Castle seems
To point the Battery of its Beams.
As if it quarrell'd in the Seat
Th' Ambition of its Prelate great.
But ore the Meads below it plays,
Or innocently seems to gaze.

XLVII.
And now to the Abbyss I pass
Of that unfathomable Grass,
Where Men like Grashoppers appear,
But Grashoppers are Gyants there:
They, in there squeking Laugh, contemn
Us as we walk more low then them:
And, from the Precipices tall
Of the green spir's, to us do call.

XLVIII.
To see Men through this Meadow Dive,
We wonder how they rise alive.
As, under Water, none does know
Whether he fall through it or go.
But, as the Marriners that sound,
And show upon their Lead the Ground,
They bring up Flow'rs so to be seen,
And prove they've at the Bottom been.

XLIX.
No Scene that turns with Engines strange
Does oftner then these Meadows change.
For when the Sun the Grass hath vext,
The tawny Mowers enter next;
​Who seem like Israalites to be,
Walking on foot through a green Sea.
To them the Grassy Deeps divide,
And crowd a Lane to either Side.

L.
With whistling Sithe, and Elbow strong,
These Massacre the Grass along:
While one, unknowing, carves the Rail,
Whose yet unfeather'd Quils her fail.
The Edge all bloody from its Breast
He draws, and does his stroke detest;
Fearing the Flesh untimely mow'd
To him a Fate as black forebode.

LI.
But bloody Thestylis, that waites
To bring the mowing Camp their Cates,
Greedy as Kites has trust it up,
And forthwith means on it to sup:
When on another quick She lights,
And cryes, he call'd us Israelites;
But now, to make his saying true,
Rails rain for Quails, for Manna Dew.

LII.
Unhappy Birds! what does it boot
To build below the Grasses Root;
When Lowness is unsafe as Hight,
And Chance o'retakes what scapeth spight?
And now your Orphan Parents Call
Sounds your untimely Funeral.
Death-Trumpets creak in such a Note,
And 'tis the Sourdine in their Throat.

​LIII.
Or sooner hatch or higher build:
The Mower now commands the Field;
In whose new Traverse seemeth wrought
A Camp of Battail newly fought:
Where, as the Meads with Hay, the Plain
Lyes quilted ore with Bodies slain:
The Women that with forks it fling,
Do represent the Pillaging.

LIV.
And now the careless Victors play,
Dancing the Triumphs of the Hay;
Where every Mowers wholesome Heat
Smells like an Alexanders sweat.
Their Females fragrant as the Mead
Which they in Fairy Circles tread:
When at their Dances End they kiss,
Their new-made Hay not sweeter is.

LV.
When after this 'tis pil'd in Cocks,
Like a calm Sea it shews the Rocks:
We wondring in the River near
How Boats among them safely steer.
Or, like the Desert Memphis Sand,
Short Pyramids of Hay do stand.
And such the Roman Camps do rise
In Hills for Soldiers Obsequies.

LVI.
This Scene again withdrawing brings
A new and empty Face of things;
A levell'd space, as smooth and plain,
As Clothes for Lilly strecht to stain.
​The World when first created sure
Was such a Table rase and pure.
Or rather such is the Toril
Ere the Bulls enter at Madril.

LVII.
For to this naked equal Flat,
Which Levellers take Pattern at,
The Villagers in common chase
Their Cattle, which it closer rase;
And what below the Sith increast
Is pincht yet nearer by the Breast.
Such, in the painted World, appear'd
Davenant with th' Universal Heard.

LVIII.
They seem within the polisht Grass
A Landskip drawen in Looking-Glass.
And shrunk in the huge Pasture show
As Spots, so shap'd, on Faces do.
Such Fleas, ere they approach the Eye,
In Multiplying Glasses lye.
They feed so wide, so slowly move,
As Constellations do above.

LIX.
Then, to conclude these pleasant Acts,
Denton sets ope its Cataracts;
And makes the Meadow truly be
(What it but seem'd before) a Sea.
For, jealous of its Lords long stay,
It try's t'invite him thus away.
The River in it self is drown'd,
And Isl's th' astonish Cattle round.

​LX.
Let others tell the Paradox,
How Eels now bellow in the Ox;
How Horses at their Tails do kick,
Turn'd as they hang to Leeches quick;
How Boats can over Bridges sail;
And Fishes do the Stables scale.
How Salmons trespassing are found;
And Pikes are taken in the Pound.

LXI.
But I, retiring from the Flood,
Take Sanctuary in the Wood;
And, while it lasts, my self imbark
In this yet green, yet growing Ark;
Where the first Carpenter might best
Fit Timber for his Keel have Prest.
And where all Creatures might have shares,
Although in Armies, not in Paires.

LXII.
The double Wood of ancient Stocks
Link'd in so thick, an Union locks,
It like two Pedigrees appears,
On one hand Fairfax, th' other Veres:
Of whom though many fell in War,
Yet more to Heaven shooting are:
And, as they Natures Cradle deckt,
Will in green Age her Hearse expect.

LXIII.
When first the Eye this Forrest sees
It seems indeed as Wood not Trees:
As if their Neighbourhood so old
To one great Trunk them all did mold.
​There the huge Bulk takes place, as ment
To thrust up a Fifth Element;
And stretches still so closely wedg'd
As if the Night within were hedg'd.

LXIV.
Dark all without it knits; within
It opens passable and thin;
And in as loose an order grows,
As the Corinthean Porticoes.
The arching Boughs unite between
The Columnes of the Temple green;
And underneath the winged Quires
Echo about their tuned Fires.

LXV.
The Nightingale does here make choice
To sing the Tryals of her Voice.
Low Shrubs she sits in, and adorns
With Musick high the squatted Thorns.
But highest Oakes stoop down to hear,
And listning Elders prick the Ear.
The Thorn, lest it should hurt her, draws
Within the Skin its shrunken claws.

LXVI.
But I have for my Musick found
A Sadder, yet more pleasing Sound:
The Stock-doves, whose fair necks are grac'd
With Nuptial Rings their Ensigns chast;
Yet always, for some Cause unknown,
Sad pair unto the Elms they moan.
O why should such a Couple mourn,
That in so equal Flames do burn!

​LXVII.
Then as I carless on the Bed
Of gelid Straw-berryes do tread,
And through the Hazles thick espy
The hatching Thrastles shining Eye,
The Heron from the Ashes top,
The eldest of its young lets drop,
As if it Stork-like did pretend
That Tribute to its Lord to send.

LXVIII.
But most the Hewel's wonders are,
Who here has the Holt-felsters care.
He walks still upright from the Root,
Meas'ring the Timber with his Foot;
And all the way, to keep it clean,
Doth from the Bark the Wood-moths glean.
He, with his Beak, examines well
Which fit to stand and which to fell.

LXIX.
The good he numbers up, and hacks;
As if he mark'd them with the Ax.
But where he, tinkling with his Beak,
Does find the hollow Oak to speak,
That for his building he designs,
And through the tainted Side he mines.
Who could have thought the tallest Oak
Should fall by such a feeble Strok'!

LXX.
Nor would it, had the Tree not fed.
A Traitor-worm, within it bred.
(As first our Flesh corrupt within
Tempts impotent and bashful Sin.
​And yet that Worm triumphs not long,
But serves to feed the Hewels young.
While the Oake seems to fall content,
Viewing the Treason's Punishment.

LXXI.
Thus I, easie Philosopher,
Among the Birds and Trees confer:
And little now to make me, wants
Or of the Fowles, or of the Plants.
Give me but Wings as they, and I
Streight floting on the Air shall fly:
Or turn me but, and you shall see
I was but an inverted Tree.

LXXII.
Already I begin to call
In their most learned Original:
And where I Language want, my Signs
The Bird upon the Bough divines;
And more attentive there doth sit
Then if She were with Lime-twigs knit.
No Leaf does tremble in the Wind
Which I returning cannot find.

LXXIII.
Out of these scatter'd Sibyls Leaves
Strange Prophecies my Phancy weaves:
And in one History consumes,
Like Mexique Paintings, all the Plumes.
What Rome, Greece, Palestine, ere said
I in this light Mosaick read.
Thrice happy he who, not mistook,
Hath read in Natures mystick Book.

​LXXIV.
And see how Chance's better Wit
Could with a Mask my studies hit!
The Oak-Leaves me embroyder all,
Between which Caterpillars crawl:
And Ivy, with familiar trails,
Me licks, and clasps, and curles, and hales.
Under this antick Cope I move
Like some great Prelate of the Grove,

LXXV.
Then, languishing with ease, I toss
On Pallets swoln of Velvet Moss;
While the Wind, cooling through the Boughs,
Flatters with Air my panting Brows.
Thanks for my Rest ye Mossy Banks,
And unto you cool Zephyr's Thanks,
Who, as my Hair, my Thoughts too shed,
And winnow from the Chaff my Head.

LXXVI.
How safe, methinks, and strong, behind
These Trees have I incamp'd my Mind;
Where Beauty, aiming at the Heart,
Bends in some Tree its useless Dart;
And where the World no certain Shot
Can make, or me it toucheth not.
But I on it securely play,
And gaul its Horsemen all the Day.

LXXVII.
Bind me ye Woodbines in your 'twines,
Curle me about ye gadding Vines,
And Oh so close your Circles lace,
That I may never leave this Place:
​But, lest your Fetters prove too weak,
Ere I your Silken Bondage break,
Do you, O Brambles, chain me too,
And courteous Briars nail me through.

LXXVIII.
Here in the Morning tye my Chain,
Where the two Woods have made a Lane;
While, like a Guard on either side,
The Trees before their Lord divide;
This, like a long and equal Thread,
Betwixt two Labyrinths does lead.
But, where the Floods did lately drown,
There at the Ev'ning stake me down.

LXXIX.
For now the Waves are fal'n and dry'd,
And now the Meadows fresher dy'd;
Whose Grass, with moister colour dasht,
Seems as green Silks but newly washt.
No Serpent new nor Crocodile
Remains behind our little Nile;
Unless it self you will mistake,
Among these Meads the only Snake.

LXXX.
See in what wanton harmless folds
It ev'ry where the Meadow holds;
And its yet muddy back doth lick,
Till as a Chrystal Mirrour slick;
Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
If they be in it or without.
And for his shade which therein shines,
Narcissus like, the Sun too pines.

​LXXXI.
Oh what a Pleasure tis to hedge
My Temples here with heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy Side,
Stretcht as a Bank unto the Tide;
Or to suspend my sliding Foot
On the Osiers undermined Root,
And in its Branches tough to hang,
While at my Lines the Fishes twang!

LXXXII.
But now away my Hooks, my Quills,
And Angles, idle Utensils.
The young Maria walks to night:
Hide trifling Youth thy Pleasures slight.
'Twere shame that such judicious Eyes
Should with such Toyes a Man surprize;
She that already is the Law
Of all her Sex, her Ages Aw.

LXXXIII.
See how loose Nature, in respect
To her, it self doth recollect;
And every thing so whisht and fine,
Starts forth with to its Bonne Mine.
The Sun himself, of Her aware,
Seems to descend with greater Care;
And lest She see him go to Bed,
In blushing Clouds conceales his Head.

LXXXIV.
So when the Shadows laid asleep
From underneath these Banks do creep;
And on the River as it flows
With Eben Shuts begin to close;
​The modest Halcyon comes in sight,
Flying betwixt the Day and Night;
And such an horror calm and dumb,
Admiring Nature does benum.

LXXXV.
The viscous Air, wheres'ere She fly,
Follows and sucks her Azure dy;
The gellying Stream compacts below,
If it might fix her shadow so;
The stupid Fishes hang, as plain
As Flies in Chrystal overt'ane;
And Men the silent Scene assist,
Charm'd with the Saphir-winged Mist.

LXXXVI.
Maria such, and so doth hush
The World, and through the Ev'ning rush.
No new-born Comet such a Train
Draws through the Skie, nor Star new-slain.
For streight those giddy Rockets fail,
Which from the putrid Earth exhale,
But by her Flames, in Heaven try'd,
Nature is wholly vitrifi'd.

LXXXVII.
'Tis She that to these Gardens gave
That wondrous Beauty which they have;
She streightness on the Woods bestows;
To Her the Meadow sweetness owes;
Nothing could make the River be
So Chrystal-pure but only She;
She yet more Pure, Sweet, Streight, and Fair,
Then Gardens, Woods, Meads, Rivers are.

​LXXXVIII.
Therefore what first She on them spent,
They gratefully again present.
The Meadow Carpets where to tread;
The Garden Flow'rs to Crown Her Head;
And for a Glass the limpid Brook,
Where She may all her Beautyes look;
But, since She would not have them seen,
The Wood about her draws a Skreen.

LXXXIX.
For She, to higher Beauties rais'd,
Disdains to be for lesser prais'd.
She counts her Beauty to converse
In all the Languages as hers;
Nor yet in those her self imployes
But for the Wisdome, not the Noyse;
Nor yet that Wisdome would affect,
But as 'tis Heavens Dialect.

LXXXX.
Blest Nymph! that couldst so soon prevent
Those Trains by Youth against thee meant;
Tears (watry Shot that pierce the Mind;)
And Sighs (Loves Cannon charg'd with Wind;)
True Praise (That breaks through all defence;)
And feign'd complying Innocence;
But knowing where this Ambush lay,
She scap'd the safe, but roughest Way.

LXXXXI.
This 'tis to have been from the first
In a Domestick Heaven nurst,
Under the Discipline severe
Of Fairfax, and the starry Vere;
​Where not one object can come nigh
But pure, and spotless as the Eye;
And Goodness doth it self intail
On Females, if there want a Male.

LXXXXII.
Go now fond Sex that on your Face
Do all your useless Study place,
Nor once at Vice your Brows dare knit
Lest the smooth Forehead wrinkled sit:
Yet your own Face shall at you grin,
Thorough the Black-bag of your Skin;
When knowledge only could have fill'd
And Virtue all those Furrows till'd.

LXXXXIII.
Hence She with Graces more divine
Supplies beyond her Sex the Line;
And, like a sprig of Misleto,
On the Fairfacian Oak does grow;
Whence, for some universal good,
The Priest shall cut the sacred Bud;
While her glad Parents most rejoice,
And make their Destiny their Choice.

LXXXXIV.
Mean time ye Fields, Springs, Bushes, Flow'rs,
Where yet She leads her studious Hours,
(Till Fate her worthily translates,
And find a Fairfax for our Thwaites)
Employ the means you have by Her,
And in your kind your selves preferr;
That, as all Virgins She preceds,
So you all Woods, Streams, Gardens, Meads.

​LXXXXV.
For you Thessalian Tempe's Seat
Shall now be scorn'd as obsolete;
Aranjeuz, as less, disdain'd;
The Bel-Retiro as constrain'd;
But name not the Idalian Grove,
For 'twas the Seat of wanton Love;
Much less the Dead's Elysian Fields,
Yet nor to them your Beauty yields.

LXXXXVI.
'Tis not, what once it was, the World;
But a rude heap together hurl'd;
All negligently overthrown,
Gulfes, Deserts, Precipices, Stone.
Your lesser World contains the same.
But in more decent Order tame;
You Heaven's Center, Nature's Lap.
And Paradice's only Map.

LXXXXVII.
But now the Salmon-Fishers moist
Their Leathern Boats begin to hoist;
And, like Antipodes in Shoes,
Have shod their Heads in their Canoos.
How Tortoise like, but not so slow,
These rational Amphibii go?
Let's in: for the dark Hemisphere
Does now like one of them appear.



Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough
By Andrew Marvell

TO THE LORD FAIRFAX

See how the archèd earth does here
Rise in a perfect hemisphere!
The stiffest compass could not strike
A line more circular and like;
Nor softest pencil draw a brow
So equal as this hill does bow.
It seems as for a model laid,
And that the world by it was made.

Here learn, ye mountains more unjust,
Which to abrupter greatness thrust,
That do with your hook-shouldered height
The earth deform and heaven fright,
For whose excrescence, ill-designed,
Nature must a new centre find,
Learn here those humble steps to tread,
Which to securer glory lead.

See what a soft access and wide
Lies open to its grassy side;
Nor with the rugged path deters
The feet of breathless travellers.
See then how courteous it ascends,
And all the way it rises bends;
Nor for itself the height does gain,
But only strives to raise the plain.

Yet thus it all the field commands,
And in unenvied greatness stands,
Discerning further than the cliff
Of heaven-daring Tenerife.
How glad the weary seamen haste
When they salute it from the mast!
By night the Northern Star their way
Directs, and this no less by day.

Upon its crest this mountain grave
A plump of agèd trees does wave.
No hostile hand durst ere invade
With impious steel the sacred shade.
For something always did appear
Of the great Master’s terror there:
And men could hear his armour still
Rattling through all the grove and hill.

Fear of the Master, and respect
Of the great Nymph, did it protect,
Vera the Nymph that him inspired,
To whom he often here retired,
And on these oaks engraved her name;
Such wounds alone these woods became:
But ere he well the barks could part
’Twas writ already in their heart.

For they (’tis credible) have sense,
As we, of love and reverence,
And underneath the coarser rind
The genius of the house do bind.
Hence they successes seem to know,
And in their Lord’s advancement grow;
But in no memory were seen,
As under this, so straight and green;

Yet now no further strive to shoot,
Contented if they fix their root.
Nor to the wind’s uncertain gust,
Their prudent heads too far intrust.
Only sometimes a fluttering breeze
Discourses with the breathing trees,
Which in their modest whispers name
Those acts that swelled the cheek of fame.

‘Much other groves’, say they, ‘than these
And other hills him once did please.
Through groves of pikes he thundered then,
And mountains raised of dying men.
For all the civic garlands due
To him, our branches are but few.
Nor are our trunks enow to bear
The trophies of one fertile year.’

’Tis true, ye trees, nor ever spoke
More certain oracles in oak.
But peace, (if you his favour prize):
That courage its own praises flies.
Therefore to your obscurer seats
From his own brightness he retreats:
Nor he the hills without the groves,
Nor height, but with retirement loves.



Another Perspective:

Remembering SC-1-B-1 Buried in the Potters' Field on Hart's Island

You were a special child, special indeed,
Because they lowered you, their special seed,
Into forsaken pebbles and salt earth
Reserved for plantings of no special worth.

The City Fathers set you in a small
Pine box to hold the memories that fall
From tiny bones in the wood ossuary
They loaded onto the scheduled Work Gang Ferry.

No one remembers what your name had been,
Or the coarse sack they wrapped your body in.
A salt-worn piece of gray concrete, not special,
Marks the trench that holds your childhood's vessel.

Sharp, vagrant winds cut into that cold place
Of barbed, galled burrs and wizened Queen Ann's Lace:
There, in forsaken pebbles and salt earth,
You lie, a dry stalk of no special worth.



Angel of God, My Guardian Dear: A Fairy Tale

When we were kids we sat at tiny desks
And prayed for the blind black man with no legs.

The dolly he sat on ran on skate wheels
With which he rolled about to sell his Christmas seals.

We prayed for him with silly, useless words,
That he might earn enough to go to Lourdes,

But then some street kids stole the board he wheeled,
And beat him up from there to Potters' Field.



August 2026:

This month we feature poems by Dan Reardon, a Dublin-based Irish poet, and Bob Zisk, a peripatetic poet – perhaps a wanderer in the spiritual landscapes of New Mexico. Dan is a well-known poet, playwright and actor. Bob hosts this THT feature, Bob Zisk Unleashed.

Dan’s poem reminded me of the journeys of Brunellus in Speculum Stultorum, but Dan’s Caliban seems to partake more of good-natured whimsy than does Brunellus, the wandering donkey.

Bob’s poems arise out of a personal and recent loss. Ἄορνος was first published in The New Stylus. Among Sorrow’s Flowers, the tenth section of the sequence, Pomegranate Seeds: For my Beloved Chamchun, was accepted by The Lyric as a freestanding sonnet.

Hopefully these poets and their poems will endear themselves to the audience of THT readers.



CALIBAN ON MANHATTAN

     Caliban staggered Frank O’Hara on
A sweltering hot night in Manhattan.
He’d been rootling the woods in Central Park
Scratching round the shores of the murky lake
In search of dinner. He was ravenous
From his travels through centuries and stars.
When Old Prospero, his Master, returned
To Naples and Milan, he’d left behind
Two magic spells, the first for Ariel,
Freeing him from servitude on the isle,
Letting him fly back to the elements,
Planets and galaxies. The other meant
For Caliban but they both got so mixed,
Ariel it was, stuck fast to the rocks
And brine pits of the isle, while Caliban
Was spirited away over the moon
To this other island full of noises
Called Manhattan in the 1960s.

Our hero overturned a rubbish bin
That stank of fish and greedily dug in
To a feast of discarded fins and shells.
A man in blue came dashing down the hill 
Shouting “Hey You!” and waving a pistol.
Caliban sprang; the cop said, “What the hell!?”
And watched this rough beast dive into the lake
And claw through the slimy clumps of reeds, break
Out to the night and a nest full of eggs
On the far shore. The moorhens were agog,
Cackling and flapping as Caliban scoffed
The lot, shells and all. “Hagseed Hence!” the cop
Shouted and Caliban bounded out of 
The Park, splashed through a fountain and down Fifth
Avenue. At the Church of Saint Thomas
On Fifty Third he careened right and bashed

                    Into the beautiful Frank O’Hara
Who’d been writing his poems in MOMA
After wrapping up museum matters.
The poet, astonished by this creature
Pouncing on top of him, stinking of fish,
Dripping wet and mud streaked with only this
Filthy pair of pantaloons; O’Hara
Started to laugh flat out on the floor a
Great guffaw, “Who are you!?” he cried “Or What!?”
Frank was howling, “Caliban I am, got 
From Sycorax” O’Hara shrieked, “Oh Wow!
Oh Wow!” and Caliban barked “Bow Wow! Bow
Wow!” They both jumped up hugging and singing
“Hi Day, Hey Day” “Caliban, let me bring
You to the quick freshes and show you all
The qualities of this magical isle
Of Manhattan. Let me bring you to where
My Brave Gods drink celestial liquor.
You shall have fresh fish and berries to eat
And we will sing sweet airs that give delight,
Put fine garments on you and we’ll stroke you
And make much of you. We’ll be so jocund.
Will you go with me?” the poet pleaded,
“Aye” said Caliban, “I will.” Then they streeled
Down the street, arms entwined, hailed a taxi
And bundled themselves into the back seat
In a ball of laughs and kisses. They flew,
Scudding through traffic on Fifth Avenue,
Holding tight, riding this vehicular
Yellow barracuda to the Cedar
Tavern, wherein Willem de Kooning, Allen
Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Ken Koch, Boyfriend
Larry Rivers and Girlfriend Barbara Guest
Were all convened – The Tribe. Caliban thought
“How beauteous mankind is, how merry
And marvellous, how happy will I be
                    Carousing in this Tavern called Cedar,
With not a tree in sight, as jocular
A crowd as ever I encountered.”
And they did make much of him, gave him food
And drink. O’Hara read his poetry,
They cheered and clapped. Caliban, so happy
He bounced on tabletops danced with Allen
Ginsberg who kissed him quite lavishly, then
Larry Rivers was painting his likeness,
O’Hara pianoed sweet music as
Everyone joined hands, dancing and roaring
Out songs, then finally in heaps, collapsing
Hysterically. When Caliban began
To cry, they all went worried, laid upon
Him consoling caresses. He tried to say
His tears were joyous, his weeping jolly.
He wished he could tell how much he loved them,
How he hoped he’d never have to leave them,
How this clamorous tavern called Cedar
Was the place he longed to live forever.
But his sobs stopped his words. O’Hara said,
“Sweet Caliban, you pine for your island,
Is that why you’re crying? It’s too crazy
Here. Greenwich Village in 1960,
Not your scene, I sympathise.” Caliban
Shook his matted locks, “No! No! Manhattan
Is my island now.” He gasped, “I love you!”
They all rose up, gave huge hoorays and threw
Their arms around their new friend, Caliban.
“We love you too Baby!” and they began 
To dance and sing again and to rejoice
Beyond a Common Joy, on this wondrous
Night in New York. 
                                   But the Cedar Tavern
Must close, every revelling must end.
These poets and painters have work to do,
Soon the Sun will rise from one River, go
Clear across the island to the other
Mightier River, shining West over
The vast land of America to glow
For all the beings of this Brave New World.

Caliban was happy he had spotted 
The Two Rivers, took note of the wooded
Central Park, the lakes where he would forage.
He remembered the fountain and the Church
Where he first crashed into Frank O’Hara.
He was sure of his welcome at the Bar
Of the Cedar. He would listen and learn
From these poets and painters, the women
And men who conducted this New York School.
Caliban was eager to set his sail
On courageous ventures, bold voyages
Throughout the canyons and the lofty crags
Of this gigantic Metropolis. “Yes”
Said Caliban, “Here will I build my nest,
Here will I spin my tales of the city
By exciteful night and wide-open day.
I’ll sing loud songs with O’Hara my friend,
My poet and protector, greater than
                   Old Prospero. For Frank weaves his magic
With words, the poems he makes, his cool music.”

Caliban, at the Point of the Island,
Looked out on the sparkling harbour. The sun
Hot on his skin. The waves alive with ships
And hooting ferries. Behind him horns beeped
From squadrons of buses and cars. People
Everywhere swarming all around him. Still
He felt cocooned in a curious quiet
In the midst of this thundering tumult. 
And though battered by twangling multitudes,
He luxuriated in his solitude,
He was the most alone he’d ever been.
He marvelled, in this city of millions,
How he could be so at peace, as if rapt 
In a safe comforting blanket, so soft.
              Caliban sighed, he smiled up at the sun,
Whispered prayers to Setebos, turned for home.



Ἄορνος

Dear Love, on these cold nights, when the fine snow
Rests lightly on dark, frozen soil, Sleep tugs
My body, stretched beside you in your round-trip
Through the dark pathways of the Birdless Lands.
Under the starry baldachin of darkness
Your breasts, wrapped in a pleated quilt, rise up,
Then sink — another trailhead to Love's Mountain
And its inviolate snowfields as deep
As Time.

When, in enveloping deliria
Of dreams, in soft incursions of caressing
Time, on the sinuous shores of our Hearts' Lake,
I count the ebb and flow of breath and life,
And you stir in a moment of deep breath:
I wonder where you are, in asphodel
Or aconite, or maybe, next to springs
Bubbling up among tall, whispering poplars
At the secret convergence of cessation
And birth.

When Luna, in her frosty sleigh,
Cuts through the frozen sky, and her She-Bear
Pants her breath across the Milky Way,
I stir in twilight sleep and waning Night,
And ponder, in the tremors of my heart,
If we will wake to rose-lipped Dawn's first kiss,
Or will you take another turn through darkness,
And pass beneath the Lake of Falling Birds?



Pomegranate Seeds: For my Beloved Chamchun

One Way Passage

I cannot find a raincheck for my Love.
Here, at the edge of Styx, a cypress grove
Gives up its swift Phoenician bark to carry
Her far from me, on what must be death's ferry,

And tall, slender columns, evergreen,
Murmur darkly, erasing what has been
Only a feathery drop of vacant light
Stirred by beating wings of the black swans' flight.

II

Damask at Dusk: For Chamchun

Twilight: jacquard skies cover us
In dryness and dusk's promises.
Spring's robins almost fill my hand,
And caterpillars stripe the sand.
Come and sit with me an hour,
Love: kiss me where saguaros flower
And sweeten night with rich perfumes:
When the lone cougar whines its tunes,
Let us sip ambrosial moonlight,
And breathe the breath of shadowy night,
Where the moist, nocturnal flowers
Of twilight scent thorned cactus bowers,
     And we, in the saguaro's embrace,
     Nest in its arms, in spine-filled grace.

III

Lago del Cor

No Pilot of the Galilean Lake
Has steered his bark, as birth's waters brake
Upon our boat's curved prow. Now dirt and stone
Tug at your feet. And I must walk alone,
For vacant earth shall echo you are gone.

Dear, will we meet in the Cradle of the Sun,
Where day and night and birth and death conjoin?
Our years have fled with all we cherished here,
With all the tenderness we have held dear.
And all the love that we were wont to pledge
Must swirl in harmattans at the grave's edge.

IV

Aubade: Separation

In my heart bright stars flash and spark,
Then pull away from me.
Silver, silent, now they mark
The urgent break of day.

The night wears on and I wear out.
The sky and fleeting stars
Whisper separation and doubt
Across my heart's gray shores.

What lovelorn embers throb in my breast?
What weave of Tyre is torn
From Venus rising at cockcrow's behest?
Night's spent. Soon comes the dawn.

Day must break, and lovers part,
For night's embrace is done:
Let your absence fill my heart,
Let dark give way to dawn.

In the distance I see the rose
Of morning announce the sun.
Before the gold flames of sunrise
I see the quickening dawn.

V

Nepenthe, Grief, Wounded Love

I never knew that silence could be so loud,
Rumbling through my ears like a dark rain cloud.
Today I saw a slender robin on that fence
Near our table, the table where a young
Bird once fell from the warm nest,
Not old enough to fly or chirp in song.

This visitor in time of mourning stirred
Memories of that other little bird
That struggled to flap its fledgling wings
Under the shaggy olive's yellow flower,
Where swallowtails dance, the sparrow sings,
And morning glories spread in a blue bower.

Ah, love, do I hear you on the Spring breeze?
Will you rub and shake the long ash tree's
Pollen from your strands of fine black hair?
Will we watch the golden dusted honey bees
Sucking away with not a care,
As sunlight pixelates through the green leaves?

VI

The Soul's Vapor

You are gone, but why do I feel your presence?
Our yard's become the country of the Wounded King.
That is because cold earth
Lacks your gentleness,

For here I see you in quick, misty light,
A moonlit beam that floats in the cool evening.
Why do you avoid my touch?
Why do I grasp blank air?

Dear heart, I cannot kiss your empty vapor
Or touch your momentary streaks of light.
Yet you  remain in our past,
In now, in yet to be.

VII

Chamchun's Spring Journey

Death, you are a mighty god. You have laid
Me low and struck my beloved mistress dead.
It was late on a Sunday afternoon.
Light was failing. You called her from the room.

I think she knew you waited in the hall.
I kissed her mouth. I tried to breathe her soul.
It was an end, a lonely, bitter day.
You would not wait: you stole her breath away.

VIII

Memories of Holy Ghost

Sitting here at the edge of Holy Ghost
I ache for all whom I have known and lost—
Lovers, friends, dogs who've flopped across my knees:
Lovely as sunlight on lean aspen trees,
They have warmed me, they have nourished me,
Washed me in the green leaf of memory,
So that now, on the rocks of Holy Ghost,
I sit awhile with them whom I had lost.

IX

Desert Moon

New Mexico, you've filled my mouth with sands
Of bitterness, and crushed my heart with stones.
I reach for her sweet flesh with outstretched hands,
But cling only to discordant groans.
I hear the sharp-toothed April wind's sad moans,
The rasping doggerel of the dark crows,
And all the bare trees rattling their bent bones
Across a vastness where the sharp-thorned cholla grows.
My life is stumbling not far from its close:
Stinging brambles of moist, grievous heartbreak
Scourge me in the rich green of the Spring rose,
Our rose that bleeds fine attar of death's ache,
   Where I stand in the last rays of daylight,
   Dreaming that you will come for me tonight.

X

Among Sorrow's Flowers

Today, as I am looking at our flowers,
All planted in the weeks before you left,
I'll make cause with this little skink who cowers
Where I, wrapped in mourning weeds, stand, bereft
Of the morning star and the night-fast moon.
Forlorn, in a deep trench of loneliness,
I ache, lacerated by grief's wound,
Smothered in cerements of leaden loss:
But I'll not reach for some new epithet
Or other glittering spark of craft or art.
For there is just finality, and death,
Who needs no new trope to kindle my heart.
   Perhaps, like my small lizard, bronze and lean,
   I 'll find a twig to peel off sorrow's skin. 

***************************************

July 2026:

Aes Triplex
Triple Bronze

Illi robur et aes triplex
circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci
commisit pelago ratem
primus...

Around his breast he who first committed his fragile bark to the wild sea was gird in oak and triple bronze... (Horace Carmina 1.3)

For this issue we are presenting brief selections from the work of three poets: Patricia Falanga, Bob Zisk and Bert Schultz.

Patricia Falanga, musician, poet, lover of languages, hails from Australia. Her poetry often is also song, an ongoing unwillingness to submit to the so called "untuning of the skies." In a time when much poetry has been severed from the receptivity of the ear out of deference to the silence of the printed page, Patricia's poetry stands out because it sings.

The Years

Whooping they arrive and weeping go;
I follow where they beckon to and fro.
The seasons chase each other round the sky
And night must follow day in ebb and flow.

Each year brings its new promise, then good-bye;
Its primary objective was to die.
The fleeting years retreat into the past,
Just out of reach however hard I try.

On time's tumultuous torrent holding fast,
I cling determined to a creaking mast
And scan the sea for friends gone on before
Who perished in the season's wintry blast.

My vessel edges closer to the shore
Whose rugged outline I may not ignore,
And there, beyond the breakers’ mighty roar,
The fickle years will come and go no more.

Blizzard

Were I to be forevermore denied
Love and warmth and all that I desire,
Still the world is not so cold or wide
That I must return
To burn
And be consumed at your fire.
Snow and wind are covering
My footsteps in the snow that lead from you.
Bitter winter widens
Between your hearth and mine.
Night and blizzard tumble down together.
Forever
Together.

I Recall Love

I recall love.
It's a tale of tears and laughter;
Castles, knights and maidens,
Fairy tales of happy ever after.
Set the scene right!
Roses, sighs and moonlight.
I recall love
For it happened 
To me
Once upon a time.

Petit Menu de la Vie

Read the menu at the door!
Can you afford
Life's smorgasbord?
Dreams and illusions may greet us at dawning.
Fancy and foibles will get us half way.
Ideas and goals take us through to the evening
But all that is left at the end of the day
Is bitter despair and dismay.
Now that you are undeceived,
Just say thank you as you leave.
Recommend us to a friend!
Please do come again!

Serenata to the Moon

The sun has set behind the hill.
The moon is rising in the sky
While all around the world is still
And we are here, my pipes and I.
In the keep the sheep lie tended.
In the town whose lights I see,
In her sleep a maiden gentle
Maybe dreams a dream of me.
An owl arrests its silent flight
In answer to my plaintive tune,
My lonely lovesong in the night,
My serenata to the moon.
Since I am a lonely shepherd
I must sing my lovesong
To the moon.

Though Spring Is Here (A modern madrigal)

Though Spring is here
Its fragrant rites do not delight
Though all God's creatures
Have their way both night and day.
Though Spring is here
Its flagrant charms and open arms
Must stay unheeded
While I go my lonely way.
Though Spring is here
Its siren song is overlong
For love has left
A chastened wasteland in my heart.

You Loved Me Now

Love me now while we are young,
Before our happy song is sung,
Before the good can turn to bad,
Before the kids can drive us mad
And when "too easy" is "too hard"
And when fate deals that losing card,
Then maybe you'll remember how
You loved me now.

Land of the Didgeridoo

My heart is part of the mountains.
I fall to earth with the rains.
I am at one with the dreamtime,
Run with the emu
Over the plains.
On high I fly with the eagles.
I plumb the depths of the seas.
I dig for ants in the mulga,
Dance with the brolga
Under the trees.
My land of red and ochre,
I am at one with you.
I am in creeks and billabongs
From Muniong to Uluru.
I am part of this vast land
And all of this land is part of me.
From Uluru to the sea
My spirit wanders free.
Dingo I know and koala.
I leap with the bush kangaroo.
I am asleep in the sand,
At peace in the land of the didgeridoo.

Terra Australis

Land of the never-never,
You have been here forever,
Mountain and plain and river
Underneath these southern skies.
Deserts of red and ochre,
Rivers that plunge below
To play in the tranquil glow
Where gorges take us by surprise.
Far from the city lights,
The sheer splendour of your nights,
The stars teeming in an endless sky.
The vast silence of your days,
The trees blending in the haze,
The hills blurring in a mist of time.
Rain forest, golden beaches,
Mudflats and mangrove reaches,
Lakes where the salt lies bleaching,
Waiting till the rivers flow.
Age old rocks dare to stand here,
Tall in this ancient land here,
Just as their maker planned here
In the dreamtime long ago.
Great southern land,
Eternal you stand,
A rock as the stream flows by.
Deep in the dreaming
Time has no meaning
Under a southern sky.

Our Southern Land

There is a timeless land
Under an endless sky,
Set in a boundless sea,
Placed in a southern clime,
Just as Baiame planned
In an age long gone by,
There for eternity,
There till the end of time.
Vast open plains call me again.
This is our southern land.
I have to go. Just need to know
How the wind blows there.
Far from the lights, star-crowded nights.
This is our southern land.
Back of beyond beckons me on
Now.

Hush, My Baby (A bush lullaby)

All the stars are brightly shining
In the mantle of the sky.
Warm inside these arms of mine now,
Hush, my baby, don't you cry.
Do you hear the mopoke calling,
Hear the north wind gently blow?
Do you hear the river falling
To the rocks below?
Frogs have made a sing-song for us
In the reeds by the lagoon.
Dingoes lend a lonely chorus,
Barking at the moon.
All the sounds of sky and ground
Are singing you a lullaby.
Night has wrapped its cloak around us.
Hush, my baby, don't you cry.

*****************************

Bob Zisk has little to say beyond the acknowledgement that Patricia Falanga is a tough act to follow. The poems he offers here are grounded in recent experience.

Afternoon Oil Change

I sit here in the auto dealership.
A faint, wry smile is settling, lip on lip,
As I stare at the thin salesgirls of Spring,
Who click their phones while the young robins sing.

Out in the sales lot it's a lazy day
For auto sales, but not bad for girls' play.
The girls are smiling but there are no customers
For them to lure with smiles and tempting offers.

Their charms are practiced on their telephones
And trying all the new games and ringtones.
Their thumbs twirl with a ballerina's grace,
And not a worry crosses heart or face --

Not one concern for what the future holds,
What some clandestine mortality withholds
In fates not yet revealed as warblers cry,
And collared doves softly prophesy.

In the Spring Night

I lie on my side of our bed,
And hear your voice in an owl's call.
My pain tells me that you are dead.
This emptiness is picrid gall.

In bitterness and lack of sleep
I cannot see you whom I seek.
All I can do is hurt and weep,
And not deny that I am weak.

I cannot bear to be alone,
And I ache that you are gone.
In darkness I hear the night moan
I weep in  silence before the dawn.

Walking Alone

I have taken the left-handed path
That winds down to the black gates of death.
Wrapped in sorry weeds of strangling loss
I've stood before those jaws I could not pass.

I looked through the barred passage, stretched my hand
Through the iron grille, and touched tracks in the sand,
And in the throaty moans of somber doves,
I laid my grief among  sad, severed loves.

I turned away with empty arms. As light
Dimmed, I spun the wheel of day and night.
I knew my sawtoothed pain would scarcely matter
In the cold ebb and flow of Styx's water.

********************************

Bert Schultz is a Philadelphian poet, technical writer, and award winning film maker. He has made a widely distributed film about SDS and the Student Movement of the 60s and 70s. Bert describes his poetry as Brechtian.

The Third Kissoff

I keep telling myself -
It doesn't even rate on the scale of
Horrors of the mid-twentieth century -
The Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
2.7 million dead Vietnamese.

Now, after 30 years, I get an email.
She goes - "How has your life been?"
I'm like - "Fine."
“Where do you live?”  “What do you do?”
“What are your kids' names?”

This goes on for a few days, then stops.
We were both very polite and friendly,
We never even hinted at the pregnancy.

She is too old now to have my child,
Her vagina must be dry and menopausal,
Her breast saggy, her breath stale,
Her anus hemorrhoidal.

My cock not as hard as during the Johnson Administration,
I'm fat and have bags under my eyes.
I snore,
And I have had extensive periodontal degeneration.

What possible fruit from this queer mating?
So why do I want her just as much?

Mostly Air

A spider web is mostly air,
Organized by strands that are
Stronger than steel, thinner than a hair.
My love for you is made of longing and denial,
Organized across the decades and the miles
By maybe a dozen touches and a dozen smiles.

**************************************

June 2026:

Six poems by Angela Segredaki ...

Angela Segredaki holds a CW degree from Oxford University and loves poetry, flowers, and people. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue Unicorn, The Ekphrastic Review, New Lyre, Amsterdam Quarterly, Mouthful of Salt, The Adelaide Literary Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Dawntreader, Snakeskin and elsewhere. She’s currently collaborating with the American poet Julia Denton on a joint poetry collection.

"Since I first read poetry by Angela Segredaki a couple years ago, I have been a fan. I first knew her as an accomplished writer of formal verse. But these poems which Angela recently sent me  show that her range of expression is not confined to accentual-syllabic verse. I hope that both regular readers of THT and visitors will appreciate these very readable free verse poems as much as I do." (Bob Zisk, May 25, 2026)


Gina asks for an ice cream to feed a pigeon

flowers and freshness
painted clouds float on a blue tablecloth
where Gina just finished her ice cream.
her dress, the chair, streaks everywhere
a shared spill of sweetness.

she speaks to a pigeon, unafraid
of fingertips or open hands
loneliness is not their tongue
it pecks at little weeds, seeking seeds
and they both belong to where they stand

playing the game of being, ignoring
regrets and guilt streaks. she speaks
like white jasmine, telling truths
I’ve forgotten, while the pigeon
nods with understanding.

Gina then takes my hand and asks
in freshly grown words
for an ice cream for her bird-friend
making me wonder, how I missed 
the moment the bird said yes



Wooden Dolls’ Houses

dolls’ houses
those wooden houses
that we used to play in when
we were      little
in one room we put a bed
where our dolls dreamt
and loved dearly.
in
another room, they would sit together, together, together
and talk through the night.

wooden dolls’ houses
full of childhood dreams

wooden    people
wooden hearts
in one room

themselves

there are no other rooms



Beneath

To my soulmate Lies Nijdam

I lick my wounds in the dark
store sweetness like sunlight
keep the old spell of return.

Nothing above ground bears witness
yet every hill is swollen
the trees stripped bare
their stillness listens.

I unearth Demeter
a year that would not turn
a hand beside her
an incantation—stay
in the bruised light

Or me 
after the divorce
and the women circling close
when my life slipped its roots.

We walked like that
across days that feigned emptiness

I went low
and listened

They stayed.

Love
uprooted
goes dark
sweetens

one day 
unannounced

green,


Inheritance

A sharp sound rang upon the ground
lost in leaves
and settling shadows.
Deep in the night, my home was still
a moon moth perched
upon the sill.

The echo lingered, stirred the trees
a hush uncoiled
through ivy greens.
The wind, the clouds, the breath of frost
whispered gently
'Think what you’ve lost.’

I turned, but no one called my name
only silence 
only cold.
When all at once, I knew what broke
a button slipped from
this old coat.

The woollen coat I had on
started showing
frayed and worn.
A second button gone, not missed
the shoulders sagged 
the torn threads hissed.

The skin I wore was never mine 
a borrowed gift
I could not shed.
And as the moonbeams softly swarmed
I thought I felt
my mother’s arm.

This vagabond, too wide, too worn
held warmth I never 
claimed before.
And in the daybreak as light grew
I bore its weight and walked on
through.


Threshold, with a Horse in the Distance

Look, I thought what we built would love us enough
to take us back. The way sometimes a body forgives
a back you’ve burdened past bearing
a heart you’ve asked and asked too much.

There were days so warm I could feel my bones relaxing
like oars lifted from the water. We called that happiness:
the slow clicking of engines in the dark. 
We carried plastic bags full of fruit
apologies hanging in closets beside last year’s coats.

No villain, just the hungry habit of more:
more light, more miles, more everything. Our love
wanted to grow past its edges, like wisteria until
the fence remembers it has ribs.

I keep thinking about the first glacier between us
how it kept dripping; a language of patience
I didn’t understand. I was young enough to think
weight meant forever.

You took my hand. Your hand was weather then;
April, not August. Later the heat came
and made itself ordinary. Not all at once. Like anger:
quiet, then claiming your voice.
We conjugated it. We got fluent.

We had crossed the line where canopy becomes cinder.
The forest inside us knew before we did.
The day you broke a plate and laughed.
The day I cried in the produce aisle
without a name for it.

Meanwhile the world kept tilting toward its thick fever
and so did I. Not punishment; just the body saying enough
and the window opening.

The horse in the distance keeps running
unhaltered. The world swells beyond its limits
fissured, still leafing in the broken places.
The light is already doing its foolish, faithful thing
across the face of the water.



Mrs Prometheus

She does not remember
when the sentence was passed
only that each morning
is fastened to her.

The alarm cleaves the dark.
A small hand finds her sleeve.
Milk warms. Shoes are found.
The day begins before she does

at the sink, at the bus stop
in the fluorescent glare of the office.
It returns,
not myth
but the same precise taking:
the quiet subtraction
of what she might have been.

Still, she stands.

In meetings where her voice
is taken, repackaged, returned
with a different name.
In corridors where her body
is measured before her words arrive.
In numbers that tilt
slightly away from her.

Evening:
she gathers what remains of herself
from the margins of the day.

A voice sparked
bright as flame.
Hands, reaching.

Here,

the theft undone.
Fire passed quietly
in stories half-told.

It is not grand.
But it persists

through exhaustion
through small violences
no one records
through the long arithmetic
of being diminished
and continuing.

Tomorrow, it will come again.
And again
she will rise into it.
Not untouched.
Not unmarked.
Still carrying heat
kept alive
enough to warm 
the next pair of hands.

The HyperTexts