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A GIFT OF ROSES
by George Swain
* * *
They know each other by the silent word,
the moment when meaning will burn
through the paper, into the world.
In toasts and curses an army is born:
their sign is their boots--one brown,
one black. Or (blunter than that),
a crimson cockade in a high-crowned hat.
Fifty leagues of thunder to the coast,
cloak and hoof-beat, to deliver
(such is the landlord’s boast
in the Black Dog) the very devil
of a promise: blood for silver.
A clink of pewter seals their hire,
spiced and warmed with a poker from the fire.
He stalks the vault with an air of plunder,
a wingèd Death on his signet finger,
and crushes to crystal, then grit and powder
a vial of human blood: this singer
of sleep is no mere messenger.
Now Dickon the smith will never forget
the baleful cheek, the iris of jet.
The sign shall be: there is no sign.
A whisper comes at Candlemass
and brings: a hairline of moonshine,
dagger in the dark. He leaves no trace
of footprint. Wordless they face the blaze
that kept the assassin warm,
an angel pressed in every palm.
As silver buys silence, the drinkers
forsake the dear old Dog, yet loath
to be alone. Mine host is turning thinker,
and worries at his toothless oath.
The ague is not hard to soothe:
a tincture of a thousand drops,
visions of pharaohs, then off he pops.
* * *
Cherished in the pit of a velvet pouch,
the Widow has changed hands
a cool seven times since March.
A sapphire of the Samarkand,
it bears a legend finely penned:
Woo me, wed me, feed your lust:
I survive your blood and dust.
The she-gem claims another lover.
His late Excellency gazes,
fish-eyed forever,
at a bumper of Rhenish with traces
of black silt: it still amazes.
In his left, an empty yellow paper
with broken blackened seal, the Viper.
A blood oath in a knot of swords:
Know that we are the Forest,
call us such and the word
dies on your tongue; the rest
is for the furnace and the frost.
A mazy snowflake sails to the page
and lights. The word is age.
* * *
Full-throated moan of the courier
in his throes: footpads have planted
a Florentine stiletto weeping curare.
Yet neatly before his spirit is panted,
he releases the scroll where the pact is printed,
borne up on the breeze round the dainty claw
of a turtle dove. The last I saw,
he smiled and sniggered in the frozen mud,
and toasted the trees with moonshine:
the mail got through, the words were sped.
Some hours later, in the dawn, in the sheen,
Milord’s favourite hobby took a shine,
smacked her amidships and spilt
her ruby freight, with a feathered splat.
The turtle is breakfast, the message astray.
Bolts fired, silk balloons afloat;
hotly whispered words in the starry
ink; a Morocco missal loaded
with code, given and hidden: fleet
steps like a thousand others,
the scores of sisters and of brothers.
A winking beacon on a headland,
rake of ashes, tuft of sedge,
cack-handed kanji in the sand:
too many repetitions to dislodge.
Finally the text will reach the edge
of all its pathways. And this
is how it happened. Listen.
At a quarter of ten (by the chimes)
The viceroy finds in his porringer
six grains of nutmeg, foul crime
against the god Routine. Wringing
with wrath his chubby fingers,
he rises as in fugue and goes post,
with a pair of pistols, to the coast.
* * *
We interrupt this tale of terror
with a crude interlude, a bawdy
cavort through the bowers of error
--for the heroic body
an utter debauch, sordid and bloody
retreat from the pinnacle of shame,
the loss of any standards worth the name.
The defeat of the wretched pro-
tagonist falls to the celebrated
gypsy courtesan Ismaila, woe
and ruin finely calibrated
to the wheels of bliss. Rated
for pleasure the full ten out of ten,
she pops your eyes and makes you look again.
Ah, Ismaila! chariot of the brave,
the tawny steed of golden-hearted youth,
whose thighs and throat the traitor craves,
dissolving all within a single truth:
the pilgrim’s passage to the spicy south,
divinest mouth of eastern loam
whom priests call gaol and I call home.
Placing a single pearl in the conch,
indulging her modish contempt for coin,
he saunters and dallies with a ruby brooch,
unbuckles cutlass. This again:
this ache in the pit, this bursting a vein,
as you lingeringly discover
your belly to your willing lover.
He has a trick. To occupy his mind awhile
and draw the journey out, he turns
some verses, triolet or villanelle,
the exploratory tones
of sweet delay. The lady often deigns
to join him in his mingled measure.
He likes a harlot greedy in her pleasure.
Hammered under by a salty wave,
and flung out gasping on a strand of rock,
he dies again, alive.
The languid lady looks.
And as he dreams, the prophetic pox
begins its secret ministry, and (better)
the lady steals his secret letters.
* * *
Approaching the glass, George Swain
admires his bottle-green waistcoat,*
and stock like lilies or swans;
the wig had to go, while the whiskers
incline him ever more westward.
My thousand faces play me false:
Cambio sempre come la salsa.
*[pron. wèskit] Once again
he tries and fails to calculate
the gold he must owe to Gunn:
mephisto of tailors, cackling
at the interest, clickety-
snap with the beads, the wanker--
and far too cosy with my banker.
Still--an undeniable genius
with parti-coloured silk and worsted,
makes me quite the Janus,
and not an inch of piping wasted.
Yea, on occasion I have toasted
Gunn (of tailors the mephisto),
who keeps me polished as a pistol.
And, cast in finest pewter, cross-
hatched and curlicued, well mounted
and depending from the cutest
little chain (a veritable mint):
behold the Bullet with my name on it.
I sport it thus beneath my shirt,
a charm to keep me free from hurt.
And thus it is I come and go
along, and all along the dusky stews,
a whiff of bear grease only, and a low
rumble of song if I choose.
I’m the one who slid past you,
gruffly muttering ‘Peace!’
You’ll not remember a face.
* * *
In smoggy Edinburgh at Knox’s,
he was a messenger, an urchin
who’d steal the heels of foxes
for speed--’scape the birch,
win the coin, and never broach
nor ever seek to know
the earthy folk who daily come and go.
At Ingolstadt in ninety,
a prophet and a thief,
he frittered away the noontide
filing a broken tooth;
lit out later for a swift vermouth,
sank a barrel of the foul solution,
pledging gold and bloody revolution.
Her Majesty’s demoniac
Breaker of Codes
has a damned aching
dribbling cold in the nose.
Snorting at digits and growling at odes,
damn all the papers you read--
and any that fox you: Eat.
Two dozen of the glazed pitchers
Regarding the prospects of my niece
Earnest affectionate good wishes
Any other business
Sir, I remain your most tireless
One pound of boiled gooseberries
Not unworthy of metrical praise
Chew and swallow in the inky
chops, lisping violet foam in
conch-like ear of eager flunky,
‘Would you kindly summon
me a stout yeoman
and make him amenable.’
There were fresh lilies on his table.
Seven stick-men scored
in granite of the bijou cell,
lapidary calendar of dread,
when visitors came to call,
escorting him pell-mell:
seven days they worked in shifts
with a little rusty butter knife.
Stick-man agonistes, stick-
man stuck, beetle-dumped
astride a thorn, the larder of a shrike:
worms are luscious, blue-eyed and plump,
the moon is a strawberry in its pomp,
and the sea a mishmash of grain,
in the annals of the luckless Mr Swain.
He told them his favourite colour
and his mother’s maiden name,
and the minds of Yahweh and Allah,
and the genius of the womb...
Trilling like a canary-swan
he flukes the path of a falcon
ex finestra on a snow-flake.
* * *
At pretty much the time
Señor Swain was going up in smoke,
a whiff of scorching cream:
the Duchess took another toke,
reeled and swam, and lost the track,
all overdone and pink and woozy,
amid the elegant chinoiserie.
After a thousand years
a crooked churchwarden
falls from fat fingers,
and milady’s eyes become wooden.
Watch them twist and harden,
and lock: ‘Lucy! Lucy, I say.’
But the silken Liu Tzi is busy.
Miss a swine. Miss a swine.
Why sow sleepest, why dust lie.
--Reedy voice in the marshes of my mind--
Dust sink sow can save a spy
falling apart. Not see, not eye.
Iron sigh hand, sigh heart muss bee ice.
Dust sow call sis cow a disgrace.
So wading through my dream
of sundry pigs and cattle,
I groped around for a final dram,
but it seemed I had lost my bottle.
And in his beetle-
browed and sun-dried gaze,
indeed I knew not cowardice from grace.
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