Banded light breaking soft across his chest,
He stands defaced and fixed like stone, as dawn
Settles on our square, and workers, tourists,
Furtive lovers shoulder past his forlorn
Frame, once famed, perhaps, though nevermore. It’s
No surprise to those who knew him best.
Which I did not. I do not know the times
He went striding past the pediments and
Portes
cochères, ignoring those who stared at
Coal-black
horses – heads starred with a white brand;
At soldiers astride in their blue cloaks that
Shrouded
flanks, croups – the geldings’ arching spines.
Farther on,
before his eyes filled with green,
He’d walk
beneath the portico, among
Whose ionic
columns children ran and hid;
Stare across at
where revolution, one
January
morning, had begun; ask – did
Charles shiver
beneath his shirts, but unseen?
Think now –
divine right forced to account,
Or botched
corpse, mortal proof, never in doubt?
He was the
apple of his mother’s eye;
He was his Father’s
supplicant;
He wore
without complaint the shirt and tie –
The Son of
Man in bowler hat.
Farther, past
inert Haig, he could see
The monument
to those he helped inter.
About him raw
wind skirred, its direction
Unclear, spreading
leaves on his face to blur
Those, after
Eden, marked for election,
Which he
shunned, trusting that posterity
Would save
him from reprobation. For thine
Is not power,
nor glory; for thine is
Not the first
act – thou must enact. For this
Is the vocation
of the palatine.
Approaching
now the orchard fruiting stone,
Where malum
flowered first and found its essence
Coddled in
petrified inflorescence.
(His elbow
backwards broken as he’d grown;
His shoulder hanging lower than it should;
His tendons fusing slowly to his bones;
A body that articulates the tone
That marks the time before his desuetude.)
The pylon
bears the empty tomb before
The First
Lord’s black steel cage: the sacrament
Of absent
life and death – what could remain
But memory caught in ageless present?
Now, those who pass will helplessly profane –
For language, though imperfect, must endure.
He once helped others see the hidden signs:
The words entwined among the spreading roots
Of words
Which blindly beg for rain to seep into
Their bark,
Composed of dense solutes,
Which then dissolve and flow into the deep
Aquifers coursing through unconscious minds.
His calling still persists, though now we claim
It otiose and something to efface,
For wonders are now felt to be the truth.
The hierophant lies dead, and in his place
We stand and fancy to divine the smooth,
Immortal certainties we use to frame
Our concupiscent vanities and fears.
It may be we are better off
Alone –
Confessor, intercessor, whispering
To ourselves,
Dowsing above the unknown
Snarl of roots in griming clod, the
Longing
For the unmasking cataract that clears
The ground on which we kneel before the tree,
And wait for fruit to fall and set us free.
At last now at the square in which he rests
Among the unpleached lime trees, stripped of leaves.
Where Churchill, Palmerston, and Peel help guard
The sward from Palace, Court, and Church. Sheaves
Of palm fronds trampled into mulch have marred
The stones on which he stands as he divests
Himself of time. His immanence is place –
One never saved for him inside the House
Divided by decree; eroded by
The wracking squalls of time that also douse
His mind, when seized by dreams that he can die
And look for his own consecrated space.
A servant once, a servant evermore –
It’s no surprise that passers-by ignore
His longing to eradicate the trace
Of the apple hanging before his face.
