Canto XI – Sedemuda

“Little did I know
that ever before or after,
I – mouth-less – across the mead-bench would have to speak.”

-        Riddle 60

Stabbed and whipped and trailed

up to Golgotha – the little bird

watched with cryptochrome beads –

and came and nestled inside Man’s cavity

and leant its beak inside His heart

and flew away, scorched and smeared,

with a newly garneted breast. Now

the ruddock stalks the gardener’s boot

and hunter’s noose, to snipe

and gobble whatever rears

from the soil’s afterbirth; worms

and beetles and lizards and, if a chill

caulks shut those loamy lips,

then it will stiletto flesh gobbets

like its ruder brethren and angle

by a crystal pool, cutting up

its own kitsch reflection –

anti-narcissus, self-mocking felon –

the robin came to nest on Devon’s gum,

and watched this toothless mouth

gape and murmur and hum;

beat after beat, tale after tale –

those jaws motioned and the hares

trampled heaven and earth

to try and keep up

to no avail.

They did not bolt fast enough

to catch sight of Austen’s beau

and had to consult the robin

for garbled scraps of heartbreak –

served in rain-spattered evenings

and the fresh clutch of tears

at the clergyman’s wake.

Snooping the tearoom for crumbs,

the ruddock witnessed the fast fingers

of gentle Jane stretch and dart and clasp

another – and later pecked snags and snippets

of the wit and irony reserved for a lover –

it is known that that indomitable hand

penning prose and parody, stilled

for many months upon receipt of a letter –

yet the hares never knew

if it was a gospel legend

to entertain in good humour

or merely another

chattered rumour.

The man who invented tomorrow

often climbed Jacob’s ladder

to better watch the honeycomb puddles

where – beneath the beadlets, snakelocks,

shannies, blennies and crabs – he would scry

the probing glint of an otherworldly eye.

Wells alone, thrust a palm into the sea shafts

to wrap his wrist with suckered wires

and drag his homely krakens

into the common man’s mind

and memory, to better bind

and seal that ancient nightmare

with a cheerless ink

of blood and emery.

The robin liked the rutted verse

which clicked and cascaded from his lips –

this tweed-and-tie magus,

mouthing consonants and inventing heritage;

Tolkien cosied himself in Kennaway

and forged his fable out of patchwork sagas

and regaled the bird which nestled on his ledge

with a syllable bouquet –

often he would eye nearby patrons

through the smoke and haze

for a thought or a phrase

to polish his kenning clay –

he looted Plato for his ring

yet hawked the sights of Sidmouth

for the pattern of his king.

The hares clucked and purred

and begged the robin for more –

the story of a riding horseman

or a Stymouth to explore –

but the ruddock fled at break of day

chirring and chuckling –

at the gall of its play.

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