The Blesssing

If Henry's head is heavy with Richard's
And Richard's with Henry's
And David's both the circlets snatched,
No wonder the metal scrapes the head
That thrusts into the chamber that powers the great
Crush at the gates of peace, and war,
Striving, lusted and let, breeds further
To furthest incontinence.
Whether the crown be gilt or silt,
Its toothful or its toothless mouth must listen
Patient to each impatient blast
Of glistening speech that speaks
Yearlings—yearlings or constant disease
So knobby knees go wobbly, begging breath,
And listless arms beg alms on dry white brows
And come up salted, and go down withered
From heads that will not squeeze a drop to fill its branches
And fruitless, yellow leaves soon crack,
Leave a wintry tree in summer
Bitterly consumed in ash.
We may take the ash and place it on a covertlet
Of velvet, black and rich as memory forestalled,
And place it under the sacred stones
To attone for our father's contempt
But others have fathers too and will
Their wills to be willed against our wills
And will not rest so restful as the ash
Giving birth to smouldering ash
That winds fanned into a holocaust
That bloomed in carnations buttoned to the breast
(And what is a breast but a fist,
Pounding on heaven?) that flecked with red
The whitest blooms
And passed that red to perrenial seed
Set in a crown of jagged tin
To tilt a whirlpool against a tide of fingers
That, to pluck, would pluck against the blade
Spinning in perpetual memory, swimming
In impetuous forgetfulness. He
That first usurped the crown had his reasons
And seasons come and go as a blast against
Naked unshielded flesh that cowers
And questions the will that owns all wills,
Sets him in perpetual slumber and a waking
Of the mind that walks in shadows of its kind
Where the tree is more than a tree and less,
And fruit a question, and blossom an answer
That asks a further question that cannot be answered
For the answer is in the plucked bud
Which silent screams under stairs of stone entombed:
And the spider has no mouth to tell what the glass saw
Till shattered shards part the guts of rats
And mingle their blood with our own.

© Dan Goorevitch