I ask no dispensation now
to falsifie a tear, or sigh, or vow
in this crazy starlight
moon-obscured:
seated in high contemplation of things
(some say, perhaps, more precious than my soul);
mottled,
my hands contained by
foldings of rich stuff
mere idle gold turned human;
touch-to-touch they lie together now
enpalmed,
deadly cold,
these of which my fortune
and my faults
had part.
there was a young tiger of Surat
whose nails always grew out in a fringe
who in stalking at midnight
notwithstanding the bad light
manage to catch and eat someone coming home
from a new year’s eve binge
by Howard Rodger MacLean Esq.
[All rights reserved by the author and anyone part of the author’s Estate]
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I whispered “wait!” to the portals
and it seemed they laughed.
I, whose cleare body was so pure and thinne and
twine-twinned like the lover’s knot that soldiers pledge
as they weigh themselves, then stay then freeze in bloods.
I said: “If puppets could sing I’d make them hate”
and, though joking, and joking still, they elected me
to hound them.
“I’m born!”, I cried
and like sloths all took to bustling by.
“I’m dead!” (shrewd words I thought)
but was found, days later, bristled in comfort.
I’m not up to this.
Such pander.
I stay seated and slouched. I pondering why the door is open:
like a slave tomorrow, with his poor kindreds,
thinks he’s free to go to die like pigs
stuck on a Calendar spit
(unthought or mere concocted date?).
Something keeps me back from all this.
’Though not fright.
And yet I’ve also played the game.
Well... yes, I have.
I paid in dust, the falcon a vexillum in change.
I then tried to pay in gold –
well, yes... just to see –
but they commuted me with a dancing bear
a hare now broods.
But none of this has sense.
All is weak comparison:
a spun top without a string.
What thoughts I have have dreams:
refracted tatters only...
of perennial of perambulatory of permanence
in doubt whether to authenticate the Door.
I smile to myself and say:
“What sense is there in all of this...”
Now that the Doors are not mountain but grave.
(Hurstpierpoint, Sussex – dated 1915)
Major-General Douglas Cameron-Smyth of that Ilk (Retired)
address given
I would also like objecting. The French are not afraid of tigers, only Germans.
Colonel Pierre Debauch Vichy (Retiring)
I do highly consider this poetic nonsense to be on the fences. The Germans have not yet ever occupied tigers.
Marie Caroline Olga Louise Astrid Ingeborg Bettenberg-Hesse
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