Macaulay is well for a while, but one wouldn’t live under Niagara.
-Carlyle

When we are with due ceremony wed,
to Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay;
and after our brief honeymoon abroad,
the cries of ‘Hooshtah!’ ‘Hooshtah!’ still
ringing in our ears, our wedding night,
as of indelicate silks deftly withdrawn,
a blest present remembrance; only then
shall we make our casual way through
the intricate English snickets and come
to inhabit these streets, the true bazaars
of Zion.

Then shall the old agony be abated;
then shall omniscient schoolchildren
speak with the prolixity of angels.
Then shall we shy newlyweds bask,
holding hands in the sun’s thin chill,
sipping our sweet, sacrosanct cha,
nibbling a well-nigh-melting rarebit
in nuptial rapture: no longer there,
where we have, for so long, longed
to be gathered, married, together,
but Here.


Prisoner

Injustice showed you more
than enough of horror:
‘The child’s face was like a white
wedge of sheer terror.’

In your honour, Oscar,
nothing less will do:
when all is said and done,
that wallpaper must go.

God knows where. Truth
bestows its just rewards.
Wondrous, your best are
all last Words.


Narcissus
Skinny- Dipping

Bare in the mirror-river with his
only love, entranced Narcissus

tried the elongated back-stroke,
tender breast-stroke, subtle side-stroke,

rehearsed the strong Australian crawl
(it was no earthly use at all);

then, as one man, thought to try
the double-handed butterfly!

At last! Beside themselves they came
each moaning his beloved’s name,

each with his image inundated!
O nevermore so sweetly sated!

See — hand in hand, white belly-up,
they float within the perfect tup,

to tugging current, lapping wave,
the pair of him a selfsame slave.

This jealous rumor echoed round:
that both the one of them had drowned.

Balls! Happy as a one-man-band,
he drifts downstream to la-la land;

he, woven as his blossom-spouse,
binds the night-starved Furies’ brows.