Not Wanted Here: Ninth Tattersby

 

 

The Folly

Tattersby

 

 

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Not Wanted Here

 

Awkward. He reminds himself he’d said it to the host

Not long ago. He’d meant Fiona. Tattersby. And the awkwardness was

Sex. Well, but…the guest says, temporizing. In this dense fog,

strolling with somnambulant, cautious footing, he feels the sheen of mist

like Lady Gimple’s atomizer. When he’d been her tutor,

she had sprayed him with her Joy, making sticky the Chaucer, and smiling…laughing,

he must say, to see his eyes water. But what had been the notion…

It was this. That as the leaden pull of breakers, at the seaside, and the salt air,

make one feel not alone—but party to the wailing drowned,

he frets these spirits may have heard

A thought

No, he says aloud for their sake. I impute nothing. The French are different

And Miss Harvey. She, of course, is an American.

But, on the prudent side, I am not wanted here.

 

A ring shapes itself in parting obscurity

A gong-like train’s whistle

About that, where it seems to hit the scale

Shows teasing black, a dream of standing stones,

Else a funhouse mirage

Of Dougal’s boundary post, reduplicated.

Not his, of course, a borough feature

Meant to stand as sentinel, for public order

A speaking voice, he cannot fear it

And yet uncertain that he hears it

 

‘Squier, com neer, if it your wille be,

And sey somwhat of love; for, certes, ye

Connen theron as muche as any man.’

 

Roguish laughter.

We haven’t met

You and I, my scholarly predecessor.

Pre-deceased, think of that!

Poor bugger’s heart snuffed like ash.

Reggie! Dear old intrepid Reggie, him, we shan’t forget!

Falsetto:  I call, and my lover answers not.

Ha, ha!

Tattersby, chained on a spit, crisped to a cinder.

Inskip, daft prat! You’re for it now, lad!

Thou pair of captives, ye who live

And the hecatomb of my lady Lucille’s dead

 

 

 

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Not Wanted Here

Roscoe Bevington: Tenth Tattersby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2017, Stephanie Foster)