Plain and Ugly Terms: Tenth German Spy
The Folly
The German Spy
Plain and Ugly Terms
Now I never smile
That, Fiona, brings the flicker of one your own
(I saw)
Ah—
But in plain and ugly terms…in simplicity, of course, why lie?
We are measuring ourselves as we are
Those mortal remains of mine stretch wide
Flesh devoured or dried, my allegory’s grin…
I apologize
I must tell you where they are, these bones
Half mummified
Among the favours I will ask…
No.
You remember when Atherleigh surprised you
and me
Just there in the hall, letting it slip
You’d been fighting with Simon
Wennie was six, you hadn’t met him,
and you’d asked if the salmon was all right
With, as he said (afterwards) admirable aplomb
You spoke to me more kindly, I think, than you felt
Because you would not speak to him
What did we talk about?
Oh, my dear…I likely harped on the theme
of Tattersby failings, bred in the bone.
I said so. Nasty cat. I doubt it’s ever really true.
No, the cold mechanics
of decomposition won’t trouble me, to hear of
Very little does.
You want to know how he managed it.
Some chemical they kept that could explode
If touched by water
He had rigged a balloon inside another
And timed the acid’s work without the horrid third
Fifteen minutes, he’d gathered all the papers
To not be seen as Atherleigh leaving, dressed
in a groundsman’s gear
And the shock that they had found a body
I can now account for
The men who’d brought on Falco
Merely falsified the story
Plain and Ugly Terms
Older in Their Wisdom
(2018, Stephanie Foster)