Not Wanted Here (poem)

 

 

 

Not Wanted Here

[from The Folly]

 

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

Not long ago. Meaning Fiona. 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 had been her tutor

and she’d sprayed him with her Joy, sticking up the Chaucer, and—

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 is, of course, 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.

(Or not precisely his, 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 fag 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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Uncollected Poems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2017, Stephanie Foster)