Three More Poems from the Plaguey Bill

The Secret of Polichinelle

As in a comedia dell’arte production, the art

exceeds the comedy, when Polichinelle is heard

in blitherings of some old and fat senior Fart,

and life becomes a tragedy, the herd

applauding nonsense by the circus cart

that pushes donkeys, mules and asses, fleas

and ladybugs upon the stage of history:

abscesses, abbesses and other absurdities,

while we who flee the plague, and they the ague,

argue with Scaramouche, bottle-nosed flies and gnats

dance scatter-brained and all befuddled, like Harlequins

in padded suits, straw-yellow wigs, with sequins,

and purple noses, crimson ears held on by pins:

until at last, alas, we find the funny  hats

helicopters to rise above our sins.

Miasma and Mirrors in Masks

The pandemical masquerade goes on, in spite of all:

The solemn doctors in their protective costumes, plumes

And mirrors made of pasteboard; cutting capers

And sliding against the grain down the hall

Of patients; and outside, the miasma, stinking vapours

And mouldy stench, on the canals, where grooms

And guardians walk in darkness carrying tapers

Creating shadows, silhouettes that fall

Across the moats, the gutters, the sewers—consume

The powder of wigs and the flakes of gold, of rapers

And murderers as they pirouette into the wall,

Like painted corpses in a sickly Masque of Doom,

From Venice to Vienna, from London to Loudon,

The violence of viruses, the silence, the bourdon.

The Maker of Cupules, Ten Thousand Years Ago

I had never made these little cups in the rock before,

Though for a thousand years someone like me has chipped

And chiselled, blow after blow, deeper into the core

Of the earth, narrower and narrower, hand never slipped;

The deeper I cut into the darkness, then more and more

My mind is exposed, my thoughts and dreams are ripped

Out of the nothingness of mindless matter. I bore

Into previous caverns, into cavities of light where dripped

The limestone sculptures and rose into things that roar

Against the endless night, my song unlipped

From chants and riddles, each soundless word a store

Of knowledge, a fount of wisdom—I unlocked the crypt

Of logical propositions, solemn insights, and sure

Against the tides of ignorance…until I slipped

Into my final years and cried out for a cure

That never comes, where someone else will endure.