Simon Jenner

1348, by St George

Edward conjured me through the

smaller trade routes: Portugal, Capadocia,

to displace the fazed sainted idiocy

of that elder Edward, who’d muted England

to a carapace of white submission.

It was a perfect leapt year. Plenty stalked

those commercial veins: spice, fleas, pearls,

diced wth the sailors. They spliced

the Death of course, tetchy in its

guttural progress. I was Edward’s double

purgative. Ever after, English teetth

bared a tighter rictus like a corpse.

Crecy was nothing on Poitiers, Agincourt.

I’d doctored your blood; who survived

the bubo was bellicose.

That’s not truth, but metaphor becoming

truth, down to the last yew-drawn

hung obsession, to the last regalia’d

corgi jest: you have the Georgian grin,

the age’s shadow of my sword’s length

whispering the rust of all saints militant.

You’ve made your death, you’ll have to lie in it.

Simon Jenner © 2008