Poem: The Plainest SOng In All England

Here it is, the new installation in the hals of sad stories:

A shadowy attic

The North Sea coast

I am inspired to salvage

A poorly varnished secretary

Offers this mysterious sacrament

A cream colored note

I love

I have come to bury

In defiance of the Lord’s fiat

I dwell willfully

My mind redecorated

In the manner of a cool

Windowless basement

We were poets

We were full glasses

Left on the brink of the bitter ends

I read the two words

Uttering in harmony

My hatred for the five insipid marks

For their simplicity

For their naivety

I sing them tunelessly

In imitation of the careless notation

and find them flat

And so it’s possible

This is the plainest song in all England

Its dingy ghost

Stands without appeal

Against the intrigues of history

They are not witches

That clumsily conjured it

Merely humiliated alchemists of language

Dashing on the shallows

Of the explicit

The choir of Daedalus

They were moved to tears

Staring at the impartial sun

Not for loss

Not for injustice

But from a quiet

Unspoken pride

Midday relaxes

On the open windows of the studio

I worked all morning

Priming this canvas

Mixing these paints

Paying too much for this brush

It approaches the tabula rasa

With dark intent

Strikes seven empty tones

and drops silently

We loved