With Ann opposite me at supper table, I peered outside at the leaves, beyond the oriel, and denounced myself as I ate, enumerated my festering faults. I tasted little, wishing for sensible words and tranquil mind. But there was no shutting the door.
“Eat, Will,” she said, and I nodded, but dared not glance at her, to find the stranger and myself. I resented her as if her infidelities were yesterday’s, as if my side of life could be ruled out, as if we were young...
Patience has not helped. Only forgiveness can.
Leaves drop from the trees and the kettle bubbles and we feed ourselves, grieving. Our shields are in place but the lances were broken years ago. Our visors are down, our plumes awry. Our horses have been killed in the field. Without pennons, we move our gauntleted hands in rusty bewilderment, slow-gaited with many, many abysmal hungers.
Henley Street – ’15
I kept a stray in my London apartment: after feeding him while on one of my strolls along the Thames I could not shake him: Pericles had a soothsayer’s mug dripping with ignominious grey whiskers, a privateer’s baleful eye, a silver-grey hide, a black tail, three white feet, a black-booted foot, and a bark like a tin pot clipping the pavement. When it came to food, Pericles was greedier than Shylock for a pound; piercing me with piratical eyes, he sat up, wagged for pity, then slumped in grief, moaning better than any stage madonna. Pericles and Jonson became the best of friends: pieces of bread or cheese from Ben’s pocket ordained him lord and master. Along the Thames, Pericles flew after every bird, yapping incessantly; it seemed to me he could run all day and never tire. When left to guard the apartment, he kept to a mat inside the door, gradually sheathing it with a coat of silver-grey hair.
Shakespeare and Ashley meshed in fog:
They duel in a fog meadow.
Fog blows away before Julius Caesar’s ruined castle