James Reiss
Myrtle Grove Inside a stone wall four huge yew trees said To be a thousand years old towered above The house where Walter Raleigh went to bed And dreamed one night that he was making love With Queen Elizabeth, who doffed a glove And quipped, "Kind Sir, no royal stands as tall, No yew tree sports such bristly branches of Enchantment and desire as you in all My kingdom from far London to your manse in Youghal." The arched door opened to a chilly floor Whose walls, three arms' lengths thick, were built to last For.centuries with no one to restore Them and lure Irish poor folk to their pastWalls housing Brits alongside locals fast Creating chaos, who would soon burn down The castle of a courtier who'd harassed Them tooth and nail from countryside to town, Then lifted tankards of pale ale to England's crown. One day he visited and eyed the yew Trees poking through a scrim of morning mist, Whereat his host said, "Edmund, see that blue Patch in the sky? It equals what we've missed. Whether we've been rebuffed or we've been kissed, We can't hold anything that won't be gone: No lady love or lucre or-by Christ!No thought of heaping glory on our Queen Will save our swansongs from the mist that shrouds the swan." His friend, who would die first, who dreamed he'd live To write his way to immortality, . Stepped through the threshold and declared, "Forgive My candor when I say I feel so free Inside your house, so far from misery -These seaside city streets where squalor loomsThat I could write nine lines of poetry And call the stanza by my name. Your rooms Are flowerbeds in which an epic poem blooms." 22
FUGUE #33