“Sovereignty does not regard the relation between father and son. A king, it is said, should deem no man his relation.” Jahangir, Mughal of India 1605-1627.

Rocks.
Snatched from the mountain’s womb, these eggs
Hatch, in human beds,
Strife. Even the white is flushed in pigeon blood.

Suns
Unsetting unsettle the mind. The peacock’s eyes,
Blind, mesmerize
The pack. Whelps of wolves soon grown: my sons.

Embers
Cold heat the blood, make feet quicken, pulses roar,
Stain marble floors
Red. We waltz. Gaffs steeled to sliver, dismember.

Flames,
Quenched from one offspring’s pits, rotten holes,
Burn on, having gold
Fuel. The breed’s carbuncle stare scorch the planes.

I had forgotten about her.
She sat on tiles transcribing
Frost’s overgrown road,
Spelled out bruised Eliot’s hysteria
In meticulous letters on bronze
Transparent paper. Trembling hands
Caused the cut to butterfly into
The trash.

I put her in a box,
Took down her carefully arranged
Postcards to noone,
And moved.

I plucked
The postcards and packed
Them away, her away, into a box.
Lid on.

I moved into an orange room, light
Shining so fully I did not
Want to interrupt.
I stacked, spine up,
Books on a sideboard,
Clothes in boxes to kick
While I dined. Bed, table and sideboard
Covered in white cloth.

As the books bordered, fell over like
An unharmonious accordion, and clothes
Permanently wrinkled, I cut the wood
And moved

Into a two-bed bedroom. White walls.
The haze set in. I forgot. I forget
Even now what that life was. I read
The days to their ends.

I shut
The door and buried
My nose, head and body into a book.
Shut up.

I moved thrice more before I
Found the PCs -
Postcards and papercuttings -
From Margot’s time.

She must be shrivelled by now.