#130

Poets these and artful dodges. Opening gambits with biographemes. Stephen in his cornered prose admits: the bards have left through doors. Unto. And such and so on. While John in the bibliopile strikes through a diffident note. Line and liens to order in hardback, in triplicate, vellum: thrice. Face out and open. While the bowels of the libraria are scattered and scuttered with roaches. This, thinks Stephen, will be key to my story of Elaine and the fire God.

And so I let him do the thinking. For this, my poet's ear, is swollen still with echoes. Were I these words were woods, say, and Keith were with me there. Or the glorious gate of Sabot, and what the market offers. Footmen with books that line stairwells. And my hand at sixteen, which in prancing curves observed: that it was in the faint wind of a failing September...

Then, and ago, did I see already amongst swans and funerals Cory's form in rough shades? The lines of his face in Keith's writing? This is what will be, when it is, what it was. That younger me in red sweatshirt and arche-page. Runnin' back from the trees with the Sidh behind 'im. A-turm, a-tum. And love: first a rose even older, remember?