by Ted Jean (November 2025)
–
The morning of his summoning to certain death,
William Hawke, the recusant, made love to his wife.
He had thought it would be in the service of her,
alone, accepting that the impendancy of torture
might preoccupy, and, indeed, in her ignorance of
his plight, she came twice over under the rapt
valedictory ministrations of his mouth and hands
upon the slender brown body he had worshiped
for thirty years; but to his surprise, his minor falcon,
too, rose for one final spiral ascent to heaven.
–
With an hour to kill before his carriage, he stooped
to his board to add the voices of two more viols
to a pavane in progress for a kindly idiot patron,
and kissed the brows of each his seven children.
He stood outside the door, then, in the gentlest rain
had ever darkened his coat with cold, watched
the disingenuous drama of the sky, and shivered.
–
_____________________***
–
In the court of the king, his adoring dangerous angel,
William squared his shoulders, could do nothing
with his heaving chest, and rehearsed his covenants.
Henry cited, whined and thundered, threatening
castration and tedious disembowelment before
hanging, quartering, decapitation. Will saw that
the royal trousers were pissed; his Sire’s sores
wept through the coppery hair on his freckled arms.
He wished he could sing for his tormented prince,
something about the passion of their young Christ.
Well, who was sorrier? They both sobbed, took
oaths, by turns, averted their loving eyes; but
Will was stronger, and Henry roared dismissal.
–
_____________________***
–
A circumspect Mass was to be made in Gatestone,
home of Lord Petres, and the service of William Hawke
to be sung by a choir of well-schooled eunuchs.
A rough pilgrim, woolen darkly, with two attendants,
knocked at the gate and was given compassionate entry;
so Henry hunkered in the dim postern of the manor chapel.
–
His thin guise widely guessed, the shameless despot
audited the soaring missal ordinary of his thrall and master.
Head down, his thick red neck deflected, Henry strained
at the taut polyphony, his only experience of oppression.
He strove to pray, to repent extremes in the service of rule,
but he was engulfed in sound, pinned at the nape
by the wind and brass of voices, weaving, ducking,
wavering at the plaintive edge of reckless exaltation.
So he simply wept, and rolled his eyes to heaven.
–
_____________________***
–
William passed in the back of a cart down a cobbled alley
beneath the teary gaze of his sovereign in late September,
too weary with thirst in a stony cell to think very clearly.
Gibbet visions mixed with the scratchy muttering of viols
and the petulant complaints of his wife that he comply,
as he tried to clasp the conjured icon of a crucified redeemer.
–
William’s gift was of God, but Henry’s to countenance
and direct, and with William’s denial, Henry’s duty to end.
The gallows priest didn’t quite get it, and in his delivery,
got it all wrong: something muddled about Henry’s duty
to William’s end, and so, withal,
and an Anglican prayer of untouchable beauty,
Will dropped through the gate and danced a while
before gathered London, and several of his offspring,
embarked upon a separate journey, accompanied,
perhaps, by a modest choir of modal angels.
=
Table of Contents
Ted Jean is a carpenter, painter, and plays tennis with Amy Lee. His work appears in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, PANK, DIAGRAM, North American Review, Blue Earth Review, dozens of other publications.
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