Setebos

Who could play Miranda?

Only you. Ferdinand – only me.

And it was like that, yes, it was like that.

I never questioned. Your mother

Played Prospero, flying her magic in

To stage the Masque, and bless the marriage,

Eavesdropping on the undervoices

Of the honeymooners in Paris

And smiling on the stair at her reflection

In the dark wall. My wreckage

Was all of a sudden a new wardrobe, unworn,

Even gold in my teeth. Ariel

Entertained us night and day.

The voices and sounds and sweet airs

Were our aura. Ariel was our aura.

Both of us alternated

Caliban our secret, who showed us

The sweetest, the freshest, the wildest

And loved us as we loved. Sycorax,

The rind of our garden’s emptied quince,

Bobbed in the hazy surf at the horizon

Offshore, in the wings

Of the heavens, like a director

Studying the scenes to come.

Then the script overtook us. Caliban

Reverted to type. I heard

The bellow in your voice

That made my nape-hair prickle when you sang

How you were freed from the Elm. I lay

In the labyrinth of a cowslip

Without a clue. I heard the Minotaur

Coming down its tunnel-groove

Of old faults deep and bitter. King Minos,

Alias Otto – his bellow

Winding into murderous music. Which play

Were we in? Too late to find you

And get to my ship. The moon, off her moorings,

Tossed in tempest. Your bellowing song

Was a scream inside a bronze

Bull being roasted. The laughter

Of Sycorax was thunder and lightning

And black downpour. She hurled

Prospero’s head at me,

A bounding thunderbolt, a jumping cracker.

The moon’s horns

Plunged and tossed. I heard your cries

Bugling through the hot bronze:

‘Who has dismembered us?’ I crawled

Under a gabardine, hugging tight

All I could of me, hearing the cry

Now of hounds.