Dream

For months the heat of love has kept me marching,

now I am healthy, and I cannot stand;

women see through me like a head of cheese.

Boys on a gold enamelled goiterband:

boys in ultra-violet tights and doublets,

from the costume shop of Botticelli,

albino Absaloms; they probe my thicket

with pikes and wingnets, and I try to breathe,

I try to keep up breathing when I hide.

This is not Florence, or German mercenaries;

this is England, main artery of fighting—mercy was murder

at Towton when King Edward’s heralds counted

twenty thousand Lancastrian dead in the field,

doubling the number killed to make the count.