When we came to the country place of Jack Morpurgo
it had a moat, by God, a dry moat.
Jack hosted us in through a massive portal, groaning
on black hinges big as battleships.
Our breath was white ice in the rugless hall:
stones scooped and softened by centuries of shoes—
boot, buskin, slipper, sandal, patten, clog.
“In here,” said
Jack, opening a paneled door
on relative warmth where a fire cavorted over
the torso of a forest giant. Who hauled it in?
Not the white hands of bookish Jack Morpurgo
or his wife, the actress Kay, who knelt on the hearth
to stir a hissing jug with a hot poker.
I crooked my neck at the ceiling in disbelief;
hundreds of carven squares and each unique.
Awestruck I lay on my back, the better to look.
“Others have done the same before,” said Jack.
“This was a king’s hunting lodge;
fourteen-something, we think. Some bloody Henry or other.”
Firelight flattered the ancient patterning
As I stared at the unsigned masterwork above,
Kay set a steaming mug beside my hand;
But what was this chill as if from underground?—
a royal spectre passed in vair and velvet
and kicked me lightly, taking me for his hound.