Read Online The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber - Free Book Online Page B

prayers
to pull us from this darkness into light.
But snuff us out, who cares?
     
                                                       Oh, shameless world.
    I’ll hold a mirror to your ugliness
until you see you contribute each squint,
each pustulence, to the grotesquerie.
     
    Oh, former loved but never-loving world.
We poets have a duty to believe
in goodness, beauty and the human heart.
Forgive me, then. How deeply I must grieve
that I’m struck down for having better faith.
     
    A rabbit screams its murder. Bullies read
the bloodied claw of nature as a cue
to justify themselves as predators.
     
    The landscape sits as passive as a priest
receiving our confessions, and the globe
revolves beneath the heavens: night, then day,
then night again. A lifetime falls away
as water poured on sand until we ask,
     
    What is a human being? Are we clay?
Excrescences of light? Bright animals
adopting gross stupidity? Or gods
pelted in human skin, come down to play,
create, destroy, find joy in misery?
The moon squats on the mountains like a pearl.
It only has to rise, and will be free.

THE HOG LANE AFFRAY
    Hog Lane, just after two, three years ago.
After a meal of mutton and cold beer
with Thomas Nashe, I’m strolling back to work
on Doctor Faustus when the Devil himself
calls out behind me: ‘There’s the beardless man
who slandered me!’ It’s Bradley and a friend,
George Orrell, full of ale and parsnip stew
and outrage. ‘I believe I complimented you
on your uprightness,’ I said.
                                                         ‘Untrammelled shit.
    Give me your sword,’ he says to Orrell, ‘quick.
I’ll slice his head off. Then we’ll see whose brains
are bigger.’ Clumsily, he wrests the sword
from his large friend’s scabbard. Orrell shoves him off,
annoyed to be handled. Yet eager to assist,
he hands his yeoman friend a soldier’s blade.
The rapier at my waist weighs half as much,
but neither of us has experience.
     
    ‘That’s not a duelling weapon.’
                                                             ‘I don’t care.
    A fighting weapon’s all I’m looking for.’
     
    ‘Don’t start this thing.’
     
                                                 ‘You started it yourself.
    The night you wouldn’t get out of my chair.
I’m here to finish it.’
     
                                             He hawks and spits
    a fat green slug of phlegm on to the dirt.
Nashe whispers, ‘I’ll get Watson,’ and flits off
through the gathering crowd, who, with their stink and breath,
are drawn by the hope of blood and spectacle
to make our arena. I watch my flame-haired friend
like an urgent signal flashing up the street,
dodging the foul discharge of a chamber pot
before he’s swallowed up in passageways.
     
    ‘I’ve got no fight with you, my friend,’ I say.
     
    ‘I’m not your friend.’ He slides a greasy hand
across his mouth, as if he’s tasted me.
‘Draw if you call yourself a man.’
                                                                   ‘I do.
    But a gentleman.’ I slide the rapier tip
into the air with a flourish, though my heart
is knocking to be let out. ‘And I would rather
settle with words. But if you’re disposed to fight
I’ll prove that wit’s superior to sword
by dodging you.’
     
                               He narrows blazing eyes.
    ‘I’ll have your wits on a skewer. Come here, boy.’
He beckons with his free hand. ‘Let’s have some blood.’
     
    ‘Show him what for!’ A shout comes from the back.
It’s Eric, the local butcher’s lad. ‘Now, Eric’ –
my sword tip drops to the ground – ‘should you not be
about