Holy relic

Lay in bed till 7 o’clock, yet rose with an opinion that it was not 5, and so continued though I heard the clock strike, till noon, and would not believe that it was so late as it truly was. I was hardly ever so mistaken in my life before.
Up and to Sir G. Carteret at his house, and spoke to him about business, but he being in a bad humour I had no mind to stay with him, but walked, drinking my morning draft of whay, by the way, to York House, where the Russia Embassador do lie; and there I saw his people go up and down louseing themselves: they are all in a great hurry, being to be gone the beginning of next week. But that that pleased me best, was the remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing in his house, in every place, in the doorcases and the windows.
By and by comes Sir John Hebden, the Russia Resident, to me, and he and I in his coach to White Hall, to Secretary Morrice’s, to see the orders about the Russia hemp that is to be fetched from Archangel for our King, and that being done, to coach again, and he brought me into the City and so I home; and after dinner abroad by water, and met by appointment Mr. Deane in the Temple Church, and he and I over to Mr. Blackbury’s yard, and thence to other places, and after that to a drinking house, in all which places I did so practise and improve my measuring of timber, that I can now do it with great ease and perfection, which do please me mightily.
This fellow Deane is a conceited fellow, and one that means the King a great deal of service, more of disservice to other people that go away with the profits which he cannot make; but, however, I learn much of him, and he is, I perceive, of great use to the King in his place, and so I shall give him all the encouragement I can.
Home by water, and having wrote a letter for my wife to my Lady Sandwich to copy out to send this night’s post, I to the office, and wrote there myself several things, and so home to supper and bed. My mind being troubled to think into what a temper of neglect I have myself flung my wife into by my letting her learn to dance, that it will require time to cure her of, and I fear her going into the country will but make her worse; but only I do hope in the meantime to spend my time well in my office, with more leisure than while she is here.
Hebden, to-day in the coach, did tell me how he is vexed to see things at Court ordered as they are by nobody that attends to business, but every man himself or his pleasures. He cries up my Lord Ashley to be almost the only man that he sees to look after business; and with that ease and mastery, that he wonders at him. He cries out against the King’s dealing so much with goldsmiths, and suffering himself to have his purse kept and commanded by them.
He tells me also with what exact care and order the States of Holland’s stores are kept in their Yards, and every thing managed there by their builders with such husbandry as is not imaginable; which I will endeavour to understand further, if I can by any means learn.

a pinion mistaken
for the remains of an archangel

ought to point
to other places

to drinking away the night
and letting dance cure fear

but we see only a wonder
a kept thing

managed with such husbandry
as is imaginable


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 6 June 1663.

100% post-consumer

Up and to read a little, and by and by the carver coming, I directed him how to make me a neat head for my viall that is making. About 10 o’clock my wife and I, not without some discontent, abroad by coach, and I set her at her father’s; but their condition is such that she will not let me see where they live, but goes by herself when I am out of sight. Thence to my brother’s, taking care for a passage for my wife the next week in a coach to my father’s, and thence to Paul’s Churchyard, where I found several books ready bound for me; among others, the new Concordance of the Bible, which pleases me much, and is a book I hope to make good use of. Thence, taking the little History of England with me, I went by water to Deptford, where Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten attending the Pay; I dined with them, and there Dr. Britton, parson of the town, a fine man and good company, dined with us, and good discourse. After dinner I left them and walked to Redriffe, and thence to White Hall, and at my Lord’s lodgings found my wife, and thence carried her to see my Lady Jemimah, but she was not within. So to Mr. Turner’s, and there saw Mr. Edward Pepys’s lady, who my wife concurs with me to be very pretty, as most women we ever saw. So home, and after a walk in the garden a little troubled to see my wife take no more pleasure with Ashwell, but neglect her and leave her at home. Home to supper and to bed.

make me a head
that will let me see where I am
out of books and hope

use a history of arson
to turn me to ash


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 5 June 1663.

Want, Need

Hunger’s the lesson best learned
from tasting with your hands.

Which is to say: before you
can eat, first you must skin

what refuses to yield, stoop
to plant deep in the soil

a branch or a seed that might grow
to fill the outline of your need.

Do you know what you really need?
I don’t either. All I know

is some days my longing is a wing
stretched bright across a quivering

spine. Some days it’s a road
at the end of which a furnace glows,

and not an inn on the way there
where the broth has not grown cold.

The life before

This entry is part 15 of 15 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2016

 

Dark wings like a damp umbrella—
the smell of rain before rain itself.

Light a sheet beaten with spoons,
glancing mercurial off water.

High on cliff ledges, rare birds’ nests.
Mummies in caves, prim with drawn knees.

What you touched in me: medallion with raised edges.

Mummies in caves, prim with dawn knees.
High on cliff ledges, rare birds’ nests.

Glancing mercurial off water,
light a sheet beaten with spoons.

The smell of rain before rain itself.
Dark wings like a damp umbrella.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The coming storm

Up betimes, and my wife and Ashwell and I whiled away the morning up and down while they got themselves ready, and I did so watch to see my wife put on drawers, which poor soul she did, and yet I could not get off my suspicions, she having a mind to go into Fenchurch Street before she went out for good and all with me, which I must needs construe to be to meet Pembleton, when she afterwards told me it was to buy a fan that she had not a mind that I should know of, and I believe it is so. Specially I did by a wile get out of my boy that he did not yesterday go to Pembleton’s or thereabouts, but only was sent all that time for some starch, and I did see him bringing home some, and yet all this cannot make my mind quiet.
At last by coach I carried her to Westminster Hall, and they two to Mrs. Bowyer to go from thence to my wife’s father’s and Ashwell to hers, and by and by seeing my wife’s father in the Hall, and being loth that my wife should put me to another trouble and charge by missing him to-day, I did employ a porter to go from a person unknown to tell him his daughter was come to his lodgings, and I at a distance did observe him, but, Lord! what a company of questions he did ask him, what kind of man I was, and God knows what. So he went home, and after I had staid in the Hall a good while, where I heard that this day the Archbishop of Canterbury, Juxon, a man well spoken of by all for a good man, is dead; and the Bishop of London is to have his seat. Home by water, where by and by comes Dean Honiwood, and I showed him my double horizontal diall, and promise to give him one, and that shall be it. So, without eating or drinking, he went away to Mr. Turner’s, where Sir J. Minnes do treat my Lord Chancellor and a great deal of guests to-day with a great dinner, which I thank God I do not pay for; and besides, I doubt it is too late for any man to expect any great service from my Lord Chancellor, for which I am sorry, and pray God a worse do not come in his room.
So I to dinner alone, and so to my chamber, and then to the office alone, my head aching and my mind in trouble for my wife, being jealous of her spending the day, though God knows I have no great reason. Yet my mind is troubled. By and by comes Will Howe to see us, and walked with me an hour in the garden, talking of my Lord’s falling to business again, which I am glad of, and his coming to lie at his lodgings at White Hall again.
The match between Sir J. Cutts and my Lady Jemimah, he says, is likely to go on; for which I am glad.
In the Hall to-day Dr. Pierce tells me that the Queen begins to be brisk, and play like other ladies, and is quite another woman from what she was, of which I am glad. It may be, it may make the King like her the better, and forsake his two mistresses, my Lady Castlemaine and Stewart.
He gone we sat at the office till night, and then home, where my wife is come, and has been with her father all the afternoon, and so home, and she and I to walk in the garden, giving ear to her discourse of her father’s affairs, and I found all well.
So after putting things in order at my office, home to supper and to bed.

the soul of suspicion
about all this quiet

they should employ me
at a company of questions

a man well spoken
for a dead man

falling and coming to lie
like brisk ice in the discourse of air


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 4 June 1663.

In the country of grief

It is midsummer, or the time
just before rain.

All day workers dig in the soil
to set a french drain down.

As they turn stones aside,
worms writhe in a frenzy of light.

Meanwhile in the country of grief
writers and scholars begin

to draft petitions, wondering
how soon they might have to go

into hiding. A woman has just
been elected vice president,

but she and all other women
are told they should expect

to be catcalled and shamed
in public. In the country

of grief, the trains fill
and fill all night

with desperate pedestrians.
Nameless bodies begin

to turn up in the fields
at dawn. Such sovereignty

feels both familiar and
shockingly new. Fleeing

before the impending storm,
small creatures run blind

into ditches and traps.
Thunderclouds spit

like loudmouths with no
regard for law or protocol.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sad times.

Idyll

Up betimes, and studying of my double horizontal diall against Dean Honiwood comes to me, who dotes mightily upon it, and I think I must give it him.
So after talking with Sir W. Batten, who is this morning gone to Guildhall to his trial with Field, I to my office, and there read all the morning in my statute-book, consulting among others the statute against selling of offices, wherein Mr. Coventry is so much concerned; and though he tells me that the statute do not reach him, yet I much fear that it will.
At noon, hearing that the trial is done, and Sir W. Batten come to the Sun behind the Exchange I went thither, where he tells me that he had much ado to carry it on his side, but that at last he did, but the jury, by the judge’s favour, did give us but 10l. damages and the charges of the suit, which troubles me; but it is well it went not against us, which would have been much worse.
So to the Exchange, and thence home to dinner, taking Deane of Woolwich along with me, and he dined alone with my wife being undressed, and he and I spent all the afternoon finely, learning of him the method of drawing the lines of a ship, to my great satisfaction, and which is well worth my spending some time in, as I shall do when my wife is gone into the country. In the evening to the office and did some business, then home, and, God forgive me, did from my wife’s unwillingness to tell me whither she had sent the boy, presently suspect that he was gone to Pembleton’s, and from that occasion grew so discontented that I could hardly speak or sleep all night.

sun behind her dress
the lines of a hip

on a country evening
so content I hardly speak


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 3 June 1663.

Rumiesque

Up and by water to White Hall and so to St. James’s, to Mr. Coventry; where I had an hour’s private talk with him. Most of it was discourse concerning his own condition, at present being under the censure of the House, being concerned with others in the Bill for selling of offices. He tells me, that though he thinks himself to suffer much in his fame hereby, yet he values nothing more of evil to hang over him for that it is against no statute, as is pretended, nor more than what his predecessors time out of mind have taken; and that so soon as he found himself to be in an errour, he did desire to have his fees set, which was done; and since that he hath not taken a token more. He undertakes to prove, that he did never take a token of any captain to get him employed in his life beforehand, or demanded any thing: and for the other accusation, that the Cavaliers are not employed, he looked over the list of them now in the service, and of the twenty-seven that are employed, thirteen have been heretofore always under the King; two neutralls, and the other twelve men of great courage, and such as had either the King’s particular commands, or great recommendation to put them in, and none by himself. Besides that, he says it is not the King’s nor Duke’s opinion that the whole party of the late officers should be rendered desperate. And lastly, he confesses that the more of the Cavaliers are put in, the less of discipline hath followed in the fleet; and that, whenever there comes occasion, it must be the old ones that must do any good, there being only, he says, but Captain Allen good for anything of them all.
He tells me, that he cannot guess whom all this should come from; but he suspects Sir G. Carteret, as I also do, at least that he is pleased with it. But he tells me that he will bring Sir G. Carteret to be the first adviser and instructor of him what to make his place of benefit to him; telling him that Smith did make his place worth 5000l. and he believed 7000l. to him the first year; besides something else greater than all this, which he forbore to tell me.
It seems one Sir Thomas Tomkins of the House, that makes many mad motions, did bring it into the House, saying that a letter was left at his lodgings, subscribed by one Benson (which is a feigned name, for there is no such man in the Navy), telling him how many places in the Navy have been sold. And by another letter, left in the same manner since, nobody appearing, he writes him that there is one Hughes and another Butler (both rogues, that have for their roguery been turned out of their places), that will swear that Mr. Coventry did sell their places and other things.
I offered him my service, and will with all my heart serve him; but he tells me he do not think it convenient to meddle, or to any purpose, but is sensible of my love therein.
So I bade him good morrow, he being out of order to speak anything of our office business, and so away to Westminster Hall, where I hear more of the plot from Ireland; which it seems hath been hatching, and known to the Lord Lieutenant a great while, and kept close till within three days that it should have taken effect. The term ended yesterday, and it seems the Courts rose sooner, for want of causes, than it is remembered to have done in the memory of man.
Thence up and down about business in several places, as to speak with Mr. Phillips, but missed him, and so to Mr. Beacham, the goldsmith, he being one of the jury to-morrow in Sir W. Batten’s case against Field. I have been telling him our case, and I believe he will do us good service there.
So home, and seeing my wife had dined I went, being invited, and dined with Sir W. Batten, Sir J. Minnes, and others, at Sir W. Batten’s, Captain Allen giving them a Foy dinner, he being to go down to lie Admiral in the Downs this summer. I cannot but think it a little strange that having been so civil to him as I have been he should not invite me to dinner, but I believe it was but a sudden motion, and so I heard not of it.
After dinner to the office, where all the afternoon till late, and so to see Sir W. Pen, and so home to supper and to bed.
To-night I took occasion with the vintner’s man, who came by my direction to taste again my tierce of claret, to go down to the cellar with him to consult about the drawing of it; and there, to my great vexation, I find that the cellar door hath long been kept unlocked, and above half the wine drunk. I was deadly mad at it, and examined my people round, but nobody would confess it; but I did examine the boy, and afterwards Will, and told him of his sitting up after we were in bed with the maids, but as to that business he denies it, which I can remedy, but I shall endeavour to know how it went.
My wife did also this evening tell me a story of Ashwell stealing some new ribbon from her, a yard or two, which I am sorry to hear, and I fear my wife do take a displeasure against her, that they will hardly stay together, which I should be sorry for, because I know not where to pick such another out anywhere.

I value nothing
more than error

desire life before
the service of courage

the old must suspect
that the mad motions of the heart

serve no purpose
but love or hatching

the sudden motion of a cellar door
long kept locked

and half the wine drunk
as a remedy


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 2 June 1663.

The animals get your discards

Grant us, we prayed. Spare.
For everything we wanted,

a roll of perforated tickets. Circus
tent, my skirts and loincloth rent.

Exhibit of fiery stripes and colors.
I know how to twine and twine

the serpent’s bleached spine and crown
myself. I hoist the daily weight of some

kind of world up there. So regal, you say,
your eye clicking and clicking its camera

shutter. I laugh, knowing the contents
of my tin can: pig slop, your common leavings

shaved for compost from dinner plates.
The flies admire your such good taste

but I, I do not care. These breasts
might strain against my good

white blouse when my arms lift
my burden back upon my head—

but be warned: you cannot cop a feel.
I have a braid of horsehair, taut vein,

a brittle bell. Red flames I could stir
to churning. Clouds boiling in every agate stone.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Solipsist.

Rounds

Humid nights, difficult to fall asleep
as tokay geckos began to call and darkness
settled thick, another net pressing

its shapeless shape against the folds
of mosquito netting. And we would hear
his footsteps as he did his nightly

checks around the house: my father
testing each window’s iron hook
and eye in not just one but several

wide circles traced from living
through dining room to kitchen
and back, finally sliding the heavy

security bar in place across
the front door before his footsteps
receded. For there was that night

in November, heavy with rain and thunder,
when we did not hear a back window
jimmied open, the thieves

slitting the covers from sofa cushions
and stuffing them with the boombox
that no longer worked,

the coffeemaker, the portable
typewriter in its robin’s egg
blue case; then stealing into

the children’s room to pilfer
small change from the bureau.
One child awoke but held

as still as death
while watching through
an edge of blanket. They let

themselves back out
into the night as furtively
as they had come. By luck

or grace, we were unscathed.
It’s years from then, and we’re
now in a different clime, another

neighborhood. Even so, we watch—
listening with one ear always pressed
to the flimsy outer door of sleep.