The Village on Horseback. Jesse Ball

stand by the pump with a deaf girl.

      She is on the verge of a breakthrough.

      I am very earnest and sedulous.

      I am possibly the best teacher

      who has ever lived. I lever the pump’s

      arm, and water begins to flow.

      Meanwhile, in my days as a

      snake-charmer, a great painter

      is sketching me. He’s on holiday

      and has inserted a slight grin

      onto this quiet face.

      I wasn’t grinning. You mustn’t

      suppose I was grinning.

      I’ve always known day by day

      my real work approaches.

      Not for anything would I grin,

      not even once.

      The work means too much.

Our Plots, Our Comfort

      By an old mill my father is waiting

      with hundreds of other fathers.

      I would like for them to keep

      each other company,

      but from here it is plain—

      none of them is speaking.

      What’s that in his hand?

      An old leather wallet.

      He’s taking something out of it,

      a picture, I wonder of whom.

      Who next will go to join him,

      walking long there

      in the early places of my life?

Report from Our Lands

      Nevertheless the war continued

       trembling the cupboards

       where we slept, cracking the long

       stone walkways of the village, as

       if there were no other way to act

       successfully in this foolish place,

       as if were we in its place, this war,

       we had no light but brute gleaming.

Bestiary 4

      A race of men who can turn themselves into not animals

      but inanimate objects. Europeans reach this tribe

      by boat. What a grand city, they say. What fine broad

      avenues, such as you might see in Paris. How lovely

      the women in their long satin dresses, with their

      fans and shuddering hair. Much feasting goes on.

      Days later, the discovery is made. Orders are sent back

      across the sea to be confirmed by the Queen.

      Orders are confirmed. The populace is brought out

      into a series of aesthetically ideal city squares

      and forced at gunpoint to change directly

      into gold. They object at first, then the King

      changes himself into a large gold vase. His sons

      become a pair of gold grates (for a confessional). Their

      children become lockets. The royal servants

      take the form of forks and spoons. This is general

      throughout the population, and the objects

      become a sort of faux-history, where each object

      fails in its attempt to mimic the life lived.

      Historians today wonder if this was intentional.

Bestiary 5

      These pregnant methods, cheerful

      and fat, leaning from filthy casements

      in the side of June may yield

      ink-eyed marionettes so lovely

      that their gestures,

      pointedly describing strings,

      mean little even to the adept.

      Mary. Isa. Joan. Celeste.

      Roaming the grounds

      of this quartered preserve.

      Mary lays a lacquered hand

      upon your cheek. Joan’s plain head

      inclines—she is speaking

      but the voice is from above.

      Isa crouches in the near future;

      she will scream at a painted boar

      that bursts from a stand of trees.

      Celeste is absent. Or is Joan

      speaking of her when she says,

      “I knew a matchstick once

      that burned like the hands of a clock.”

      From the scenery then, a wooden creaking

      as of someone’s descent. Applause.

      Applause. And in the front row

      a man’s heart bursts in his chest.

EAST RIDING

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