Heart afloat above Urquhart Castle
said the Rook to the King
who frowned to find his crown
on my head, so he took hold of
Socrates’s cup of hemlock
& with a frivolous proposal
offered me the first sip in which
I slipped Mithridate into it
to survive beyond the poison,
to show sympathy to mystery
& antiquity like The Loch Ness
Monster finally becoming
“unmasked out of an unending
combination of masks”—
a revealing like Aphra Behn
rising from obscurity surpassing
our own deaths in jetstreams
of stillness.
said the Rook to the King
who frowned to find his crown
on my head, so he took hold of
Socrates’s cup of hemlock
& with a frivolous proposal
offered me the first sip in which
I slipped Mithridate into it
to survive beyond the poison,
to show sympathy to mystery
& antiquity like The Loch Ness
Monster finally becoming
“unmasked out of an unending
combination of masks”—
a revealing like Aphra Behn
rising from obscurity surpassing
our own deaths in jetstreams
of stillness.
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