by Nirina Nancy Mignon
Layn sentry on a mound,
Mine forefinger compasses the scale listless,
Th’ stringèd lute is wound.
With no brazen doting do I whet my tongue,
With disease and rustling do I rebate a song,
Onto those past yet lively and incorrupt,
Who by the passing hour have formed a throng.
To those who have been my witness,
Yet forworn to give an account do I dedicate.
Let such come to thee as a remittance,
Or as fortune feigned, now that the tea leaves have settled.
A good hour before the dew set itself amongst the breast of berries;
Before it could sigh serenity,
Th’ mist nestled yet bedded in its comfort,
Could not declare its domicile.
Whether the tearlets were want of their forewept cloudy mother,
Or the rudiments of rain were in schism, unwant to coalesce
For a brotherly quarrel, or a show of paresse,
This I may not relate, but of such you may discern a morning hour.
Arriving in town, trotting after the paved stones,
Each who harbored the hall did I set to employ.
Levying a good troupe of th’ louts,
By lendful promise was converted their use, forestalling their bouts.
That they may be found in upright activity,
For seven nights I made them return unto me errands.
The baker’s shoppe was made vacant;
Even the burgeoning burgher was humbled to caterer;
For each man did I promise great bounty.
Only imagination could detail such a wage,
That could interest the sullen clerk to pan-pipe musick for twice an hour;
To be the entertainment for a babe in its cradle, even the dames most dour;
For the avaricious with reason to lob pence as rice to men richer;
This did I ask of my kinsmen.
On the seventh night, each awaited their portion of a great inheritance,
Yet were confounded;
Their minds fled from detailing the inbound reward of estate,
And wondered at what scheme resolved their longsuffering sundry,
To which end their pitiful toil purposed a renovation of magnanimity.
To my delay and their despondency was I shut up,
The hire and its reward I knew not.
Yet in their rancor shackled by continence and fatigue,
They set away the tar and feathers;
No skunk was made for me spikenard;
Each sweat of theirs which had entitled for me debt
Blotted th’ ink of mine name away from checkbooks.
Here was I forgiven for mine folly.
Neither was I made the firstborn of Hagar,
No order of exile was writ for I,
In their lovingkindness, a sigh rather than scorn arises now at my mention.