Jesse Ball - The Village on Horseback - Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

and without so much as a by-your-leave,

rush off into the dew-strewn underbrush.

East Riding. It is the name that the world has

for the forest. I recall I was a child when I

heard it first. Still, I felt drawn.

I would go sometimes to the highest part

of the farm country and gaze eastward to the sea

of treetops drowsing in the distance,

hazy day, the sun’s rays mingling with the dust

and hanging in the air like the passing of hands.

I believe, I told the village priest, in East Riding.

Dismayed, he spoke with my parents,

counseling them to send me to the part of the world

farthest from East Riding.

But my father laughed. I recall this vividly.

He laughed at the priest, and raised me up

eye level into the air. He said,

“I believe you are going to East Riding.

Already you’ve left us.”

He took my mother’s hand and stood in the doorway

looking off into the distance as though watching

the progress of some traveler on a distant road.

But I was still in the house. My things weren’t even packed.

The priest stuck his sharp elbow in my ribs.

See? he said. So I slipped between my parent’s legs

and walked and walked and walked.

When I reached the distant road, I could see

that they were watching. I waved. They waved back.

And I followed the road where it went

beneath a canopy of trees.

On the deeper paths, one can’t know

for sure if one is welcome, save by clearings.

If one encounters lovely clearings

and crisp glorious mornings, then one has

cannily chosen the right path.

At other times it’s as dark as the inside

of a leaded window on an old cloudy block.

No one visits anymore, and the oldest man

is older by far than the histories he tells.

This is his defense, and it’s a keen one.

So I know to turn back, sometimes.

Always, it’s then one is given a small but kind

clearing to sleep in, and a tiny rose in greeting.

Be thou pleased by the day, and by waking

to light. From the bottom of a well

comes the vaguest song, but it is, I think,

known to you, muttered in your aging heart.

For if we all do not know a thing,

then no one can know it. It is not given us

to have that which is not instinctively

present in the world. On the softest grass

imaginable, I lay my head. It is quiet

and the path has been lost.

The path, I say, has been lost.

It is lovely to say things in a human voice

and hear in your mind or in the air,

and hear in the forest a human reply.

Little Teag was sleeping on a bed of moss. Just then up crept a satyr, the cruelest, most straying, canceling satyr of them all. He stripped poor Teag down to the bone with his sharp teeth and left the little skeleton for someone else to find. Such a delicate skeleton. I came upon it while walking. I pointed to it with my hand, and went to it with my feet. John Spence, who was along, did not come closer. He said it wasn’t a proper burial. I said we should give it one. And so we had my little sister out with us next day dressed up in ribbons and lace, and I wore my high collar and Spence had a good cap. We wrapped the little fellow in a clean sheet of linen and brought him down to a hole we’d dug by the millstream. I said a few words then, like a deacon, I said, “IF it was a satyr that did this, or a lamb, neither will I worship. Braver than the soil is the flesh that lends it breadth.” And through the woods then the satyr came, galloping on its hind legs. We hid in the grave ’til it had gone, and only then emerged to lay upon the ground in the groggy afternoon, listening to the brook. Before we left I filled the hole, spreading the earth flat enough for any boy to walk upon. John Spence marked it with a stone, in case we should ever again need a hiding place in that part of the forest.

And being wrong about the colors light takes in the eyes of my animals,

I wonder now what many failures

of difference I have made,

trying to map the catchments of other lives

with brown scenes from this single self.

RITA KEPT LAZARUS IN A CHINESE BOX & FED HIM PEPPERMINTS UNTIL HE NO LONGER KNEW WHO OR WHAT HE WAS. THEN SHE GAVE HIM A PAPER CROWN AND A JAR WITH A TADPOLE AND BADE HIM SIT BESIDE HER.

That I have debauched the youth of this town. That further, I,

a youth of this town, have been

debauched, have helped in the debauching of others. Have helped

myself in and to the debauching

of the others, well. . I would not be overly troubled at the news.

For you see, I have a new

project in mind. Imagine a house, a shack rather, in some flyspeck

town. Within the house, a trap door.

And beneath the door, an entire realm of wickedness!

He who first spoke of it

has promised we will meet there, and I must confess, I look now

often at the map he left,

look often upon those impressions his thin and supple fingers

made in oily remark.

Harangued

by the ring

master, the

paper circus

fell to

muttering.

Johan wrung

his hand

and stroked

the elephant’s

thick skin.

“How will

we fathom

the mind of

the audience,

if we cannot

name it truly

our oldest

and deepest

foe?”

A young king is unhappy. He takes

to going out with a false beard,

sackcloth robes, a long knife, a leather bag.

He soon becomes known about town in this capacity,

and liked. He takes a mistress. He spends time

in common taverns, in playhouses.

No one knows his secret, save a palace guard

his own age, who lets him out of the castle each night.

One night the disguised king

returns to the castle, only to find the guard,

now also disguised, ruling from his throne.

Before the King can speak, the new King orders him seized

by palace guards who cut out his tongue

and cart him away to a nearby asylum.

He is heard from no more.

The new King despises his children

and has them strangled. On the other hand,

he takes great pleasure in his association with the Queen,

who has guessed nothing.

One day it is announced before the court

that a madman is at the gates, claiming to be the King.

The King grants him an audience, at which time

the madman tells the court the story

that you have just been told, this time

through a series of hand gestures. Naturally,

no one is convinced. The King, however,

takes pity on the man, and allows him

to take up service as his jester, in which capacity,

I may happily relate, the man excels.

Word of the mute jester spreads,

and soon the court of this King is spoken of

throughout many lands

as a place of enlightenment and culture.

She wanted desperately to know

what was in the green box.

A green box on a coarse black cloth

in a burnished-gold room.

She leaned in close,

her soft hair falling across

both our faces.

If only, she breathed,