A SEMI-GREEN PASTURE

Did you know, my envious green darling, they asked me first to join in reaping fairer fields? Of course you did, but why admit it? The gods deal out gold and desire unevenly, sure. The grain is better here, the feathers wear well in my cap. There's still hunger here, sure, but the wine-cup is never raised to shame the guests who court the table. There are many things to admit to (many which one day will be said) when to you the autumn-freaked trees have turned their cold backs, final and fast.

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SMIRCHMONGER

When I hear the latest awful news of what you said or did from the corner merchant or the chancellor on a stroll through the commons, I wonder how far the mind must have travelled to detach itself from the heart. But then I think back to our long dreadful hours together and I see neither corresponded much before. Such severing has left you frayed and ranging as lightning's bill-hooked ferocity, pitching down to lay all low.

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IF YOUR HANDS HAD NOT BEEN TRAITORS TO YOUR SPEECH

Day has gone on long enough. The sky's been galled out by the stroke-heat of the sun and I'm tired of bending knee to you. What your gesticulations remind me of is the round-winged lyrebird's cry of instrumented alarm which sends the groundlings to shelter in the elms' hollows. You should note: my ear is not of the rabbit's hearted-fear or wide-eyed stillness, but of the fox, which scents the bed of all your lies. 

(NOTE: Aesop, "The Fox and the Woodcutter": The Fox replied, "Indeed, I should have thanked you fervently if your deeds had been as good as your words, and if your hands had not been traitors to your speech.")

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These poems were inspired by Catullus (trans. Peter Green), and they strive to animate his cheeky here's-the-new-gossip-on-the-street voicing and his irrevent I'm-gonna-call-you-out persona.