Voices from the Past Part 104

Monday

What fools we mortals are, for I who wrote of shrews married a shrew who is more shrewful than any Kate from Padua. I laugh at my own defeat, a shrew beside a shrew, players nodding at my marital bewilderment, I, the drunkard drunk on illusions. Shall we list her infidelities-country-man at Fair, con-man, neighbor?

Shall we name names?

Shakespeare and Ann, at ruins of Kenilworth castle,

copulating in the gra.s.s, happy in their bucolic l.u.s.t.

The two trudge, hand in hand:

Ann ups her skirt and they flop again, giggling:

"Twins," she says.

Henley Street

I

married a shrew and yet thirty years ago, Ann and I knew hot jollity at Kenilworth, the gra.s.s a hide under us, pigeons reconnoitering castle walls, a falcon lawing the sun. Since Ann and I had a few days for ourselves, we had ridden to K. She was Sweet Villain, and when we pastured the horses and unstuffed our knapsacks, we stuffed ourselves, and sacked ourselves, gorging in sun, the horses stomping and snuffling beyond us. Sweet Villain pulled up her skirts after we had drunk more than we should and I was glad I had not married another. She said "Your hair's redder," and I said "Your hair's yellower,"

meaning where, and our laughter went bounding.

We sacked that old busky castle from wall to wall, writing on scalded plaster, pushing over abutments, throwing rocks at a fox. From some crater corner, we looked up, our heads dusty, holding each other s.e.xround, our fierceness there while falcons fought, clipping each other, beaking one another, feathers falling. Kenilworth and kings: we smelled unsavory dungeons but pushed our falconry over them, our naked seel better than intercourse of power and time: among the marl, we viewed puffs of smoke from country homes, saw water gleaming, a windmill turning, sheep among sheep, their woolly backs humping toward a rainy sunset.

Soon, soon, time was to tear away our love, but we did not suspect: we were the confidents, our jollity amusing because fastened to laughter, no wrack or confusion: it was slap of hands on bare b.u.t.tocks, "ah" over breast, mouth sucking, suckling, surprising, surfeiting, back again for more: the taste of love's bite the waist around, the hand up, down, and the gra.s.s its hide browner, browner than our flesh, her flesh ignited from within, so burned for me.

Stratford-on-Avon

June 1, 1615

We ate off wooden plates, tulips blooming in the garden, blue and white Chinese plates hanging on the wall, and lilacs blooming in the garden...in a dream I confronted him and he was monarch and he said to me: I am Hamnet, come, we'll go to the guild chapel and hear the sermon...it was a cold sermon but honeysuckle was blooming in the garden...orioles were singing above the oriel. Columbine, ferns, and lilies were on the cabinet: she said to me: Come, Will, eat! I said to her: listen, I hear the pegs moving inside the beams: that is for integrity. Ivy grew on the east wall of my house in those days.

Henley Street

June 3, 1615

Alone, following the Roman wall, as it girdled London, I used to speculate where the Roman G.o.ds had gone; thinking, as well, of those of Egypt and Greece...time with a scroll on his back, asking alms. Smashed bricks, memento mori, along that vast, yellow, unweeded garden, were questions in their own right, broken, to be kicked aside, as are our own questions concerning mortality.

Gazing at the Thames, I hoped for hope from the wide wall, wider river and broader mystery. I went over my plays...Ulysses...Cleopatra...Prospero... The wall, with its imperialism and legion of whispers, said "no, master, no," speaking in the voice of Lear's fool.

Ellen and I climbed the castle where Caesar lived, the tallest site in London, the Thames below, flowers and vines crawling over ruins, the walls of yesterday saying "Et tu Brutus."

Danger knows full well that hate is doubly dangerous: we are two lions littered in a day, and the litter of stones crumbles underfoot, but Ellen cries out to me, and I catch her by the arm.

There is a white sail on the river...

Ay, me, how fine a thing the heart of woman! I thought it then and think it still, the very best of her is gentle subtlety: it is this that takes a man in.

A flock of blackbirds lit below us, covering the fallen stones like black hail.

We went many times to that castle and walked along its ancient yellow walls; she asked me for poetry and I repeated lines: what were they, I wonder?

Now...most n.o.ble one...the G.o.ds stand friendly today, that we may, lovers in peace, lead on our days to age:

I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting Quality there is no fellow in the firmament...the skies are painted with unnumbered sparks...they are all afire, and every one doth shine; but there's but one in all doth hold his place: so in the world...

The stars came out, a summer's night on Caesar's place, and we heard frogs and the t.i.ttering of lovers, ourselves loving that place, our flesh, that empirical wisdom. We went so often we called it "our castle."