‘the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house’

            -Thomas Lorkin, letter of June 30 1613

 

I call them out to greet you: your groundlings,

your bully rooks, yard-bibbers, thistle-kings; I hear

their whoo-bub from boards laid over spit and shells,

among the slops I hear their bouse-fuélled rushling.

Their codling judgement is readied for a throw; yet

 

you have caught them john-a-dreams, staring

in taper-light at the stage:

maids forgetting their chares,

apron-men brought from their budgets.

Heart-toused, souls atwire, pit-gawpers.

 

I wonder: how is it they listen so?

What cuts their revels short, what stills their coarse factions?

Are these such entertainments —the antic caper, hags and kings,

forest toys, the swords and dudgeons they see before them,

such airs and sweet sounds, such disport—

 

that they must stand in the pinching nights,

warmed enough by the stars’ regard through the roof

to clap and bid the company for more,

to await the next play to be cried through the markets,

jauncing at their gossip to appoint the hour when they should attend? 

 

Or is it because along other histories’ dray-ruts

the hero comes to hazard with fortune already known

from the first, with only faps and fools for novelty;

while here are such plots trod by stranger heroes,

such a scamble over hope’s rising vapours

that they cannot help but wait upon each entrance and exit

for its unaccustomed device? Tomorrow and tomorrow

these penny-grudgers will cheer as loudly

while they watch bears fight the course. 

But tonight they stand there and listen.

 

That light that hangs so high hangs upon a sentence

spoken in accents timed to their hearts

as if they were such pages as words might play upon:

kiln-new, glistering as if aired abroad for the first time,

annealed in spelling, as in matter, by the day’s dispute.

 

If tonight fire should leave them bereft

of heavens and pit, the arras scorched,

twangling instruments charred, tiring house a ruin;

should a fool’s wind set the globe alight, leaving them

sans cellarage, sans gallery, sans face, name, everything—

 

then let them share such realms as breath alone can make

of these abandoned heaths, these haunted palaces and islands. 

Confined by you, they count themselves a king.

In a folio of darkness, let their visages be made whole again

in the light of our attendant flames.

​

Honorary mention, 2026 Fish Poetry Prize, Ireland