Work Text:
Terza Rima (On Returning)
Ships vanish o'er the shimmering, distant line
Of sight; once lost, perhaps they'll run aground,
Strike sandbars, icebergs—stops no map defines.
So what if all the lusty crew should drown?
Or smash to bloody flotsam in the break?
Sordid corpses drift to depths profound?
Surrendered once to sight, why should you make
Occasion of their wreckage? Gone is gone.
Storm-tossed afar, the glass has gone opaque.
Seek instead to welcome vagabonds—
Obdurate ships brought low by seas unkind—
So when wrecked sails heave in sight at dawn,
Beacons blaze. You'll guide me. I'll be fine.
* * *
—Really Baz? Boats? Bit of an obvious metaphor, that?
—Stop reading my journal.
—Stop falling asleep with it open, then.
—You could just close it.
—Not bloody likely now that you're leaving me notes here.
—Noted. I'll charm the rest of it shut. To respond: I felt the boats appropriate to the subject matter.
—Well, the “subject matter” has never seen the open ocean, so.
—Crowley, love. I'm taking you to Margate at week's end. Or Portsmouth. Or Swansea. You should say these things!
—Didn't I just?
* * *
—You've done it again, Baz. Right on my pillow, even. Here's your deserts:
Tyrannus Basilton Pitch is
accustomed to godawful itches
but having once had a go
with Simon Oliver Snow,
the only itch's that in his britches.
—This makes you sound like a vector for venereal disease.
—No! It's a joke about your insatiable lust for me.
—Read again.
—Oh, I see it now. What else rhymes with “Pitch is”?
—riches? stitches? switches? half-hitches?
—Revised for your pleasure:
Tyrannus Basilton Pitch is
no stranger to sexual itches,
but since he first had a go
with Simon Oliver Snow,
he now straps down his cod with half-hitches.
—“sexual itches”? You know that's not a phrase?
—Rub it in, B. We're not all born for poesy.
—I don't mean to disparage, exactly, but the image is deeply unsettling.
—If only you were Tyrannus Basilton Sturgess.
—And anyway, it now sounds as though I am so terrified of your sexual deviancy that I resort to self-torture.
—Well, at least that part's come through.
* * *
—Baz, I like that you write about me.
—If only I could say the same.