Early in January 1296, Floris V leaves his court in The Hague for Paris, where – against his better wishes – he switches Holland’s ancient alliance with England to one with France. This sparks off treachery among some of Floris’ nobles, leading to his murder in June.

*

in his hall of knights –

mental topers, tumblers, ravers

– mad din of needy bingeing gluttons

*

smoke-shrouds cling to blackened beams

minstrels mock those braying, belching goblet-brandishers

ranting voices drunk

*

alone in that crowd

and at its centre, he sits

a silent moment.

***

*

thoughts like words unborn

in a womb of forgetting

flit through his spirit

*

scared of too much thought

(which drinking puts a stop to

– as if thoughts could drown):

***

*

sacred hopes, our wished-for dreams

float off like swans when we awake

they glide off on the glossy glassy lake

*

worn out by living

(which dying puts an end on

– as if our lives first wear, then strip us bare).

*

as if as if as

if, in drinking, sleep and dreams

and thoughts and words all drowned like shipwrecked memories

*

and yet and yet and

yet we live and breathe and feed our fates,

our lives float free of us.

***

*

he sits with his knights,

his ladies, fools, his dogs and serfs and clowns

one sated, bloated, slumbering moment

*

comes as if to himself

in the din of that great hall

on his island in the lake –

*

sees in that moment

the ghosts of future feasting,

woken when he wakes.

 

Omm

twelfth night, 2018