Robin Hood Checks into the Ritz
The far-too-clean-and-pretty bellhop boy
Sniffs my ratty burlap bag, grimaces,
Then drags it like a sack of dung away.
Myself, I lift an overlooked portmanteau.
Some earl or duke will miss it, yes, but not
Until the cocktail hour.
Pity him the missing
Party dress and tux and favors.
Ah, pity
Prince John’s nouveau riche, and the nouveau poor,
And pity, too, this unctuous bellhop boy
Who practices pretense at my door, the hand
Soiled by my bag now held before my nose.
He’s a zealous lad, indeed, but he’s run out
Of luck. Who serves the
rich stoops low for love
Of silver. In his palm, I
place a farthing;
On my face, a sneer; and with a slam, he’s gone.
He won’t be back. No, nor
I. Who could sleep
In such luxury? The bed’s
too soft, the bath
Too clean, the view too grand.
So, from my ratty
Burlap bag, I unpack my bow and quiver
And shake out my merry men, Will Scarlet, Little
John, my humble good Friar, and all—bless them
Their patience and their cramps.
We grow familiar
In our work, and work we have to do tonight:
At the Sheriff’s Ball, a gala for the moneyed
Guilt, we’ll pluck jewels, cash, and pride. We’ll be
Swedish meatballs beside the creamy pate,
Cocktail weenies beside the fresh baked Brie.
We’ll be what coats the Sheriff’s craw, and gags.
Already I hear the party balloons pop
And with uncouth noise fizz about and drop
Into the honeyed punch. I
love the gasp
As much as the groan. It
serves them right, as me
As well. Once I was the son
of an earl,
A Saxon lord. I recall
Huntingdon,
My family estate, but I will not call
What moves me revenge.
It’s more than that,
Or less. The Friar schools
me on such fine
Distinctions, or so he tries.
Call it, then,
A tweak of the Sheriff’s cheek.
I take only
What the rich can do without, what they have
Done without: responsibility—that
And the silver sewn into their pockets. I could
Do worse, as others have, but pity tells us
That the rich are unlike the poor only in
Their wealth. Have the rich
not sound hearts? The cynic
Claims the knife will tell.
And when the Friar
Questions the dirk I carry beneath my jerkin,
I tell him it has but one use: to see
Someday within the Sheriff’s heart. But have
The rich, he says, not souls also that, God
Willing, may gain them Heaven? I mislike
Such quibbling. What does
the Norman priest
Say, then, in his silken robes—have the rich
Not souls? Of those who
only take, I say
Not. Of the Normans, I say
not. A cur
That bites and knows no better has more soul.
And what of you? Are you
rich in soul, taking
What they would give if only they knew how?
All I’ll say, because honesty forces it,
Is that there’s as much pleasure in the taking
As in the giving. Call it
some small justice,
Which is not enough. Taking
a life, he says,
Is never worth the riches. I smile at that
And nod to Little John. He
knows it, too.
That is a blade keen and deep and it cuts
Both ways: no man’s life is worth all those riches.
Forgiveness at the Caffè della
Pace
From wherever it came, the bullet could not
Have arrived at a better time.
And what luck
That Austin was in its path. A corsage
Blossomed just above the kerchief tucked
Into his coat pocket. The
other patrons
Fell over one another, tipping chairs
And tables, coffees and wines, and running off
As fast as their confusion would allow.
Austin’s mouth gaped open, and then from his chair
He slid to the pavers and babbled something
About being shot. Well, of
course. I knelt
Beside him, and he grasped my shirt and pulled
Himself up and me down and stained my shirt
Something ghastly, his grip abating none.
My coat, white silk, double-breasted, lay
Folded and, thankfully, unspattered over
The back of my chair. I had
other coats, yes,
But I was fond of the cut of that one.
My cognac had survived as well, but those
Truths were of little interest then to Austin
Who had only one truth left.
Still, pip-pip
And all that, as the Brits say.
Austin coughed
And gagged a bit, and I said, No need for such
Drama—why, we have yet to finish our drinks.
He didn’t even try to smile, which is,
I’ve heard, the way, with some: sober, grim, dull
To the very end. He pulled
me close, and I felt
The stain spread more across my shirt. Now, please,
Think me shallow if you must, but it was
A hand-tailored Egyptian cotton shirt,
Perfectly delicate on my skin and,
After all, he was no real friend of mine,
And his blood was on my shirt, not my hands.
He pulled me down and said, Your wife—we—while—
And he coughed up a little something nasty.
I called out to a waiter for a napkin
And, impatient, I snapped my fingers. Really,
Austin said, it was nothing, she and I,
Wrong but nothing. You must
believe me. Yes,
I said. I know. She told me it was nothing,
But you shouldn’t feel the less a man for that.
I lay his head down and stood, took the napkin
From the waiter, and wiped my face and neck.
Some accidents, you see, are meant to happen,
While others simply do. This
was the latter,
I assure you. Austin looked
up and gurgled,
Forgive me. We’ll survive,
I said, don’t worry.
When he lifted a hand, reaching for me,
I draped the soiled napkin over his face
And thus our conversation was, at last, finished.
Running the Rosenberg Code
Through the gilded heart of Prague,
At midnight, through streetlight and shadow,
I bear the satchel to deliver it to the man
Who will deliver it to the man
Who will deliver it to the man . . .
The latch remains fast. I
am
Only so obvious that my phantom,
My twin, my other, the shadow at my heel,
Cannot lose me. Deception
is
An easy leap over the wide Vltava.
It is standing so still that I vanish
Into the eclipse of an alley.
It is
A lie so apparent that it must
Be true. Deception, a tail
I wag
To lead and mislead, draws my phantom on.
For pleasure, I wind him like a ribbon
Through the narrow, knotted ways
Of the Mala Strana. In the
gray light
Of his shop, a butcher swings his cleaver,
Lopping shank from brisket, and spies me
Reflected in his raised blade.
A baker
flails his dough—croissants for the Turks—
And feigns disinterest. I
drop a koruna
Into a tin cup and its blind beggar
Observes the glint of the chain at my wrist.
Each morning I wake with another
Satchel locked to my wrist.
I open
The daily news to the obituaries and decode
My evening’s route. All day
I play chess. When old
Anton
Takes one by one the pawns
I sacrifice, my heart stutters.
Thirteen
Moves more, and mate— Anton
Tips his king over, reconciled
To his final rest. When
Anton sleeps,
I begin my route and breathe again
The living night, which itself breathes.
I round Wenceslas Square with its deathly
Pigeons and pause to let my phantom follow.
All of Prague is my chess board.
Some morning, in a puddle of sunlight,
I will wake up smiling, dead
Of natural causes. Ah, what
A disguise that will be! My
phantom,
My friend, I suspect that the satchel has always
Been empty, and I have guarded it
With my life, and yours.
And still, after
My death, you will shadow me and this satchel,
From my flat, through the byways and alleys,
Past each corner’s athletic
Cripple, past the Prag-Straschnitz
Where Kafka holds court now
As he never did while he lived,
And on to the industrial section where,
In the smoke and soot and factory-gloom,
The little parts of the little cars
That people drive are molded and burnished,
The molten steel will gush in sparks
Into the pit. Even the slag
Will glow and, for a moment, look
Like something of profound value.
I know which piece on the chess board
I am, and which Ethel and Julius were.
Someone knows which pawns to sacrifice.
Jeff Mock is the author of Ruthless (Three
Candles Press, 2010). His poems appear
in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia
Review, New England Review, The North American Review, The
Southern Review, and elsewhere. He
directs the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in
New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, Margot Schilpp, and their daughters,
Paula and Leah.