It could take from Monday to Thursday
and three horses. The ink was unstable,
the characters cramped, the paper tore where it creased.

Henry Ford boasted
there would be no Egyptian mummies in his museum.

Horses with wings and horses with shoes.
White stallions sacrificed to Roman gods.
Scythian kings buried with fifty horses.

Science was a walk in the woods
Where my neighbour's dad did his lecturing.
It was a tiny metal cannister, kept

What was I thinking of (not Tintern
Abbey, that's for sure, more likely you—
mean: we were on honeymoon)

Because of your own natural sense of death,
death's stench in the fur, in the follicles, sweat glands,
death in the roots of the teeth, it's right

His interest in blades of any cut
is purely amateur, he tells me. But

What I remember most is what he did to the couple
   who sent his best pasta back to the kitchen,

Aristocrats, they were
made to walk over,
to be proud of their scars:

Your manners much in evidence: please
pass the water jug and would you kindly
loosen the handcuffs just a tad? They pinch.