Were you told I had a fine collection of miniatures?
I understand your sight is poor, but let me
describe some of them to you, while we wait.
Here is a lapis shell that opens to reveal

a mermaid astride a dolphin. She has two tails,
no antiseptic Hollywood creature she,
they coil in relish as they hold her sex
fast to the spine of the undulant beast.

Now here’s a locket of chaste and simple lines,
inside a lady sits on a stool,
one plump arm ‘neath a storm of skirts.
A footman lounges on a chair before her,

his long penis entering the naked maid
who straddles him and blushes with shame
and delight. The lady leans forward
and inspects their genitalia avidly.

I know the room in which this all takes place,
I recognise the land beyond the window,
it is a hunting lodge our family kept for many years.
I’ve often wondered who the artist was.

These two ovals framed in gold have black ribbons
tied in bows about them, and are much older.
They show a brother and sister aged two and four.
Inside the backs are locks of hair, still soft.

And here beside them is their mother, her lap full
of jewels, a tiara in her black hair.
She was an ancestor of mine from the far south;
a powerful family that ruled a wide domain.

She wed a handsome foreigner,
but he had an eye for women, and he fell
for the widowed mistress of a neighbouring estate
(one slightly richer and with better game)

who enticed him away. Fearing
his wife’s white fury, he took their two children
as hostage against her good behaviour.
But he didn’t understand the nature

of her love for him, for when she heard
what he’d done, her love turned to a black hatred
that filled her as if her very blood was made
of darkness. She and her half-crazed brother,

together with a mob of hired killers,
fell upon her usurper, and she slit
her children’s throats before her husband’s eyes,
and that was just the hors d’oeuvre, as it were.

The tiara she wears in her portrait
has not faded with age, as people
sometimes think. Rather, it was already pale,
being made of small bones

taken from her rival’s hands and feet.
The baubles she fondles were her rival’s jewels.
One child only did she give birth to
in the rest of her life, somehow fathered

by her brother. It was that act of incest,
perhaps, that gave our family its tone-deafness
and slight emotional instability.
Ah! I hear my wife’s footfall on the stair,

I’m so pleased she’s found a nice companion
to share her love of music. I know you’ll both
enjoy the concert, and the dinner after.
Take your time, there is no need to hurry back.

We spent our childhood summers in Grandpa's house,
among the creaks and groans we knew were spooks,
and sometimes in the dark, when we'd been specially good,
he'd take us to a field to see the stars.

To begin we'd find the one the others circled round,
that could guide a ship to north all through the night,
then he'd point out Mars and Venus, and the Demon Star,
and show us where the constellations were.

Then bath and up to bed, and just one fairy-tale.
At first we were frightened of the noises in the night:
'It's just the ghosts who warm the water
dancing through the pipes,' he smiled,

then told us how our ancestors, five thousand years before,
when they went to seek their fortunes in the world,
carried fire from their mother's hearth,
to light and warm them through the forest ways

and passed it on unbroken down the centuries to him.
Then he took us to an ancient boiler underneath the stairs,
'The soul of that old mother's still burning deep in here,
she's the oldest tree in the forest, she's our guiding star.'

And he let us look inside it through a crystal glass,
and her blue and savage eye returned our gaze,
then as a chill wind shook the fabric of the house,
a host of shining figures rose up behind her back.

'Look at the spirits of the families of our dead!
Their souls are burning bright and hard as yours,
they sigh and tap the walls at night to tell you all is well,
though their bones sleep cold and still beneath the soil.'

Then he led us back to bed and tucked us in,
beneath a cloud of quilts like setting sun:
'Now get your sleep so you can take our fire
to those who wait in forests still to come.'