Spartan child, stolen fox half-concealed in its robe,
the fox biting the child’s stomach, gnawing the vitals away,
the stoic child bravely saying nothing—
what could it say, cold marble that it was?
There was pain in its eyes, and it stood,
upon a plinth on which were carved eight words.
I walked around it, and I read:
Be bold,
be bold,
but not too bold.
“I tethered little Betsy in the stables,
between a dozen night black stallions
each with blood and madness in his eyes.
I saw no one.
I walked to the front of the house and up the great steps.
The huge doors were locked fast,
no servants came to greet me when I knocked.
In my dream (for do not forget, Mister Fox, that this was
my dream. You look so pale) the house fascinated me,
the kind of curiosity (you know this,
Mister Fox, I see it in your eyes) that kills
cats.
“I found a door, a small door, off the latch,
and pushed my way inside.
Walked corridors, lined with oak, with shelves,
with busts, with trinkets,
I walked, my feet silent on the scarlet carpet,
until I reached the great hall.
It was there again, in red stones that glittered,
set into the white marble of the floor,
it said:
Be bold,
be bold,
but not too bold.
Or else your life’s blood
shall run cold.”
“There were stairs, wide, carpeted in scarlet,
off the great hall, and I walked up them, silently, silently.
Oak doors: and now
I was in the dining room, or so I am convinced,
for the remnants of a grisly supper
were abandoned, cold and fly-buzzed.
Here was a half-chewed hand, there, crisped and picked,
a face, a woman’s face, who must in life, I fear,
have looked like me.”
“Heavens defend us all from such dark dreams,” her father cried.
“Can such things be?”
“It is not so,” I assured him. The fair woman’s smile
glittered behind her gray eyes. People
need assurances.
“Beyond the supper room was a room,
a huge room, this inn would fit in that room,
piled promiscuously with rings and bracelets,
necklaces, pearl drops, ball gowns, fur wraps,
lace petticoats, silks and satins. Ladies’
boots, and muffs, and bonnets: a treasure cave and dressing room—
diamonds and rubies underneath my feet.
“Beyond that room I knew myself in Hell.
In my dream . . .
I saw many heads. The heads of young women. I saw a wall
on which dismembered limbs were nailed.
A heap of breasts. The piles of guts, of livers, lights,
the eyes, the . . .
No. I cannot say. And all around the flies were buzzing,
onelow droning buzz.
—Bëelzebubzebubzebub, they buzzed. I could not breathe,
I ran from there and sobbed against a wall.”
“A fox’s lair indeed,” says the fair woman.
(“It was not so,” I mutter.)
“They are untidy creatures, so to litter
about their dens the bones and skins and feathers
of their prey. The French call him Renard,
the Scottish, Tod.”
“One cannot help one’s name,” says my intended’s father.
He is almost panting now, they all are:
in the firelight, the fire’s heat, lapping their ale.
The wall of the inn was hung with sporting prints.
She continues:
“From outside I heard a crash and a commotion.
I ran back the way I had come, along the red carpet,
down the wide staircase—too late!—the main door was opening!
I threw myself down the stairs—rolling, tumbling—
fetched up hopelessly beneath a table,
where I waited, shivered, prayed.”
She points at me. “Yes, you, sir. You came in,
crashed open the door, staggered in, you, sir,
dragging a young woman
by her red hair and by her throat.
Her hair was long and unconfined, she screamed and strove
to free herself. You laughed, deep in your throat,
were all a-sweat, and grinned from ear to ear.”
She glares at me. The color’s in her cheeks.
“You pulled a short old broadsword, Mister Fox,
and as she screamed,
you slit her throat, again from ear to ear,
I listened to her bubbling, sighing, shriek,
and closed my eyes and prayed until she stopped.
And after much, much, much too long, she stopped.
“And I looked out. You smiled, held up your sword,
your hands agore-blood—”
“In your dream,” I tell her.
“In my dream.
She lay there on the marble, as you sliced
you hacked, you wrenched, you panted, and you stabbed.
You took her head from her shoulders,
thrust your tongue between her red wet lips.
You cut off her hands. Her pale white hands.
You sliced open her bodice, you removed each breast.
Then you began to sob and howl.
Of a sudden,
clutching her head, which you carried by the hair,
the flame red hair,
you ran up the stairs.
“As soon as you were out of sight,
I fled through the open door.
I rode my Betsy home, down the white road.”
All eyes upon me now. I put down my ale
on the old wood of the table.
“It is not so,”
I told her,
told all of them.
“It was not so, and
God forbid
it should be
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