Steel

There had been a time when his madness had been tolerable,

as indeed it still would be in a man possessing less power,

but now it kindled and flared and on occasions

the vambrace of his right arm flattened the faces of servants

as hobnails grind a trembling spring daisy.

Such violence, of course, was normally the product of trivial slights.

The fire dancing on the bricks was hungry without starving

and onto walls black from flames and malcontent it sent small promises.

Above the hearth in a gilt frame there was a picture of a woman,

forbidding and terrible, wrists slim as swords,

her eyebrows the tails of Apollyon’s legions,

the artist’s skill sending her full lips out like a deathly kiss

as they seemed concrete as the exhausted breath

of a lover’s panted praise.

He pressed his tongue to his gums and spat away the blood.

He chuckled. In a far corner the headless body of a man hung on hooks,

twisting like a cloud or a sunset or a soul. What had the offense been?

Perhaps a plate was elbowed with a crash onto fitted stone.

Perhaps an unwise word was whispered too loudly.

More likely that the absent eyes had wandered to the portrait,

that in the shock of awe and beauty a sigh had escaped.

More likely that this insult coiled the madman into swift motions

that culminated with blood dripping into the fissures of flooring,

that a head had grotesquely rolled until the asymmetry of the nose

brought the desecration to a languorous halt.

Perhaps such a thing would have occurred if there had been no portrait,

no armor bound with animals’ tanned hides, no crushing blows,

no slashing whispers of steel nor the dull break of bone.

Perhaps such a thing would have occurred if there had been no room or walls,

no women, no madness, no oblivion at the bottom of a brandy bottle.

Perhaps it was sufficient that there were men.