‘Just where do you think you’re going, girl
With those ribbons in your hair?’
‘I’m off to the world of Make Believe
To the Hart Midsummer Fair.
They say there’s a Magical Fairy Ring
Where the maids dance round a pole,
Where the step of a dainty pair of feet
Can win you a *** of gold.’

‘There’s Lords and Ladies and Dukes and Kings
Come down from the Castle Kragg,
Wearing their Crowns and jewels and rings
And they roast a new killed Stag,
There are clowns and jugglers, Gypsy bands
And the Phantom Fiddler’s there,
Playing an ancient Irish jig
At the Hart Midsummer Fair.’

‘The gentlemen from the town come down
All dressed in their best array,
Looking to win a country maid
To hang off their arm that day.
And those as willing, the auctioneer
Takes maids from the countryside,
Bangs his gavel and calls the odds
For the sale of a country bride.’

‘I’ll not have you at the County fair,
You can stay at the farm by me,
We’ve been affianced for over a year
And wed in a year, we’ll see!’
‘I’ve waited long for your promise to wed
But nothing has come about,
I’ll not be wed to an Ostler, when
A gentleman calls me out.’

He locked the maid in the pantry, so
She wouldn’t get out that day,
But she slipped the lock, and changed her dress
And managed to get away.
She went the way of the hidden lane
On the old grey dappled mare,
And rode on over the hills to find
The Hart Midsummer Fair.

She was late for the clowns and jugglers
She was late for the Fairy Ring,
She wasn’t too late for the auctioneer
Who told her to come right in.
She couldn’t see who was bidding for her
But she took it with a smile,
It must have been some fine gentleman
For the bidding was done in style.

‘Four pounds I’m bid, for this comely *****,
Four guineas to you out there,’
Another pound brought his gavel down
‘I believe that you’ve won her, sir!’
They tied a blindfold over her eyes
And her wrists were bound with cords,
She had to walk for a dozen miles
Tethered behind a horse.

The horse’s hooves had a hollow ring
As they hit the cobblestones,
The walls were damp and the air was filled
With a smell like drying bones.
Her ‘gentleman’ took the blindfold off
And her knees began to sag,
She’d sold herself to the Pantler of
The household, Castle Kragg.

The Pantler, so very old and grey
With a blind, white staring eye,
He said that she’d be the scullery maid
There were pots and pans to dry,
There wasn’t a single window in
The kitchen, down below,
She ****** the money he’d paid for her
And she begged him, let her go.

‘That’s not enough,’ said the wily serf,
‘To free you from these grounds,
If you want to purchase your liberty
It will cost you twenty pounds.
Your value is in the work you’ll do
Both here, and under the stairs,
If you pay your shilling a week to me
It will take you seven years!’

That night she slept on a pile of sacks
And she ****** the man away,
She said, ‘You’re not going to touch me
For as long as you make me pay!’
But late that night in the pale moonlight
A horse’s hooves were heard,
And a shadow crept to her bedside,
Whispered, ‘Don’t say a single word!’

He led her up to the courtyard where
There stood the dapple grey,
Hoisted her up behind him, spurred
The horse, ‘Now let’s away!’
She clung on tight to the Ostler she
Had spurned, without a care,
And laughed when they crested the hillside
As the breeze blew through her hair.

The banns went up the following day
They were married in the fall,
She said, ‘I finally got my way,’
And he answered, ‘Not at all!
‘You only married an Ostler, not
The Pantler under the stair.’
‘An Ostler’s all that I wanted since
The Hart Midsummer Fair!’

David Lewis Paget

Where are we, Kaya?  
                               

Landscapes pock like amanita muscaria, fly agaria
the long-legged mushrooms, scarlet
and foot-cloven
and languages rage and quicken like seeds

Seated at the empty table
bloated from unrequited intentions
we refrain from embrasures

Your Garingau voice &  throaty laugh
ripple over our eyes
Ha liya youn dabib?
You ask: Where
are we
going?

from here, with Lighthouse Caye in sight
on this sea of blighted corals beyond Seine Bight

where you were born as a footling--
inked though it became-- sole dark, Soul bright
emerging from the long dive
talismans training in your toothless mouth
foretelling the deeper plunges

off Billy Hawk Caye at Solstice
soulfully spearing our Sole--food without strife

And there is richer fare
where
we
are
going
into the night Kaya.

~ Lin Ostler
December 23. 2011
all rights reserved

Geoffrey Chaucer died last weekend
about six hundred years ago.
One Autumn day muffled drums tapped
out a dying pulse, a knock at
heaven’s gate. I listen for hooves,
the soft thud of an old man’s shoes
on the path outside the ‘grace mansion’
in the corner of the churchyard,
thinking he might just be riding
down to Canterbury again;
but no, hooves and voices are both
silent. No more good wives’ tales
set down between journeys on the
King’s or even Bishop’s business
and reread at evening stops at
some inn along the Kentish road.

I sit a little longer, sad
until the voices of a priest,
a nun, a soldier, an ostler
carry to me upon the breeze
and I know the pleasure you will,
somewhere, sometime, in future years.

Born on Boxing Day
she lived a hundred and one years
- all through the Great War
that failed to end all wars,
the social revolution of the twenties,
and the great depression,
before marrying at the age of twenty-five.
And even then she had to declare
her father’s occupation
on the marriage certificate
as if "father : ostler" defined her.
The marriage took place on Christmas Day
to save the expense of another family gathering.
She never went out to work after that,
no longer just her father’s daughter
but proud to be a wife and mother,
first in rented rooms with a shared outside privy,
then to a modern house “like a palace”
with a refrigerator
and a washing machine
and a garden
where her husband could grow things.
She always loved babies and children
and even at the last,
after years of advancing dementia,
with eyesight, hearing, mobility, and memory failing,
she would always come to life
in their company,
everything forgotten except how much she loved them.
We finally said goodbye, knowing
that although she had little to give
except love,
she gave it to the end.