Renaissance

 

The timbers rotted and the close rooms stank.

Pomanders did no good. Out in the stables

The horses held their noses in the dank

And straw. Laid out on the damasked tables,

The joints turned green, the bread grew hard and died;

No lady could spend such a spring inside.

The cuckoo on the move sang in hysterics;

The hawthorn sucked in air and stained it pink;

The garden walks were seasoned well with clerics;

The poets hid in hedges with their ink

And rhyming paper. In the elmtree shade,

Vertically, a man knocked up a maid.

Heads would depart before there came a June,

And no man knew the faith that in the fall

Would be allowed. Red-ripe and out of tune,

Wind in their blood made lyres of them all.

Men died, who let their mustaches relax

Or thought of a conundrum worth an ax.