The Maynard
Spring 2015

Victoria Summons Hall

Death—that mournful sleep—
was miserable Destiny
for our courageous kin,
now squelched in volcanic mud.

Graced by elder aloofness,
distant to the Front’s sulphurous deeds,
still I see The Times show bodies
naked as children

in amputated clothes,
all over spade-bitten earth,
crumbled bones
in that dog-shit cemetery,

My India. Their dead?
All were suicides—inflexible,
irrational.
But Treason is a labyrinth.

Command this hour’s hero—
Mr. Hall, to catch the sea,
wave by wave,
each majestic swell,

then half-collapsed foam.
Once he fords the spray rampart,
ramping our shore,
he must enjoy every opportunity

for Caprice.
Bring me Mr. Hall,
the pitch-faced sailor
who blew apart the Sepoys

and made their mosque their graves.
Let him sing, sassy as a kazoo,
and encourage our spasms of humming,
while night takes custody of dreams.