Alan Gould: If You Know My Inmost

So If You Know My Inmost

 

And since you’ve seen the wiles o’ me,

Come tell to me your name.

—Traditional, “The Forester”

 

“So if you know my inmost

why not reveal your name?

For Annabels and Clarabels

will not be thought the same

 

by one upfront and forelock boy,

sleek beside swimming pool,

adroit with pleasantries between

our sheets of sweet misrule.

 

For now the dawn has come with broom

to sweep away the stars

and slip them in her pocket with

her keepsakes and ménage,

 

and I am now your data, love,

yes, your magnetic field,

so since you know my physics, love.

I’ll have your name revealed.”

 

“Some call me Shy, some call me Shock,

some call me Scaramouche.

But I’m the chough with crimson eye,

the bronze-wing in the bush.

 

Some call me Raindrop-on-a-leaf,

some call me Hidden Face,

but when I earn my livelihood

I’m simply known as Ace.”

 

“Some call you this, some call you that,

some call you demigod,

but when you’re at your workplace, love,

I know you’re Wally Plod.”

 

He’s jumped astride his motorbike,

he’s off across the hill.

On skateboard she’s abreast of him

though still she’s deshabille.

 

She’s chased him through the valleys and

beside the reservoirs,

then down into the city with

its serpent gleam of cars.

 

He’s in the lift and rising fast

to Level Forty Four,

but she is in the stairwell and

arriving there before.

 

The views are angel views up here

Hobart to Borneo,

and Daddy’s in his swivel chair,

his hirelings come and go.

 

“Big Daddy, here’s your flunkey

who crept below my guard,

but would not give his name to me

for all he left his card.”

 

Her daddy gazes through the glass,

Hobart to Borneo.

Her daddy speaks with quite a growl …

“Here’s what I think will flow …

 

If Wally has a loving heart,

but more, a careful ear,

then I foresee there might well be

the wedding of the year.

 

But if he is a fly-by-night,

a varmint and a shonk

he’ll sleep his nights with crabs and mites

in the slums of Honkytonk.”

 

Confetti blushed across a scene,

they’re married forty years,

a magnate’s only daughter and

a scamp with careful ears.

 

Alan Gould