Brother of Dragons for Matt and Beth
“I am a brother to dragons,
and a companion of owls.”
Job 30:29
The haggard rakes out,
refusing to stoop on the prey.
The falconer unhoods
the merlin’s eyes.
Unloosens the brail
from his sails.
Unties the jesses
from the pounces.
The weathering merlin
bates off the fist
and goes ringing up.
The dragons have captured a maiden sky
with their white torches,
thus the cold holocaust,
dawn in crowtime.
The owl opens its eyes to jonk.
In that sleep of death what dreams may come?
The ramage serpents writhe in pale fire
on the messenger’s staff;
emblem of some greater lust, some greater wisdom.
To the dragons, fire is neither hot nor cold.
This frost is fire.
A curse blesses. This blessing curses.
The myths whisper:
The phoenix needs the fire to temper his seed in ash.
Unicorns are tame to the virgin; but griffins
devour the chaste.
The falconer can man a hawk,
imp the hunger traced feathers of an eyass;
but this tatterdemalion cannot mew of his motley,
imp a creance,
and can sew no flag of truce
out of bright rags.
The Day of Judgment
broods over the memory cathedral’s doors.
Only in the eyes of the dragons
are we all unbroken.
Only in the eyes of the dragons
are we all undying.
Dana Pattillo
Note: This poem is a sort of puzzle box, a complete self indulgence in obscure and antique vocabulary, mostly terms from falconry. Thus I provide a glossary for the perplexed:
Haggard: A wild hawk captured when in adult plumage.
Rake out: Flying too far and wide while the falconer is flushing game.
Stoop: Dive on quarry
Merlin: A small hawk commonly known as the Pigeon Hawk, Falco columbarius Linnaeus.
Brail: Soft leather thongs used to secure a hawk’s wing.
Sails: The hawk’s wings.
Jesses: Strips of leather attached to the hawk’s legs.
Pounces: Claws.
Weathering: A hawk unhooded in the open air.
Bate: Fly off the falconer’s glove, or the desire to chase or escape.
Ringing: Spiralling.
Crowtime: When fall segues into winter, or when winter segues into spring; a time between those seasons.
Jonk: Sleep.
Ramage: Wild.
Man a hawk: Tame a hawk.
Imp: Mend broken feathers.
Hunger trace: Mark in tail feathers generally by starvation as a nestling.
Eyass: Hawk raised from a nestling.
Tatterdemalion: A knight in ragged chain mail; a beggar in rags. In falconry, mail means the breast feathers.
Mew: Molt.
Motley: Particolored clothing; the uniform of court jester.
Creance: In falconry, a long line.
Memory Cathedral: a mnemonic technique developed by European scholars in the Middle Ages. In order to remember large amounts of information before the invention of printing made books common and easy to obtain, the adept scholar would store his memories in an internally visualized cathedral, as objects or series of objects that functioned as rebuses (visual puns; an eye for an “I” and so on), that triggered recall of the stored data. The Day of Judgement is often depicted in bas relief sculpture over a main entrance to a Gothic cathedral such as Chartres
