Iona's Hair

There are many historians who dispense a soporific virtue; a minority will keep you turning the tea leaves, burning the midnight newspaper.  If you want a really good story about the king they found ensconced in a parking lot recently, look no further than Paul Murray Kendall's Richard III.  How the Kendallian image of this chap diverges from the Earl of Oxford version (oh wait - I mean Shakespeare) !  Of course, the Tudors had it in for the Earl of Gloucester.  I think the city of York still likes the guy - as well they should, according to Kendall.  Plus there's a passage in the book which goes thoroughly into fishgarths.

IONA’S HAIR

The s-curved spine of attainted king

snakes up from parking lot.

Not Prospero, not quite

Macbeth.  The plot’s the thing

for knucklebones.  Woodvilles & Nevilles

in the nether woods – phosphorus

Warwick, glowing in the dust.

Someone’s gotta pay the bills

for Renaissance magnificence.

The wolfish gusto of these

alpha bêtes!  Rimini’s

laird, Ezra’s ravening prince –

shades in the hollows of Sherwood,

old artifacts of violence.

How did we survive this?

How will we yet?  Pappy understood,

somehow – head bowed with meekness

to a mud-stained plow.

All yang, no yin, was how

blind stick-up men went down.  No sense

of the spider’s tensile teetering

with dewy tread, on thread...

black widow’s offspring (death’s-

head remonstrance for buccaneering

sports).  Be with me, Columba,

bright dove-bird padre

from cloud-slopes of Eire.

Proud kings lie hidden in Iona’s hair.

7.7.15

Remains of King Richard III