CALLING

Alf Tennyson's height made it hard to hide
His muse would find him crouching
Beneath a privet hedge or sitting
Among the branches of immemorial elms
Swearing at the bees in a fierce whisper.
"Enough of this, Tennyson!" his muse would call,
"We have a contract! 133 cantos, no more or less
In iambic tetrameter. Rhymes to be ABBA.
I have a new idea for a title. How does
'Artie Hallam -- My Dead BFF’ sound to you?"
"I like In Memoriam A.H.H. better." "As you will;
Now, out of the vegetation, man!
Cantos can't write themselves you know."

JUST THE FACTS

          The Kraken has slept since before the world’s first beginning and has managed to stay asleep on the ocean’s floor through every beginning since, even the extravagantly loud ones and the one made mostly of screeching colored lights which Coyote made to win a wager. So long has he slept that his dreams have put on substance and walk about as men, though their way in the world is seldom easy.

          If you look at Moxon’s edition of the Collected Poems (though you never bought a copy and were never given one, one has appeared on your shelves) there is a poem about the Kraken which Alfred Tennyson wrote when he was 18 or so, in which he summarizes the Kraken’s fate which is, at the end of the world to “rise roaring to the surface” and die. Tennyson, however, died well before the Kraken, and was waylaid on his way to the afterlife by the ghost of his friend Edward Fitzgerald.

          When they thought of Tennyson, his friends usually did not first think of his being a great poet. Cigars summed him up for some; others thought of his beard, his extravagant sorrow over Hallam’s death, his temper, or his grandly fluent profanity. For Fitzgerald, the essence of Tennyson had communicated itself to the hats he wore, which were no sooner clapped on his head than they underwent peculiar changes, as if their identity had become fluid. It is a rare if pointless gift to be able to effortlessly make a silk top hat fancy itself a sombrero.

          Fitzgerald had been a noticing man, and had become a noticing ghost. He had been shadowing Tennyson’s spirit for some while and was sure it had started out bare-headed. Somehow, it had acquired a hat of even more than ordinary disreputability. “Tennyson, that is an appalling hat!”

          “Fitz? How glad I am to see you! Strange; I never imagined those as the first words I’d hear after I died.”

          “I had something much more impressive prepared but that hat has driven them out of my head.”

NOTE FROM A KRAKEN

Over time the kraken's dreams
Have filled up with sea wrack and flotsam
From sunken ships. On stationery
From a ship that will go down in 1912
He writes with a pen that, as warranted,
Works underwater. "Dear Sir Alfred,"
He begins, "Though we have not met
You will know that I am a sea monster
Who's been sleeping since the world began.
Lately, while idly leafing through

The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse
I came upon your sonnet, The Kraken.
To my surprise you have written that
Some meddlesome angel will eventually
Poke a spear in the ocean, making it boil.
(I must say, I would like to have a few words
With whoever thought arming angels
Was a good idea). At that -- I am still
Following your poem -- I will wake up,
Roaring. (As who wouldn’t at being boiled?)
Then, you write, I will rise to the surface
And die.

                  Again: I am to wake, roar, rise, die.
This came as a shock. Until now I have cherished
A range of possibilities. In my grander dreams
I have become the Slade Professor of Art
And lectured to crowds of eager aesthetes.
More modestly, I assumed I might support myself
By clerical work or, at the very least, rampage
Through some great Eastern metropolis.
Frankly, I no longer see the point of existing
And, as you are the cause of my perplexity
I turn to you for counsel, trusting you will resist
The urge to quote yourself on mine not to reason why.
Yours faithfully,
                    Microcosmus Marinus, Kraken."

THE VERY OLD MUSE REMINISCES

“Of course I knew Alf Tennyson,” said the very old muse,

“I knew everyone. Never did much work with him;

Just once in a ways. His regular muse was a big woman

And wore steel-toe boots. He was six foot or so

But she could have put him in her pocket and had room

For Cat Rossetti and Martin Tupper, with Algy Swinburne

Swinging from that gold-plated watch chain of hers.

I remember Alf and his muse smoking awful cheroots

That smelled like someone was burning rope. He kept hoping

She’d bring him something soft – something with birds

Or fuzzy kittens gambling in a sunshiny meadow but she

Was never much one for kittens. ‘Alfy,’ she would say --

Though he time and again asked her not to call him Alfy –

‘I have something extra good for you here today:

Another poem about your pal Arthur Henry Hallam!’

Alf would sigh; “And how many is that now?

A hundred and six, I think?’ But he knew he was stuck

And did as he’d been told; she was never the sort

Who tolerated much backtalk. No more am I.”

KRAKEN

Alfred Lord Tennyson was tall

And smoked cigars. He swore

With enthusiasm. He’d recite Maud

Even when no one asked him

(Perhaps especially when no one asked him)

A lesser poet would not have dared

To wear hats so ancient and terrible.

On his deathbed he opened his eyes

(A peculiar shade of hazel they were)

To ask a visitor if she’d been taught

How to dance a sarabande.

He interrupted his death to rise

And make a slow demonstration.