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TAPESTRY
MOTHS I
know a curious moth, that haunts old buildings, A
tapestry moth, I saw it at Hardwick Hall, ‘More
glass than wall’ full of great tapestries laddering And
bleaching in the white light from long windows. I
saw this month when inspecting one of the cloth pictures Of
a man offering a basket of fresh fruit through a portal To
a ghost with other baskets of lobsters and pheasants nearby When
I was amazed to see some plumage of one of the birds Suddenly
quiver and fly out of the basket Leaving
a bald patch on the tapestry, breaking up as it flew away. A
claw shifted. The ghost’s nose escaped. I realised It
was the tapestry mohts that ate the colours like the light Limping
over the hangings, voracious cameras, And
reproduced across their wings the great scenes they consumed Carrying
the conceptions of artists away to hang in the woods Or
carried off never to be joined again or packed into microscopic eggs Or
to flutter like fragments of old arguments through the unused kitchens Settling
on pans and wishing they could eat the glowing copper The
lamb-faced moth with shining amber wool dust-dabbing the pane Flocks
of them shirted with tiny fleece and picture wings The
same humble mask flaming in the candle or on the glass bulb Scorched
unwinking, dust-puff, disassembled; a sudden flash among the hangings Like
a window catching the sun, it is a flock of moths golden from eating The
gold braid of the dress uniforms, it is the rank of the family’s admirals Taking
wing, they rise Out
of horny amphorae, pliable maggots, wingless they champ The
meadows of fresh salad, the green glowing pilasters Set
with flowing pipes and lines like circuits in green jelly Later
they set in blind moulds all whelked and horny While
the moth-soup inside makes itself lamb-faced in The
inner theatre with its fringed curtains, the long-dressed Moth
with new blank wings struggling over tapestry, drenched with its own birth
juices Tapestry
enters the owls, the pipistrelles, winged tapestry That
flies from the Hall in the night to the street lamps, The
great unpicturing wings of the nightfeeders on moths Mute
their white cinders . . . and a man, Selecting
a melon from his mellow garden under a far hill, eats, Wakes
in the night to a dream of one offering fresh fruit, Lobsters and pheasants through a green fluted portal to a ghost.
copyright © Peter Redgrove
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