Albigensian frenglo-angles

So Prince Henry, Ugly Duckling, winds his ever-so-clever Subtilitie of tongue down London way... wheedling & yodeling his mellifluous Thames theme.  It will only deepen and grow darker later, methinks; there be more to face that he hath not yet.  Meanwhile he slithers on, whistling past his own self-consciousness, in the famous Capital... (p.s. the sculpture along the Thames which stimulated Our Hero in such a timely way was Atalanta, by Francis Derwent Wood).

from Ancient Light

       8

       

       What is this ancientnew lighthearted light

       in a realm of frozen monumental statuettes? 

       Kissed to life by a skittish Provençal quintet 

       named Quitterie?  It was by the Thames we met,

       

       in Chelsea, across the road from Cheyne Walk; 

       I'd been four days already in the capital, 

       wandering lonely as a crowd.  Near the tall 

       and glittering bridge the houseboats knocked

       

       against the pier.  We glanced, and looked again, 

       awkward to speak.  I let you go, far up along the bank; 

       passed a statue of a naked woman, rank

       with fleshlier mettle – but it made me try again!

       

       – caught up with you by the next crossing;

       said something passable and mild; compared 

       our maps, our plans, our lack-of-plans – and fared 

       together into Chelsea. Bluejays began to sing. . .

       

       It was an alba – Albigensian,

       and guileless. We walked together, 

       barely understood each other –

       beginning again and again

       

       with friendly frenglo-angles, tongue to tongue 

       – piloting, from there to Leicester Square, 

       between adultery and innocence, aware 

       that freedom gives the lie – the fIrst rung

       

       on the ladder to those penetrating bells

       (if only we ring true).  Prodigal children, 

       Love is prodigal – more prodigal than sin. 

       So sang the spendthrift preacher of St. Pauls'.

       

       And in the maelstrom under Nelson's gnomon 

       (sun gone down, St. Martin-in-the-Fields) 

       granted a graceful Provençal farewell, I sealed      

       (canonical) my Book of Q (Lips Monastery). Gone.

Another rose window