Free The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber Page B

stop his coat
from flapping on his chest. I want to say
‘Are you all right?’ but the question is absurd.
     
    What good are words? There’s a woman sobbing on
her slain provider, comforter and mate –
and her sobs are your creation. How should words
presume themselves as bandages or slings
when the world limps onward, and you’ve darkened it?
And words be damned, for if we’re ‘gentle men’
then what hope does the world have? Words are lost.
They’ve plucked their eyes out rather than see this,
have jumped from clifftops.
     
                                                     Finally, Tom thaws.
    Stone quiet, he murmurs, ‘What will I tell Ann?’
     
    ‘Tell her the truth,’ I say, after a pause.
‘I killed someone? She’ll like that.’ There’s no smile.
‘I thought I was a better man,’ he says,
‘but there’s no such thing. Just look.’ He nods his head
at the sobbing woman, mingling tears with blood,
Orrell and Bradley’s brother lifting what
used to contain her love, and staggering,
off-balanced by its weight. ‘Ten minutes ago
I was a writer. Now I’m a murderer.’

ENVOI
    And he was not the same. If prison broke
some part of him, it was a secret piece
below the cough he carried eighteen months
beyond the blessedness of his release.
     
    Within his former swagger now, a limp
was hinted at: some slight imbalance stayed.
     
    Behind each joke the deadly serious
would tug a gulp, provoke the listener’s stare.
     
    And he was out of time; his laugh would ring
two beats beyond the point where some of us
would find things funny.
     
                                               Yet the strangest jest
    Tom ever played on us was losing faith
that the world would let him off on self-defence
another time. And so he wrote his end.
Three years would pass before we buried him.

LIMBO
    Thrown into Limbo, Newgate’s deepest cell,
to await our pardons, and to join those souls
who spend their hours watching rodents fight
for a crumb of something rotten.
                                                               ‘Fuck, the smell,’
    says Watson, as we’re harried down the hall.
Gaol costs, and those who can’t afford to pay
to shit in a pot have smeared it on the walls.
Here, we’ll await the pardon of the Crown.
The stink of resignation follows us down.
     
    The third night in, the gaoler lets me out
for a visitor who’s paid him handsomely.
And there, in a private room with a solid door,
is Robin Poley.
                             ‘So. You’re faring well?’
     
    ‘The God of Shepherds come to find his strays?’
     
    He likes the metaphor. ‘A little beer?’
He passes a jug across. He has a face,
as Watson said, uncoupled from his thoughts.
A windless lake that mirrors the serene
even when lightning cracks the sky above.
I wanted more than drink.
                                                 ‘Some paper and ink?
    A decent quill? A pen-knife?’
                                                         ‘Not in here.’
    ‘But you can get me out?’ I say. Again,
that lake of a face shows only silver calm
over its fatal depths.
                                           ‘Come sit,’ he says,
    proof that the man can smile and slip the noose
over your head before you feel a thing.
     
    ‘I cannot bear to be here,’ I begin.
‘The shit, the fleas—’
                                           He stops me. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
                       ‘The Queen’s own servant, are you not?
    No livery, grant you; you’re of a higher grade.
A trusted agent, and a royal tutor.’
     
    I gaze at his throat. ‘No doubt that’s