I introduce Penelope Gwin,
A friend of mine through thick and thin,
Who’s travelled much in foreign parts

Here Follows an Account of the Nature of Fish.
Here follows a description of an unknown town.

And when you are finally caught and questioned, it is discovered, sadly, that you know nothing of use. Your captors exchange glances, nod. You are released in the freedom of some afternoon,

He found old age awaiting him 
                on a spare and limpid plain
         between Troy’s embers and the mines’

1    It’s been raining six days now,
      stinks of worms. Every grocery-store
      weather mat in the whole city has been

While I wait I copy the smallest details,
how experts supposed a violent end, this corpse
an ill-fated soldier. A musketball to the leg. Another

 The eyes of your eyes not yet
open. Tongue. Bud lip. I come
to watch the heart

 It’s hot in this red room,
inside the beating heart of the ritual, explosive
now with duress, bleeding its stress

So that all day he’s stared the mountain down
its myth of windowsill, followed by, live, sight
of an oak shaking as a fever into leaf, alone

Aphra Behn is not wearing all her clothes 
in some part of South America nobody knows. 
Everyone is polite, and not. Maybe she left off