Kevin Cawley<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1
\nAdultery, a cult of knights
\nwho championed the trampled rights
\nof women stuck with simple men,
\nenunciated once again
\nits awesome old philosophy:
\nLove pardons all. So harden me.
\nMaid Marian embarrassed boys
\nwho courted her with mortal joys,
\nwho planned to make romantic books
\ncome true with their intrusive looks.
\nTheir practiced gestures waxing wild
\nmade Marian more wary. Mild
\nyet mistress of a vicious wit,
\nshe made them test the blade of it.
\nHer orthodoxy soared above
\npedestrians requesting love
\naccording to some formula,
\nsome passionate anathema.
\nShe’d lose them with her Q.E.D.;
\nshe’d take their hands and make them see.<\/p>\n
2
\nBut one, the Earl of Huntington,
\nhad answered all her banter, done it
\nnicely with no trace of spite.
\nRegardless of how hard she’d bite,
\nhe sent his argument along
\npolitely, sifting right from wrong.
\nThe phony trope, erroneous
\nconclusion or unruly fuss,
\nthe battering of rhetoric,
\nthe softer philosophic trick
\nall challenged him, and balancing
\nideal design and real thing
\nhe routed them repeatedly.
\nShe couldn’t consent, wouldn’t agree
\nwith every point a clever boy
\nmight put her, but she could enjoy
\nthe magic of his logical
\nproduction — ineluctable
\nbut ultimately tolerant,
\nno martyrdom by argument.<\/p>\n
3
\nWhen Marian practiced archery
\nin general the men would flee.
\nThey’d heard the jokes, absurd accounts
\nof each prospective teacher pouncing
\non the opportunity,
\nthe thrill of possibility,
\ndismayed to find the lady’s aim
\nbetter than theirs. She’d hit the same
\nsmall mark from twice as far away.
\nA chuckle. “What good luck,” she’d say.
\nBut Huntington, not one to shrink
\nfrom jokes or care what jokers think,
\ninvited\u00a0her\u00a0to tutor\u00a0him.
\nBeginning with an interim
\nof weeks between their meetings, she
\nagreed that they would need to meet
\nmore frequently. And he suggested
\n“Daily lessons may be best.”
\nA pair of scholars. Marian should
\nprobably call him Robin. Good.<\/p>\n
4
\nWilling to use familiar names,
\nRobin and Marian, able to aim
\ntwo arrows at some narrow post
\nand vary by a hair at most,
\ntogether in one another’s thought,
\nthe teacher and the creature taught,
\nthey went all winter, spent all spring
\nand summer on the same old thing.
\nTarget practice. Arguing.
\nWhen autumn came he bought a ring
\nand after tea one afternoon
\nproduced it — all too soon, too soon.
\n“You’re joking,” she said. “You’re mocking me.”
\nIn looking for his equal he
\nhad never thought how every male
\nhe knew preferred his beauty frail,
\nhad not imagined what it meant
\nto beauties when their suitors went
\naway to marry safer wives —
\nthe failure of their daily lives.<\/p>\n
5
\nThe church that had the virtue of
\na summer cool she came to love
\nin autumn somehow caught a cold
\nthat weighed her down and made her old.
\nShe sat and thought her future up.
\nShe’d join a convent, interrupt
\nthe sermons of determined friends
\nwho burdened her with worldly ends,
\nadvice on acting nice and sweet,
\nto handle every man you meet
\nwith cataleptic flattery,
\nto catch the point of lechery
\nas if it were uplifting wit
\nand titter when he mutters\u00a0shit.
\nShe’d interrupt their endless bragging,
\nsimpering and dimpled nagging,
\nbroach the subject, watch the fun:
\n“Me, I think I’ll be a nun.”<\/p>\n
6
\nWealth and self-indulgence had
\nbeen hobbling efforts Robin made
\nto swell his faith: developing
\nsome charity, the scary thing
\nhe hoped for most in groping prayer.
\nLaughably childish, half aware
\nthat living means to give things up,
\nhe still preferred his silver cup
\nkept full, as if the ale he’d drink
\nshould never make the level sink.
\nThinking of Marian, drinking more
\nintransigently than before,
\ncursing when his servant failed
\nto keep his cup completely filled,
\nenraged to hear his page repeat
\nhe’d just brought out the last of it,
\nhe yelled and knocked the fellow down,
\nsaddled his horse and rode to town.
\nLivid. He didn’t give a damn
\nwhat he might do in Nottingham.<\/p>\n
7
\nObviously Robin Hood
\nfound Justice so disgusting, Good
\nso downright bad, the Crown so far
\naway, so busy playing war,
\nhe doubted courts could outlaw him
\nand make their dictum take. The whim
\nof hothead Norman Nottingham
\ncould never cause a quiver: damn
\nor pardon him, it hardly made
\na difference in the drifting shade
\nof Sherwood. Once he learned the poor
\nkeep company, how some endure
\ntheir general lot of penury
\nwith merriness, hilarity,
\nhe guessed that his misfortune might
\nbe Providence unraveled: light
\nundone in shadow, wonder wound
\nin dappled overlapping ground
\nlike mortar in the forest tile
\nto teach a man too rich to smile.<\/p>\n
8
\nTo set down tales of Little John
\nrepeating every cheater’s song,
\nto give the names as if you knew
\nthe men he met, pretend a true
\nintention even when you have
\nno facts at all, in practice serves
\nthe wishful thinking legends use
\nto win an audience to views
\ncongenial to maniacs
\nwho call the mob to lawless acts.
\nThe convent Marian joined became
\na family home, the family name
\nquite prominent, anonymously
\nmentioned here only because
\nher family’s papers came to hold
\nthe convent archives. Finally sold
\nat auction to a speculator,
\nrecords of Robin’s reckless ways
\nsettled in the Vatican:
\nhis letters, her memoirs settled in.<\/p>\n
9
\nThese dumbstruck dead can’t come to term
\nexcept in papers kept from harm
\nby sisters with a history
\nto cherish. No posterity
\nto worry them: a heritage
\nfor mothers of another age,
\nfor daughters also, taught by vows
\nwhat mastery the chaste espouse.
\nI read and I repeat the facts:
\nexplicit or implicit acts,
\nsome things hinted, some things guessed,
\nbut nothing invented, nothing suppressed.
\nI consequently cannot tell
\nthe usual tales. But you have all
\nheard wild accounts in childhood, seen
\nthe movie versions, rude cartoons
\nand magic-camera agitprop.
\nYou’ve put the best on videotape.
\nWhy insist that my approach
\nconform to topics normally broached?<\/p>\n
10
\nHearing that his Marian
\nwas entering a convent, one
\nwhere sisters kept their visitors
\noutside the cloister, hiding there
\nfrom fellowship with relatives,
\nfrom intercourse with any living
\nsoul beyond the walls, the earl
\nhired an outlaw courier.
\nHe sent a message meant to melt
\nher anger with the pangs he felt,
\nconvince her with intensity,
\nstrike her blind and make her see.
\nHe bundled it with one thing more:
\na frozen purple rose that bore
\nthe scars of fortune, marks that he
\ninterpreted quite artfully
\nas bearing more on Marian’s
\nemotion than his own. The senseless
\nseason of unreasoning
\nreaction must come back to spring.<\/p>\n
11
\nBut if it made a difference kept
\namong her other manuscripts
\nI cannot say. I went through every
\nparticle the archives saved,
\nthose documents that mock me now,
\ntheir ordinary porridge sour,
\nlacking sweetness, lacking spice:
\nthe good quotidian advice
\nof mother superiors. Nothing more.
\nScience must not rely on lore.
\nI cannot therefore end my tale.
\nScholarship must always fail
\nto put\u00a0paid\u00a0or to write\u00a0fini.
\nHistory and mystery
\nwill blend until the end of time,
\na born clich\u00e9, a worn-out rime,
\nhackneyed as the pack of songs
\nthe English keep on singing, long
\nas Robin’s reign and cobbled up
\neach day. New verse. No way to stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kevin Cawley 1 Adultery, a cult of knights who championed the trampled rights of women stuck with simple men, enunciated once again its awesome old philosophy: Love pardons all. So harden me. Maid Marian embarrassed boys who courted her with mortal joys, who planned to make romantic books come true with their intrusive looks. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5084,"featured_media":0,"parent":41,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-91","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91\/revisions\/95"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}