Sixteen Forty-Five

Untimely winds in sixteen forty-five

Blow through the windows, wake the paper rose.

This is Sweet Briar, the Tudor seal, it binds

One kingdom with another, fire with fire.

Its five red petals breed six warring tongues

That in the silence spell our hexagram.

War means supplication: the hexagram—

Once print, now prayer—in sixteen forty-five

Fends between adversaries.  Old tongues,

Grown grave, recite the Prayer Book and the Rose.

This is the trial of fire and fire, for fire

Alone holds fast that which hell’s fire unbinds.

But now our cropped, uncivil Samson binds

Five foxes, brush to brush, a hexagram

Of blazing damage.  Kinship, threat, and fire

Contend for right in sixteen forty-five—

Until the Lord of Liberty arose

And drew the temple down on English tongues.

Huntsman, lord of a thousand blooded tongues

Master of the hollow forest, who binds

The aged with their heart’s desire, the rose

With senseless fear: your ancient hexagram

Is riven oak, for sixteen forty-five

Has purged the kingdom, and its men, with fire.

Come with your houndsmen to the household fire:

Here is Herbert, Tyndale, Eliot—rare tongues

Who in the fires of sixteen forty-five

Found prophesy fulfilled.  Their writing binds

Past with present: a poet’s hexagram

Of ever-living fire and unseen rose.

This is our hexagram: the Tudor rose

Of sixteen forty-five unfolds its fire-

Tongued text: this warfare is the strife that binds.