Perkin Warbeck

Call me butterfly,changeling or imp,as you will,
I do not lack for names or enemies,
Peasant by birth, prince by the will of God.
Born to dazzle and perplex the world,
I find myself cajoled into strange destiny,
Daring the improbable with full force;
Used by every devious hand and mind
In Europe’s mortal games.
Each,bewildered by his own desires,
Seeks a scapegoat,plots a story,
And finds the necessaries where he can.
Who is any man to dub me impostor,
Not lacking,I am certain,impostures of his own,
And counterfeits admired by others
As finer than nature’s work.
(The trickster land of Flanders made me,
Weavers’ hands scrolling out tapestries
Of fantasy more beautiful than life).
In this age of adventures,I captain myself
Into wild seas,bound for untold landfalls
And savagery in all its forms
(In that peril may not hearts be opened
To God’s grace?We northerners are ruled by the moon,
Whose tides and influences favour the new,
Calling us to wander and explore).
All hearts yearn in these times for the lost,
The forsaken and abandoned,whatever it may be,
Caught between greatness and nothingness,
Deceivers deceived,kings of empty courts.
Take from me the cloth-of-gold and ermine,
The fine linen and chains of gold,
The black velvet hat set with pearls,
And you make me no less royal,
No more than you can move the heavenly spheres
Or change men’s elements and humours.
This world falls to the clever and the handsome;
And I have studied in myself the witchcraft
To induce in others my desired effects,
As they worship the sanguine ascendant in me.
(Though,no doubt,you notice my flawed left eye,
Dull and uncanny,a touch of the basilisk,
A hint of venefice-an imbalance in my symmetry,
Fortune veering into the dark
As imagination creates and destroys).
To invent and re-invent is my vocation:
To forget and remember,beyond reason,
And fashion a new man, a new world,
Somewhere between either and neither,
As I practise my luckiest escapes.
What hidden powers sponsor my progress
And lead me to heaven or hell?
Is the idiot huntsman riding out again
With a cuckoo on his wrist?
And I,who once walked through palaces,
Become the king of the wild woods,
The harried quarry of my enemies,
Abjuring the trees to bow to me
And the animals to kneel at my feet!
An eagle I am not,but why not a sparrow-
Equally at home in the towering air,
Commanding my wings to the utmost
And shooting out of sight....
Damn the bloody field of war,
I sit the saddle as a dreamer,not a soldier,
So leave me alone with the clavichord-
I would play fantastic ballads into the night,
And still the world’s frenzy for a spell.