New Century Aubade: (20 Eaton Street, South Of Buckingham Gardens)

Everything I do is a pose: one hand gripping the balustrade, the other cupped around a glass of air lifted into the inked-in sky, a toast to . . .

well, who-knows-and-hell, a drunk’s remorse is mostly whimsy, anyway— a strained revelry like this night, wavering before the advancing forces: even the King’s distant shrubbery grows conspicuous, as ungainly as a child’s toys left overturned in the parlor.

No birthday for me again this year— my odd cipher erased by court astronomers eager to align human measure to heavenly cadence. An awkward galopp! But I’ll dance to anything tonight, off-kilter on my four-year-old legs; tonight I am lit from within by that beacon of enlightenment, French brandy; I sway in homage to the plumpening lawn and topiary of your verdant realm, O mad majesty, my dear glutted Prince!

Again! they cried, rolling in their seats as we tuned up for the next round: again the caroling, plates clattering and flailing limbs: again! as if the next time would surely be the best but not the last . .

Pinkening sky. And with it a small breeze quickening, wisping my cheek, a ghost’s chill tickle . . .

Foolishness, all of it— the lost birthdays and prodigal punch, the extra zeroes on a clean slate— even the bitch I walked out on so that I could toast a sotted stranger, my one true love laid bare and cold before me:

hedge and meadow, castle keep.