At Half Eleven In The Mutton Lane Inn, I Am Fire, Slaughter, Dead Starlings

 
Don’t.        Though this pub is packed with bodies, 
a shifting mass of limbs, dancing, spilling
porter, kissing, laughing, I can feel your gaze on me.
It burns.        Don’t.
 
I know what you’ll say, (you’ve said it before) 
that you couldn’t care less about my silver ring, 
that tomorrow morning, you want us to be 
lying together, still, in your attic room
 
up on the tallest city hill, where windows tilt open
and let sunshine and starling song fly in.         Don’t.
We have resisted long enough, you’ll say. No, 
we can resist some more. If you come closer,
 
I’ll keep my gaze on the floor, I’ll answer your stare
only with words. I’ll tell you that in 1622,
on the last day of May, a vast black cloud
shadowed this city-valley, that knives of lightning
 
came bright-jagging down to spark on thatch 
and pulse to flame, to make a blaze that twisted 
through all the wooden dwellings, that the fire grew 
and grew until people began to flee the flimsy buildings,
 
clutching children to their chests, stumbling over 
each other, running through crooked lane-ways 
as lightning and fire bloomed through the city, 
where they ran and fell and ran. Many died, suffocating
 
in flame as it ate air, leaving their lungs and limbs 
blistered, blackened. Still, I can feel your stare. It burns. 
Don’t come closer. If you do, I’ll tell you that after that fire, 
the people who lived remembered the omen of a fortnight
 
before, when they squinted outside, their eyes all drawn 
to speckling skies, where two vast murmurations of starlings 
were spinning, screeching over the city, flinging themselves 
at each other with such tearing and beak-piercing, that ripped
 
wings cobbled the streets, until the paths were slick 
with bird-blood and feathers, small corpses thumping 
down into gutters. The people remembered watching 
the clashes, baffled by the birds, their tiny magnet-hearts
 
jerking toward each other like bullets, as though they couldn’t 
help themselves in shiver and clutch and shatter, 
their bodies swooning and falling, falling into each other, 
a thousand small deaths — except, listen, now, I’ll tell you,
 
still looking only at your feet, listen, in those days, 
they didn’t call them starlings, they called them stares. 
So, you see, I will say, that stares can spark fires 
that cannot be quenched, stares lead to children
 
weeping, clutched tight to chests, 
stares bring fire, yes, but also destruction 
and distress. Turn away, I will say. 
Find someone else.