Jackal Pattern

Jackal Pattern

1: Horses and Dogs

The invention of the pattern often requires
Among other tender elements
Subject to the grotesqueries of decapitation
A moonlight scene, the foreground inhabited by an animal
A black knot hanging from its throat
But when a bird, disinclined to die
Is tied to a child's collar outside a schoolhouse
Where we might otherwise find, hidden in a fire, a fragment of a jackal
Well, this is just another cheerful little game, played in splendid weather
A boy's face, they used to say, is just a grave atop a collar
The garment perhaps a shade darker than mouse gray
Or so I gather from an adjacent phrase
In which the brother draws cloth across a wire

The patterns in the pattern book
They sever the neck with blue ink, using green for each defect
And tracing the pockets with various other colors
Most notably an unsuccessful yellow
Canary in the form of straw
False pockets, akin to those shown on the houndstooth jacket
Are no less curious, after all, when the fingers are actually flies
Bees are captured in the children's pockets
Upper right and upper left, by accident
If this is how you prefer it
Sister and brother on a mountain holiday
The latter now a ghastly schoolboy, quite grievously received
With rickrack in all four corners
Claws, excised from wrens
Appear as hooks on cassocks, for collars and pockets
And in place of buttons, from throat to hem
Approximating the shape of a stake

2: Infirmities

Houndstooth began as dog's-tooth
It was therefore confused, I assume
With a certain element of English ornament
Triangular in design, hoof-shaped to the walleyed
And with a kind of violet, well known for its curiously lurching head
The hyphen was excised or retained, as the case may be
Or excised and then restored, as a matter of affection or in error
Though these marks were never intended to conjure rivers or streams
So far as I know, or even coffins between stations
One variant, at any rate, gave way to another
And thus the drowning hound replaced the lost dog, its name
Just a little gasp in the afternoon
Traced to a bedridden gentleman
Without children, without a wife
His face covered by a portion of scored cloth

3: House Language

The patterns in the pattern book
Here the creases are actually a species of gray beetle
Improving the garment, as spikes might
But also forming notations of a sort
Often presumed a code for the blind
A span of yarn cinches the hood at a hanging
The gentleman's, north along the boulevard
Where the wind is rather a disappointment for the boy
The girl wears a hat and a travelling dress
The latter in camel's hair, prune-colored, with a drop waist
Blazed, or serrated, in three places
And a terribly high neckline, which perhaps embarrasses the hostess
But the creases appear near the shoulder blade
At an angle of forty degrees, roughly speaking
And now proceed south, blackening the thorax
Poor Agnes or Beverly or Harriet, in the course of a fall
The parson's garment, by contrast
Is thought to inhabit an invisible house
But hangs, in this case, from an oak post
Inhabited by an invisible body

The sleeve is less fortunate
Caught in the spoil, as it were, at the outset of an exploit
A misadventure of the flesh
In eggshell or pearl, without pattern
At Katherine's house, where, furthermore
The smoke is mistaken for a braid of hair
Issuing from the floorboards and departing the room through the chandelier
The Marie sleeve, hazel, I'm afraid, floats in a chamber pot
Per the nursemaid's testimony, indelicate as it is
And from which we may derive only a few conclusions
As to the angle of the bone saw
No doubt they displease you, these unseemly activities
Most notably in the case of cousin Edward
Whose sleeve had, in fact, displayed a measure of red
If not exactly a fraction of the atrium, it turns out
On account of buckshot
The crape, a dagger of fabric
In the household parlance of the day
Is always worn around the left arm
Unless custom dictates a rectangular item
One inch wide, pinned to the lapel or to the cuff
Or, for the children, who now exit at the privet
Sewn into the neckline