Tittle-tattle, silver-spittle--
Who has swallowed the moonlet
And spat out the star?
Not I! says the gentleman,
Buttoned and brittle,
With a dead nightingale
In his collar of tar.

His smile is a china catastrophe;
His tongue is a pink pendulum.
He bows to Fidelity-After me!-
And steals the gold hem of her gown.

My brother! - the dagger goes tick.
My lord! - the bolt answers click.
My friend! - there is wormwood in wine.
My oath! - but the oath is not mine.

In Sapience, under the moon's milky horn,
The gulls play their fiddles on brambles of thorn;
The banners cough feathers, the gargoyles grin,
And the roots of the World Tree come nosing in.

For Yggdrasil keeps, in its wooden head,
The names of the living, the lies of the dead;
Each leaf is an ear, every root has a tongue-

You swore you were faithful.
You swore it when young.

Oh, fiddle-dee-fidelity! Flatter and flee!
The god in the mirror has gout in one knee.
He dances with Honour, he dances with Shame;
They change at the stroke of his beautiful name.

One face for the altar, one face for the feast;
One face for the god, one face for the beast.
One face for the friend whose secrets he keeps-
Then sells them for silver while everybody sleeps.

Who, me? says the gentleman. Never! says he.
The mirror replies with a little hee-hee.
His left eye winks and his right eye weeps;
A black nightingale flutters out of his cheeks.

It sings of a promise gone mouldy and green,
Of a friend who was drowned in a garden unseen;
Of a kiss with a thorn and a hand with a knife-
Oh, what a most beautiful, honourable life!

Then-hush!--the roots have unbuttoned the floor.
A face falls like snow by the gentleman's door.
It is his, it is yours, it is nobody's own;
It grins like a skull on a throne of white bone.

He tries on the eyebrows. They wriggle away.
He tries on the mouth. It has nothing to say.
He reaches for I-but the I has been sold,
With the silver, the secrets, the buttons of gold.

Tittle-tattle, terrible tree!
Which of thy leaves remembers me?

The gentleman bows. The gentleman grins.
The gentleman searches the dark for his skin.

And the roots whisper back, as the black bells toll:

Thou hast fooled every mortal.

Thou hast fooled every god.

But who hath deceived thee,

Thou poor little fraud?


Penned by my hand on the 6th of Phaestian, in the year 1016 AF.