Jackal Pattern

Lyrics

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