They called him Charles
the Hexed (hechizado,
verhexte), Carlos the
Ill-jawed, the sickle-
souled, the king born
from tired soil.
He looked for all the world like a wax
man
melting on a throne, a changeling of poor
melting on a throne, a changeling of poor
fortune, the royal
imbecile in Spain.
Charles the Penumbra, the tremble
of that long shadow cast by
the grasping hand, a sick and
waning moon in a solar house.
AEIOU come down to this, down
to the drooping point of his
witchcraft chin. Worse, Percy,
than what your pious mind
conceived—say this for him,
our curse-marked Charlie, that
he was Ozymandias in ruined flesh,
the ragged edge where we learn
that we have sinned.
Austria is so very
small compared
with the hallowed
earth, and
Charles ended in the way
that small things do.
that small things do.
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