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           The text laments the frustrations of a hard writing project undertaken to honor an unnamed auditor who’s remote, fickle, and maybe unappreciative; the vacillations here inher more strictly in the two-pronged text than in the ostensible subject—so that the “shaking hands” (14) that torture the poet may well be his own. In any case, the anxieties about the cycle and its eventual acceptance and fate seem real. The texture is thick, the syntax elliptical, the coherence dependent on double meanings and puns in the figures that allow the poet to shift his conceits: planting a garden, gilding and clothing an image, performing a “ceremony” of adoration, making a pilgrimage. “Checked” (1), meaning variegated or checkered, governs and describes the poem, with its catalog of mixed conceits. Puns on “seamly” and “seam” (8, 12)—“pieced together”—are also strategic.

           If the fickle sky (1) means the inspiring auditor, with the poet the gardener who’s planting his knot-rows as best he can, then the friend as a sun-figure is too often “behind the clouds.” But the sun is also “dimmed” (4) because the poet is ineffective, holding up “marigold” verses (see 11) that merely parody the life-giver and in fact block out the sun’s face. The pun on “ray” in “raiment” (8) segues into the new conceit—“gilding” and “clothing” the friend’s image with rich natural figures; this notion proceeds in “bare” (12)—with the pun “seamly” operative—and clarifies somewhat the poet’s attempt to “create an image.” The new figure, in turn, suggests an icon and allows the poet to be a “zealous pilgrim,” with details such as “swift-footed time” (5) and “where…lies” (10) expanding the motif of pilgrimage. By the last line, the “bare image” that emerges from the speaker’s rhetoric, the object of his adoration, seems Christlike: The pilgrim would find it “torturous” to hold the nail-scarred hand. “Seamly raiment” (8) contrasts with the seamless garment of the Crucified Christ, and such plays as “Mary” and “Son, sigh” (11) reinforce the inherent biblical allusion. Meanwhile, the pun on “cunt-scent” (14) and the hint that the auditor plows “maiden gardens” (2) paint a different Calvary—with the rivalry of women one possible reason the speaker fears rejection and disappointment when he finally meets his muse.

            Coterie references include plays on “Guild” (6) and the printer “G. Eld” and arcane business about sun and moon—à la the modern Proctor and Gamble logo—and a “peer-sect ceremony” or “rite” (9). “Checked” (1) suggests gameboards and acrostics, and “Gardens” (2) may be “knots” of intricate rows. “Fresh numbers” (3), “footed time” (5), “art” (8, pun), and “Eye Magi pictured” (10) develop this cluster. Instead of “Shake spear to torture me,” one hears “…hands.”

            Diction about nature, especially horticulture, accumulates: sky, “unset” gardens, fresh, gold complexion dimmed, wilt, sun and moon, earth’s and sea’s rich gems, marigold, sun’s eye, and May. Words that have to do with religion, trips, and icons amplify “zealous pilgrimage” (13).

            Like Rune 22, the poem manages a rhymed couplet close.

Sample Puns

           1) See Harry dainty (dandy), cheeked
           1-2) the False, Fey, Musky Anne, Dim Annie, m’ Eden Garden’s yet unfit; Ye Ton (Tun) of Anne [= et]; Keen [Wail], demean y’ May dingy, hard in Satan fit [stanza]
           2) midden
           3) Ending (Anne-din) of reason, numb her ass, numb her awl; an homme be ruler gray
           3-4) gray seas Anne tossed; a ruler graces end, host anus
           4) Anne, Dusty Anus; anus’s gold complexion dimmed; come, peel, X [crucify] John damned Hamn’t
           4-5) midden
           5) Anne-twat
           5-6) Anne-daughter, thou wilt as wife t’ Southy, dead image
           6) Guild; G. Eld.; dinghy [?] obeys W., Harry—a pun
           6-7) Eye t’ Gaza, thou eyed sun and moon wittier than disease or itchy miss (ms.)
           7) son; wit hearty; Caesar I see edge ms.
           8) Eye Sabbath seemly; female, your “I” mend; your Amen, tough merd; aye, men, toss m’ art; ray-mint
           9) Th’ peer-sect (th’ peer of Hecate) see, Harry, moan ye, “Oslo’s right (rite)”; O, slow, sir, I jet
           9-10) Oslo’s rigid, tough, endure your terror aye
         10) aye my Egypt Esther dallies; Two find W., Harry, your true Image; W., Harry, you Howard rhyme; you rhyme Egypt’s turtle eyes (turd-allies)
         11) Butt esteem; Mary called aye, “T.T.”; mirage old at heaven’s eye; But is the miracle dead?
         11-12) But as the miracle died, heaven see ye maim, ache; Hat., the sun’s eye, my make’s [mate’s] ember, John, wanting words to issue it
         12) My make’s ami be a rune; barren; bare contrasts with raiment (8); words too few (tough you) eyed; tough hewed; to shit, I need “ends-loose” pills
         12-13) to feuding tend, a zealous pilgrimage
         13) Ending dazzles pilgrim; pill grim I jotted (jetted)
         13-14) Eden; Eaten
         14) Twin son’s end t’ f--k, handy ass t’ torture me; Twin son, ascend, shaking Dis to torture me; fake ends tutored your rhyme; taught whore to you rhyme; do in cunt-scent…; tottered (daughtered), you rhyme

Acrostic Wit

           The downward lefthand acrostic codeline—CAAAAG WITT B MID—suggests such readings as, e.g., “Cagy wit B.M. eyed [cf. below, ‘Cagy wit be midden-issue…’],” “Cagy wight be maid,” “See, Age Witty beamed (be 1499),” and “See a Jew, aye T.T. B.M. eyed.”

           The upward reverse codeline—DIM BTTIWGAAAAC—may be decoded to read, e.g., “Dim Betty wags,” “Damn bitty wages,” “Dim Betty, you guess,” “Damn Betty Waaaas!” and “Damn bitty wage I aye see.” Acrostic wit may be encoded beyond the first column: Thus the letterstring code CAAAG WITT BE MID/hnnn ni ishou an o/edddd lt et yt here (a down/down/down letterstring) suggests, e.g.,“Cagy wit be midden [i.e., dunghill]- issue, an ode! Let it yet…,” “See a Jew, it be a maiden…,” and “See a jawed B.M. hidden issue….” A “cag” is an insult or stiff point.

           Determining how much of such a code is authorially manipulated, in either a specific case or generally throughout the buried cycle, is one of Q’s many conundrums.