Avalon

The ancient air enslaved some dying bits of ash,
Tossed them into the open sky
Where they did a quick jig,
Fell down onto the soft green carpet of the earth
And presently fell fast asleep,
And then itself was enslaved by an ancient mist.
Up, up it climbed into the night-time,
Higher and higher,
Until the air became too thin to endure.
It choked for want of life,
Fell onto the coldness of the daffodils,
And the mist washed it away against the dreary shore,
The remnants of a memory long forgot.

"Be about your business or be on your way."
There is no time for business,
No time to be about my way.
What is it I am supposed to do?
No entiendo los problemas del mundo.(1)
And nearer and nearer the rear of the palace,
Behind what was once the great Westminster Bridge,
A child dances alone.
And I wonder.

Here, let me carry that for you, madam.
Why carry? What carry? What is it you want?
I want nothing at all, madam.
Here, let me have it.
Schnell.(2)
Such courtesy, such virtue, such everyday valor,
And then I was in a train-car
Bound for Baker Street or some other station.
And then I was in a train-car.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.(3)

What do you suppose we shall do today?
A shopping spree in Camden, I think.
Why think? What think? What is it you want?
No thinking needs be done. En passant,(4)
The Pawn makes two years' progress
Toward his doom.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.(5)

No, my dear lady, that is not the Scabbard,(6)
Though convincingly inscribed with th' ancient runes.
But there, tried and true, is Arthur's sword
Hanging upon the wall.
(It is rusted
And presently made slave to a hoard
Of particularly unappreciative lookers-on,
Crucified there in shameful fashion.)

PLEASE REMEMBER.
Why recall? What recall? I know not what they want.
PLEASE REMEMBER TO TAKE ALL YOUR BELONGINGS WITH YOU.(7)
But there are none, which truly belong to me.
A black cab pulls up to the street corner,
A pest more than anything:
Who really wants to ride?
But even I can't resist the chide.
I climb in. Hogarth's please.(#)
That'll be four pounds. Fine.

It's night-time now, and all around,
Thin strips of light are tossed up against skyscrapers
And white stone walls centuries old,
Wrapping child and father alike in comely array.
But here have horrors been done,
Atrocities far beyond reckoning,
And now the tourists have won.
All are deserving of comely array.
PLEASE REMEMBER.
It is time, please, it is time.
Time for the end of the world,
Or maybe its new genesis.
My flight departs at twenty till,
Not enough time to make it all that way,
But I imagine that I can make it still.
What of you? Do you think that I will?

I try not to think at all.
There is no use in it, they say.
Hurry up please. Nevermind the tie.
We need be quickly about our way.

But I don't even want to go.
Neither does he, I should suppose,
But not even do they want us to come.
Why attend, then? What should we attend?
Hurry up please. We shall soon be made late.

An excellent photo of the Queen's estate.
However did you manage to take it?
Should I tell him that I didn't take it at all?
Strange thing it is, you to see here in this unusual place,
Or anyone else besides,(a)
And then particularly at this unusual hour.
The Jester, I think, owns a flat near the Tower,
And for it he paid a very large sum.

"Need you always be such a coward?"
"Not at all, I simply don't want to do it."
"But you must, or else you must be afraid."
The Cathedral casts down on the ground a shade(+),
Protecting the world from the sinister sun.
And at the edge of the world, a child dances,
And I think it not unusual that she is alone,
Enslaved by the ashes and put into trances,
Told she can be anything she wanted to be.

And far to the west, the boundless sea
Looks out onto Dublin and Manhattan behind.
"Can you imagine what that world must be like?"
I'd rather not imagine anything at all.
Yo soy de San Juan, un Boriqua naturalmente.(8)
And there is the Reaper with his brothers the Prophets
Walking along the banks of the Thames
All the way to its very ends,
Tending to their soul-collecting
All the live-long way.

And far to the east, our German brothers
Mourn their dead (and some that they had even lived at all).
"Can you imagine what that world must have been like?"
I told you: I do not want to imagine.
The Knight takes the Queen straightaway,
And the game is practically already lost.
The Rook wears a frown; he never even made it out
For tea and a muffin in the early afternoon hours of forever.

Big Ben spills its billowing boom
All over the countryside
(Which has not been a countryside for ages).
And sometimes I wonder at the empty pages
Of William Blake's notebooks,
Which were not empty for long.
What is it you want? A portrait? A song?
A poem? A story? A landscape? An epic?
I am only a simple and plain accountant,
And there (if I saw one) is a growing pandemic
Which makes them imagine their dreams will suffice
For bringing their bread to their dinner-tables.

My mother (long dead) used to tell to me fables,
And I wonder at them, I wonder.

Listen to Mary—still she keeps the hours,(b)
And April will suffer engend'ring the flowers,(c)
And listen to the music of the open street.
What is she doing? What are they doing?
There is no time to do anything at all.
PLEASE REMEMBER.
I don't think I can forget
What happened that night,
Such a glorious night.
Or was it?

I think so, I think so,
I think so, I think.
What think? Why think? What is it I want?
I bought a new bag to-day,
All silver and trimmed with a bit of gold.
I love it more than I've ever loved anything,
And I realized this just to-day.
It made me very sad,
But now I am alright—
I was quite quickly put over it.

I bought a new bag to-day,
All silver and trimmed with a bit of blue.
It cost me thirty-seven pounds.

And the noon-day sun reaches high into the sky,
Lighting the way for the bastion below.
They slither along into taxis and stations,
Disappearing into empty black hollows
All across the city.
Where do they all come from?(d)
Where do they all go to?
Are those pearls that are his eyes?(e)
Look!
Or has Eliot(f) stepped in for a crumpet?
Look at the metro!
Look!
And don't ever forget
To MIND THE GAP.(9)

And everyone, PLEASE REMEMBER
TO TAKE ALL YOUR BELONGINGS WITH YOU.

The ancient air captures another ashen village,
Tosses it up to do a quick jig,
But they stumble over their own feet.
The smog blows down empty alleyways and crowded street-corners,
Touring the city in the dead of the night,
Playing the role of a spirit forever lost.
(Or it is very possible it plays none at all.)
Across the dirty streets it will crawl
For all the eternities yet to be had.
And as the Queen cries, the King has gone mad,
And the Court and the Courtiers are wont to be glad,
Presently the City in all its exhaustion
Gives up a great sigh of relief or remorse
And settles at once into a coma-like sleep.
I wonder. I wonder what tomorrow will reap.

20/07/2007

Translations and Mythical Annotations:

1. Spanish: "I do not understand the world's problems."
2. German: "Now."
3. Old French: "Shamed is he who thinks evil of it." Motto of the Order of the Garter, England's highest ancient chivalric order which still exists today.
4. French: "In passing." In chess, if one player (player A) moves a pawn two spaces forward to avoid capture by one of his opponent's (player B's) pawns, player B may opt to capture player A's pawn as though it had only been moved one space forward. "En passant" is the name of this special move.
5. Italian: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Direct quotation from Dante Alighieri's "Commedia." These words are inscribed atop the gates of Hell.
6. The Scabbard of Excalibur is sometimes attributed powers of its own. It is said to make the bearer impervious to fleshly wound. According to legend, the scabbard was stolen by Morgan le Fay and never recovered.
7. A phrase often put over the P.A. system aboard London trains.
8. Spanish: "I am from San Juan, a true Puerto Rican." (Literal: "I am from San Juan, a Puerto Rican naturally.")
9. A phrase often seen painted on platforms in London train stations warning people to mind the gap between the train and the platform.

Literary Annotations:

a. Reference to Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene." The adapted passage reads: "Strange thing it is, an errant knight to see / Here in this place, or any other wight/ That hither turnes his steppes. So few there bee/ That chose the narrow path or seeke the right/ All keepe the broad high way, and take delight / With many rather for to go astray/ And be partakers of their euill plight/ Then with a few to walke the rightest way; / Oh foolish men, why haste ye to your own decay?" (Book I, Canto X, lines 96-104). Modernized: "Strange thing, to find a wayward knight here in this place, or anyone else besides. There are so few that choose the narrow path or do what's right: instead, all take the broad high way, and would rather take delight with many (and partake in their evil plight) than with the few to walk the rightest way. Oh foolish men, why do you haste to your own decay?"
b. Reference to the Unreal City stanza of the first poem of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." (Line 67.)
c. Reference to the opening section of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
d. A quotation from "Elanor Rigby," a song by the Beatles.
e. Reference to Shakespeare's "Tempest." The adapted passage is a quotation of Ariel: "Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that were his eyes/ Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange." (Act I, Scene ii.)
f. T.S. Eliot, poet and author of "The Waste Land" among other notable works. In tandem with the preceding two lines, this is an explicit allusion to "The Waste Land."

Miscellaneous Annotations:

#. The context of this sentence is ambiguous. Hogarth is a hotel in central London as well as an artist that strove to portray the energy and diversity of London as a "world city." Hogarth's London, then, is an archetypal view of downtown, and this line can be taken as a request for metaphorical passage toward that exciting dream-world as well as a mundane cab ride to the hotel.
+. "Shade" can be taken to mean both a blocking of the sun and a type of spirit or phantasm.