A Sestina on Senescence

Tags

entropy, Eos, Macbeth, mortality, old age, senescence, sestina, sic transit gloria mundi, Struldbrugs, Tithonus

Eos pursuing Tithonus: Louvre

 

SESTINA ON SENESCENCE

 

It comes to all of us- old age-

 

with aches and pains and memory loss,

 

which intimate mortality,

 

reminding us of matters grave:

 

the inevitable changes;

 

the unavoidable decline.

 

 

Some invitations we now decline.

 

(Youth does not mix too well with age.)

 

Our crow’s feet presage further changes.

 

Perhaps our non-attendance is no loss

 

to those who do not wish to face their grave,

 

nor trace the lines of their mortality.

 

 

‘Nothing serious in mortality?’

 

And yet Macbeth resisted his decline,

 

declaiming while one boot was in the grave.

 

(At least he did not have to reach old age.)

 

He knew a crown was not worth all the loss.

 

Sic transit gloria mundi: nothing changes.

 

 

Icons who have trounced Life’s changes

 

may rub our noses in mortality,

 

though they themselves experienced loss

 

of face, of friends and suffered love’s decline,

 

they died unwithered by the blasts of age

 

and somehow made a portal of their grave.

 

So, do our footsteps all point to the grave?

 

Does Death’s knell merely ring the changes?

 

Our brain cells burn out from an early age.

 

Is this how we define mortality:

 

an inbuilt diminution, a decline?

 

Or, do we think there’s much to gain from loss?

 

 

Life’s penalty may seem to us a Pyrrhic loss;

 

we can’t resist the pull towards our grave

 

and feel like Struldbrugs in our steep decline.

 

Is entropy to blame for all these changes?

 

If future medics cure mortality

 

will we, like Tithonus, just age and age?

 

 

Why shun mortality when the changes

 

need not be loss of anything but age-

 

the grave not something that we should decline.

 

 

 

Villanelle

Tags

Jacob and Esau, Rebekah and Isaac, villanelle

I haven’t written a sestina yet, I lamented to Brassica.

They are supposed to be good for laments, she said, somehow

reading my thoughts and mood.  Try a villanelle.  It might be

easier to start there.

So, I tried to think of a topic and turned to The Bible for those

little dramas that illustrate human nature.  Suddenly Jacob, Isaac

and Esau popped into my mind and, before I knew it, inspiration had

prompted the following poem.  Maybe it is an exercise in form,  but

I hope it transmits the essence of their relationship struggle.

HALF LIGHT

Half-blind, he mistook goat for venison.

(Mother and son were partners in the crime.)

And so he gave Jacob his benison.

 

Take this stew and treat him with kid gloves, son.

Rebekah staged her little pantomime:

half-blind, he mistook goat for venison.

 

Jacob stayed at home- a tent denizen;

but Esau was a hunter in his prime.

Isaac still gave Jacob his benison.

 

Isaac couldn’t recognise anyone.

His cataracts obscured this social climb:

half-blind, he mistook goat for venison.

 

Jacob knew when to put the lentils on.

Esau’s priority was dinner time.

Thus Isaac gave Jacob his benison.

 

An old man’s craving made him jettison

Divine will.  So, trapped like a bird on lime,

half-blind, he mistook goat for venison

and gave Esau a lesser benison.

 

 

 

 

 

A Young Cockerel’s Stone

Tags

a cockerel's stone, Baz Luhrmann, David Cameron, Krapp's Last Tape, Lammas Tide, Lanzarote, Pele Tower, pigeon egg ruby, SamCam, selfie, The Nurse Romeo and Juliet, wet nurse, wormwood

Augustus Snodbury was very glad that he had made it to the end of term.

Virginia had been very happy with the pigeon’s egg ruby engagement

ring.  Personally, like Dru, he had thought it a tad vulgar- its stone of

proportions more like the bump on Susan’s head.

Susan?  I hear you query, Dear Reader.

Candia: Yes, the one who was/is with God.

Reader: I’m still no wiser.

Candia: Folk don’t seem to read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ now.  Even the kids

just watch the Baz Luhrmann film.  The Nurse’s child who died. 

You know, that was why the old gal could be a wet nurse.  Geddit?

Susan died when she fell and sustained a bump as big as a young

cockerel’s stone.

Reader: Stone?

Candia: Testicle to you.

Reader: Ah!  But what’s this to do with Virginia’s ring?   Oh, yes!

Anyway, Virginia had clearly thought it was no more than she

deserved, as she quoted The Book of Proverbs– the bit about a virtuous

woman’s price being above rubies.

Reader:  She is getting rather full of herself.

Candia: I agree.  I could make her fall off her stilettos, if you like. I needn’t

wait till Lammas Tide.

Male Reader: No, don’t do that.  We like to read about her ankles.  Do you

think she will fall backwards in the near future?

Candia:  Not so long as I can tease this sorry saga out!  But, at least, Gus

is not ‘a man of wax.’

Reader (of either gender-or even both): No, we think that phrase refers

to Nigel.

Candia:  Oh, don’t be too hard on Nigel.  He’s got enough on his plate. 

His mother is trying to create difficulties about the wedding.

Reader:  She has wormwood on her dug?

Candia:  Her dug is all right.  She’s prepared to check him into kennels

for the occasion. 

Reader:  Something is lost in translation here.

Candia:  It is just that she feels she is losing a son rather than gaining

a daughter-in-law.  She also thinks that she will have to hire a decorator

in future, as Nigel is bound to be more occupied as a married man.

Reader:  So where are they all, in their Easter holidays?

Candia: Snod and Virginia are with Diana and Murgatroyd in the

Borders, sorting out the guest lists and logistics, but Dru and Nigel

have taken themselves off to Lanzarote.  They bumped into David

Cameron the other day.  Dru took a selfie with SamCam and invited

her-and Dave- to the wedding(s).

Reader (impressed):  Did they accept?

Candia:  No, they politely responded with the equivalent of:  It is an

honour that we dream not of.

Reader:  He might be free by then. By the way, is Snod happier about

things now?

Candia:  I believe that he took Virginia’s hands and said:  ‘Perhaps

my best years are gone.  When there was a chance of happiness.  But

I  wouldn’t want them back.  Not with the fire in me now.’

Reader:  That’s from Krapp’s Last Tape and Embers.

Candia:  Typical. One of his obsessions. He always talks…you know…

stuff like:  ‘I can’t go on like this.’

Reader:  And then he does?

Candia:  Precisely.  But Virginia can handle him.  At least, I think she

can.

Virginia:  Yes, I can.

Stabat Mater

Tags

alabaster jar, amber, bass viol, continuo, Pergolesi, spikenard, Stabat Mater, theorbo

(An old one from Mother’s Day, 1993- a performance in a church in

Meanwood, Leeds.)

 

STABAT MATER

This masonry should cry aloud to hear

the validation of the Virgin’s pain;

the distillation of a single tear

incorporated in the sad refrain:

O quam tristis et afflicta…

 

Theorbo and bass viol underpin

the strings’ and singers’ interplay,

as Pergolesi paints for us the price of sin

and strips the intervening years away.

Crucifixi fige plagas…

 

I look around to where a favoured few

unite to share the Mother’s anguished strain;

participate in passion from the pew,

reflecting that her loss became our gain.

Fac me vere tecum flere.

 

Yet those outside are steeped in disregard:

the congregation numbers twenty two.

The movements scent the church as spikenard-

an alabaster jar shattered anew.

Cruce hac inebriari.

 

Writhing in time with the continuo’s pace,

a household fly performs its deathly dance.

Oblivion meets its fate and yet I face

a fact imbued with strange significance.

Quando corpus morietur fac ut animae donetur…

 

We leave the haven of this ark,

to find no armistice has been declared

and slip into the graveyard’s cloying dark,

as prey in evil’s web, we seem ensnared.

Fac me cruce custodiri morte Christe premuniri- confoveri gratia.

 

The music of the spheres has set that fly;

in memory’s amber it will resonate.

Transfiguration gild us as we die;

such harmony our end alleviate.

Amen.

 

 

Explore Your Sexuality Day

Tags

disempowerment, exploring sexuality, fobreglass figures, gender fluid, Glasgow School of Art, LGBT, Matron, nursery rhymes, orienteering, phallic symbol, Scotch egg, seahorse, Twelfth Night, Venice Biennale

(54th Venice Biennale.  Photo by Gianpiero Actis, 2011)

 

Mr Poskett threw a sickie and Mr Snodbury threw a fit.

The fact was that the Staff were uninterested in exploring anything

other than signing off their end of term reports.  They were not

disinterested- no, they were absolutely NOT interested.

Their charges were of an age which displayed other concerns.  Perhaps

this was owing to maturational unpreparedness, or, as the enthusiasts

for enlightenment felt, it may have been because of a lack of education.

Whatever the reason(s), the boys seemed, on the whole, happy to assign

themselves to the male gender.  And, although they had been deprived

of the older stalwart nursery rhymes which used to be features of

kneeside anthologies, such as:

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice and all things nice…,

they intuitively accepted that they were composed of rats and snails

and puppy dogs’ tails.  They knew that was the case, as the little girls-

if not the Bible-told them so.  They behaved accordingly in the school

yard, changing rooms and playing fields.  If anyone cried, he was a

‘blubber’.

But now such cruelties were being challenged by PSE teachers, some of

whom had been ‘blubbers’ themselves.

(Yes, Dear Reader, it has always been a cruel world.)

Occasionally one or two pupils had explored their sexuality under cover

of darkness, but Matron merely arranged for their sheets to go to the

laundry a few days earlier, and nobody said a word.

Believe it or not, some boys had even had a passing crush on Mr

Snodbury- not that he had ever noticed.  Perhaps they had mixed up

their enthusiasm for cricket, with the Master who supervised them at

the crease.

John Boothroyd-Smythe, at least, had an inkling (very CS Lewis noun) of

what the fuss might be all about.  Remember that his older sister, Juniper,

had been diagnosed (by whom?) as gender-fluid.  John had mixed this

term up with Jeyes Fluid, which was something that his mother had used

to scrub the patio, so no wonder he had been confused.

Anyway, Juniper was expressing all that fluidity by sublimating it and

creating installations of an international rating while in her final years

at Glasgow School of Art.  Not for her any cliched phallic symbols, or womb-

like apertures in sculpture.  Oh no, she challenged assumptions

about the male/female brain.

One of her latest works had been accepted for the Venice Biennale.

She had moulded two fibreglass figures: one male; the other female.

Then she bought an old couch from a re-cycling centre. The male was

recumbent on the sofa, in front of a defunct television ( also from the

same site.) The female had an over-sized remote in her hand and was

zapping the man.

(Juniper had had the fake device cast at a local blacksmith’s, but he had

shared none of the glory. That was because he was a craftsman and

not an artist.  There seems to be an aesthetic distinction, Dear Reader.)

The title was: Untitled, even though her tutor had advised something

about disempowerment gaining strength, or the worm turning.  Juniper

felt that a work of art should speak for itself, even if most were silent.

So, on this day of exploration, the school kitchen entered into the spirit

of the occasion, as keenly as boy bishops had embraced a day of misrule.

To Mr Snodbury’s chagrin, Spotted Dick and other meaty favourites were

‘off‘ menu. Themed sandwiches and labelled salads were on the

menu du jour.

Gus stood perplexed at the counter.  Usually, he didn’t have to make a

difficult decision.  The queue was building up.

Oh, I’ll have one of those bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, he

addressed the girl (but was it a girl?) behind the serving hatch.  He

removed the toothpick with the little pink and blue flag which proclaimed

something.

The breezy reply was : Oh no, sir, it’s nothing to do with lettuce etc; it’s a

Lesbian, Bi and Trans versatile brunch snack.  You should try something

new every day. The ‘g‘ doesn’t stand for ‘gherkin‘ or ‘garnish‘…

I’ll take a Scotch egg instead, grouched Snod.

Yes, men can have eggs too, smiled the girl.  Seahorses…

Indeed, curtailed Snod.

Nigel was behind him in the queue.  He indulged in no prevarication,

but merely placed a mini-salami on his plate, without a word.  He

eschewed salad, as he wasn’t over-keen on cucumber, or it wasn’t keen

on him.  He could never remember which way round it was. His mum

would know.

That’s not much, cautioned the girl. Would you like an ACDC apple cake?

You’ve got to keep your strength up now that I hear you are to be married. 

Is it to a boy or a girl?

Nigel ignored the latter part of the dialogue.  He simply asked for

clarification as to the dessert.

It’s just an apple turnover, sir.

Okay. Thanks.  He blushed to his specially worn pink socks .

To cover his embarrassment, he turned to the PE teacher behind

him. What are the lads doing after lunch?  It must be difficult to theme

outdoor activities.

Well, we thought we’d do a spot of orienteering, Dave winked.  What are you

up to?

Just exploring cross-dressing roles in Twelfth Night and the like, Nigel

stammered.

Fascinating, said Dave, whose eyes were riveted on the turnovers.  Hey,

can I have two , please?

Some people are just greedy.

 

 

 

 

Sin of Presumption

Tags

Alice in Wonderland, Bathsheba, Boldwood, builders' tea, David Cameron, hagiography, Lucozade, martyrology, misogyny, Neutral Tones, Proust, Prufrock, sin of commission, sin of presumption, Sods' Law, St Brigid, St Patrick, Thomas Hardy

Fortunately Snod had a double free period before Lower Five and so

he slumped into his favourite lumpy chintz armchair and waited till

he could be sure that the rest of the staff were in Lesson One.

Virginia came in sheepishly, carrying a tray with some builders’ tea

and a plate with two Bourbon biscuits.  He was allowed two since it

was not every day that one became affianced.

He didn’t look up at first.  He felt that she had committed a sin of

presumption, or at least commission, but he wasn’t going to split

theological hairs at this point.  Taking  a sledgehammer to break

a walnut came into his mind too, but he felt that was a violent

metaphor.  Still, he probably would never have succumbed to a

more gentle persuasive technique.

Yes, he had heard of St Brigid and her relationship with St Patrick.

He simply didn’t want Virginia to activate any of the ideas that the

female saint of yore had favoured, such as giving away all her

counterpart’s worldly goods and so on.  Virginia would probably never

understand the vital importance of his oiled cricket bat, or piles

of Wisdens.  He wasn’t swayed by aspirations to a ranking in the

hagiography through denial in any shape or form, and, if he was

to wed, then it might be more appropriate to consider an entry

in a martyrology.

He looked at the cup of tea.  There was no such thing as a free drink.

He felt like Alice, in Wonderland– a novel concept.  The eponymous

heroine had been confronted with a phial which was labelled: Drink Me.

If he accepted the bone china mug and its contents, did it imply an

acceptance of the proposal?  Was he about to drain hemlock?

He risked a sip.  Aaah!  Just the way he liked it: slightly stewed.

He swirled it round his mouth in a Proustian reverie.  It wasn’t too

disagreeable, after all- the whole idea and not just the cuppa.  It

took him back to reminiscenses of past times of security, as when

Matron had brought him just such a beverage when he was in San with

measles.  She had warmed his jammies on the radiator and had

given him Lucozade.  He remembered looking at the confines of

his life through the orange cellophane, which he picked off the bottle,

and feeling that life was still an adventure, if only for Boys’ Own

readers.

Virginia tiptoed out, knowing that he needed a little space.

He gazed at the poster of Thomas Hardy alongside the English

Department noticeboard.  That wretched man had caused him a

lot of trouble over the years.  (see the original misdirected Valentine

which had ended up between the underlay and the carpet of a boarding

house-mistress’ apartment, many moons previously.)

And now he had to ask himself a typically Hardyean question:

Was he, like Boldwood, being set up by a teasing woman?  Virginia

did have some Bathsheban tendencies.  He tried to resist thinking of

her in a state of deshabillement for the moment, as it distracted him

from the thrust of his current thought processes.

Then Hardy came to the rescue.

How so? you ask, Dear Reader.

Boldwood gave him the idea.

Gus took his hymnbook from the side table and threw it into the air.

Virginia came into the room again, having given him what she

considered was sufficient time- to hang himself, some would have

added.  She carried some correspondence as justification.

What are you doing with that book? she reprimanded.  You’ll break its

spine!

Snod inwardly whispered, Open-to wed; Shut-to…

Sods’ Law: it fell open.  Or was it Snod’s Law?

Virginia picked it up and placed it in his pigeonhole.

Then she came over and took his plate and mug, spat on her

hanky  and wiped an indeterminate stain from his tie.

So, that’s settled then, she pronounced.

And he knew that it jolly well was. But a quote from Neutral

Tones,  one of Hardy’s finest, suddenly sprang to mind:

The smile on [his]mouth was the deadest thing

alive enough to have strength to die…

No, although he felt chidden of God, it couldn’t be as bad as all

that, surely?

Could it? Happy misogyny, here we come, he mused.

He had measured out his life, unlike Prufrock, in oxymorons,

rather than coffee spoons.

 

Honey Trap

Tags

bondage, Book of Revelation, Breviary hymn, con brio, Courage Brother Do Not Stumble, For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, George Herbert, honey trap, Lectionary, Love Bade Me Welcome, Mr Bean, Naaman, Spirit and Bride, Surrexit, The Strife is O'er, Yield Not To Temptation

(Image: George Shuklin)

Geoffrey Poskett, Choirmaster, was appraised of the impending

honey trap.

He felt that his ancient colleague was being stung and so decided to

strengthen Snod’s resilience by playing a medley of steely hymns

while the Juniors filed in and filled up the front ranks of the whole

school assembly.

Courage brother- do not stumble came to mind and he improvised a

clever little introduction.  This was followed by Yield Not To Temptation.

Weren’t there some apt references to bondage in some of the old ones?

Hmm, perhaps he’d better not.  He just changed key and accompanied

(con brio) the internalised words: Fight manfully onward/ dark passions

subdue and then, spotting John Boothroyd-Smythe in the second row,

fixed his magisterial gaze on him while mouthing: shun evil companions/

bad language disdain…

The Headmaster rose to the spirit of the occasion by reading a

passage from Revelation about The Spirit and The Bride saying ‘Come.‘

Those regular communicants of St Birinus Middle might have reflected

that the Lectionary reading for the 29th February might have been even

more apt, because, referring to Naaman, the thrust of the passage was

all about doing exactly as one is told and, for a man about to receive a

proposal (however much of a euphemism one might regard that to be,

in this instance) it might have been a jolly good introduction to the

secrets of a successful married life.

The final congregational number was George Herbert’s Love Bade Me

Welcome and Geoffrey Poskett closed his eyes and prayed: Draw back,

draw back, you old fool.

On cue, at the line : Who made the eyes, but me? Virginia emerged from

the stage curtain at the side of the dais and tottered over to the Senior

Master on her highest stilettos yet and pronounced:

How about it, Mr Snodbury?  I am making the eyes!

The whole school cheered and no one heard the reply. Snod blushed

like a maiden and four burlier prefects lifted him, chair and all and

made off with him into the wings.

Before the Juniors could launch into For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow,

Geoffrey had a moment of inspiration and started thumping out

The  Strife Is O’er, The Battle Won, suddenly entering into the spirit of it

all.  Now is the Victor’s Triumph Won, he played, forgetting that no one

knew that number, as he had been moved to spontaneity.  So, when

he sang in a falsetto that nevertheless carried: Alleluia! he realised that,

like Mr Bean, sometimes you are on your own.

What Snod had muttered and what no one had picked up was :

Finita iam sunt praelia!

Which, being interpreted is, of course, the Latin title of the Breviary

hymn.

What had annoyed him particularly was that Poskett had chosen the

wrong tune. It should have been Surrexit!

And what irritated Boothroyd-Smythe and Co was that The Headmaster

didn’t even announce a half holiday.

 

A Leap of Faith

Tags

aboulia, acedie, babuschka, dasha, geiger counter, Hamlet, Jenny Packham, MCC tie, procrastination, St Augustine, St Brigid, St Patrick, tache, Tsarist Russia, Valentine's Day, Weltschmerz

Virginia Fisher-Gyles had been a little deflated when Valentine’s Day

eventually arrived and, although the customary bouquet of red roses

had been delivered to her office, nothing of significance had taken place.

A few days had passed and nothing had been said.  He hadn’t even worn

the silk cravat she had given him.  He continued to don his gravy-stained

MCC tie.

Snod had been procrastinating-an inactivity that he indulged in, not

only on the 29th of February.  It was habitual, nay ingrained, as much as

the various taches.

Virginia couldn’t pin his behaviour, or lack thereof, to acedie, as that was

characterised by a restlessness and possibly an inability to work, or pray.

No, he managed his job, though not given to much movement.  He

did not exhibit signs of Weltschmerz, unless anyone mentioned a cover

lesson.

Aboulia might have been a better diagnosis, but, then again, although

certainly diminished of movement, it wasn’t that he didn’t care about

not caring.  He simply never even considered it an issue.  Emotional issues

just didn’t register on his internal Geiger counter.  Was he suffering from

indolence of the heart, in the same way that Hamlet was thought to have

been?  Was he just a typical man?

In Tsarist Russia, such people had been put to hard labour in some old

babushka’s dasha, to shake them up.  Virginia had a few jobs lined up

for him.

He had the ring, so why was he not transferring it to a female digit

forthwith?  Why was he praying, like St Augustine: Lord…not yet.

The roses had drooped and the water had been unable to be refreshed

any longer.  Virginia tore a strip off her desk calendar.  The 28th February-

that meant that tomorrow she could ….

She sped off to prepare her campaign.  She was as determined as St Brigid

to close the deal with St Patrick.

The next morning she was at her desk, red knickers a hopeful substitute

for the recommended petticoat.  The Headmaster and certain staff

members had been fore-warned.

(About the campaign- not her undergarments.)

She couldn’t be any worse off.  She would propose to Snod on the dais at

the end of whole school assembly.  If the old so-and-so didn’t comply,

then she would fine him the requisite 12 pairs of gloves, or a silk dress.

She had already spotted a desirable Jenny Packham beaded number in

her local boutique.  It wasn’t cheap.