IF YOU KNEW TZ’U HSI

Tags

Alute, Boxers, callisthenics, Cox clock, Dragon Empress, eunuchs, Great Wall, Jade Room, Jezebel, kowtow, Kuang-hsu, Manchu, Niuhuru, Pearl Concubine, Peking, Prince Chuang, Queen Victoria, seagull hovering cicada cling, silken cord, Son of Heaven, suzerain, Tzu 'Hsi

 

A very old composition found in the cellar!

There was a young woman who lived in a palace.

She had so many eunuchs, she didn’t know what to do;

so she seized all the power and, out of sheer malice,

delivered milk cakes to the hapless Niuhuru.

 

There never was a girl like Tzu’ Hsi-

prickly as ten porcupines.

She didn’t like being in the second division

of The Son of Heaven’s concubines.

She may have been L’il Orchid when she lived in Pewter Lane,

but she morphed into a tiger lily as The Dragon Suzerain.

 

If you came into her presence, you kowtowed pretty quick,

or, like Kuang-hsu, you found yourself becoming very sick.

 

She wasn’t too cognisant of seagull hovering, cicada’s cling,

but she made the dragon turn in the city of Peking.

She slept on petalled pillows, lulled by ticking Cox’s clocks,

pretending to be venerable and fairly orthodox.

But when they all struck ding dong bell,

she had Pearl Concubine chucked down the well.

Oh, what a naughty girl was that,

to drown the Emperor’s pussy cat!

As for her widowed daughter-in-law, she didn’t care a hoot

and didn’t bat an eyelid at the suicide of Alute.

 

(Severin.stalder own image Great Wall at Jinshanling- 8/6/2013)

 

She hurried to her Manchu homeland in the shade of The Great Wall

while the mutinous brigades she’d fostered went on to have a ball.

Originally they’d practised callisthenics in ill-disciplined cohorts,

but she didn’t want her eunuchs dressing up in Boxer shorts.

Not one to have a lily liver- nor yet a lily foot-

she blithely sent Prince Chuang the silken cord to use as he felt suit.

 

Out-living Queen Victoria delighted her no end.

To British ministers’ wives she was an enemy turned friend.

But before she died of dysentry, she stage-managed one thing more:

she’d see the wretched Kuang-hsu out-he’d go the day before.

Lest anyone should be confused as to their relative worthiness,

she determined his comparative funeral expense was more than two thirds less.

 

Inviolate for two decades, she lay in the lavish tomb,

but bandits don’t respect the ancient codes of The Jade Room;

they did not fear ancestral shades; showed little veneration

to one who’d been a Jezebel to a different generation.

They stripped her of her grave clothes and threw her in the dust,

which, in the light of history, appears to us quite just.

 

 

 

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Frozen in Time

Tags

Arthur's Seat, Canongate, contre-jour, decoupage, Enlightenment, Inklings, Lion's Haunch, Presbyterianism, Rev Robert Walker, The New Town, The Traveller's Pose

The Rev. Robert Walker- skating,

decoupaged through the roseate gloaming;

proud, like a cameo against the dun,

broad brushstrokes of Lion’s Haunch; Arthur’s Seat.

Contre-jour, he’s caught in a deft profile.

 

Has he sublimated his past losses:

that youthful mother and his first-born son?

The joys of discipline light up his eye

and grace and effort are counterbalanced.

His being exudes sound theology.

 

Just like his Master, he glides on water;

sure-footed, poised; in his own element;

making his own mark where others have scored.

In The Traveller’s Pose, he whizzes past,

like a sparrow through a banqueting hall.

 

The pink inklings binding his buckled shoon,

question his Presbyterianism.

His gaze is fixed on another city-

not The New Town, enlightened though it be.

The artist in him suspends all beliefs.

 

No stone in Canongate will pin him down.

 

 

Chipping Snodbury

Tags

Absent Freinds, aperro, bachaqueros, Bolivar, Chipping Sodbury, Corbyn, Deist, Embers, Farrow and Ball, Ford Pinto, gloaming, Indian Summer, Malapropism, Pele Tower, River Camel, Sandor Marai, Snodland, The Cotswolds, Venezuela, Voltaire

Great-Aunt Augusta: RIP

 

Mrs Connolly, the housekeeper at Murgatroyd Syylk’s pele tower,

was exhausted.  She had overseen the triple marriages- well, dual

marriages and one re-espousal- of Augustus and Virginia, Drusilla

and Nigel and her employers: Diana and the aforementioned Murgatroyd.

She had given Dru a lace-trimmed hankie when her mascara had

threatened to run, as the bride had welled up at the thought that dear old

Aunt Augusta would not be with them.  The old curmudgeon had loved a

good wedding, funeral or general family crisis.  She had been sorely

missed.

Gus had raised a toast to ‘Absent Friends‘ at the end of his father-of-the-

bride speech, by way of respect.

Curiously a feather had floated down onto the top table at this very point.

It was black, but was nevertheless pronounced a good omen as it

appeared to be exactly like one from Aunt Augusta’s feather boa which

she always wore- even in Snodland Nursing Home for the Debased Gentry, at

‘aperro-time‘ as she was wont to call that crepuscular, inebriation

time-zone.

Clearly, she was with them in spirit, if not spirits.

They had left a place at the top table for her, or for The Grey Lady whom

she had conversed with, though nobody else had had direct

communication with the resident phantom.

Mrs Connolly had kept a lid on the petulant Mrs Milford-Haven, mother

of Nigel, who had been confused by her lengthy, Corbynesque train

journey from Cornwall.

She had scarcely been over The Camel in her lifetime, but was naturally

acquainted with the concept of a hump.  This was no crude allusion, but

merely indicative of her tendency to sulk when she was not the centre of

attention. Maybe it was some kind of physiological Radon effect.

Mrs Connolly had handled her robustly.

Whit’s the matter with yon wifie?  she had enquired.  Has she peed on a

thistle?

Soon she had calmed the situation down by introducing her to a Farrow and

Ball paint chart, which gave the peevish guest big ideas for Nigel’s post-

honeymoon guilt trip, to finish off the decoration of her bathroom.

Even Gus had been a tad emotional about his more-or-less step-brother,

Hugo, who was stranded in Venezuela.  He had been unable to leave the

country to take up his proffered teaching post at St Birinus Middle, even

after all the hard work Virginia had put in with visa application and so on.

A black market hawker was unlikely to be able to afford a trip to The

Borders.

Bachaqueros was a romantic collective noun, but everyone knew that it was

euphemistic.

Dru had been exasperated: Why doesn’t he just add billions of zeros to a

Bolivar note and turn up at the airport with a wheelbarrow of them?

It’s not that simple, darling, sympathised Diana.  We should have opened a

‘Generosity’ site to raise funds for him, I suppose.

Oh, I hadn’t thought of crowd-funding, Dru sighed.

Or he could have sold his Ford Pinto, muttered Gus.  Though we have lived to

see Voltaire’s comments on paper currency come true.

The Rev Finlay Armstrong had been aroused at the mention of this notable

Deist.

Yes, it returns to its intrinsic worth, Snod explained, as if he was back in the

classroom.

Flickr-Voltaire (marble) by Houdon. Nat Gallery Art, Chester Dale,

  1963)

Author: Sarah Stierch

 

But he was not back in the classroom.  He was now to be a married man

and Virginia had suggested that he burn all his old teaching notes in the

new trendy, fire pit which Murgatroyd had installed so that his guests

could sit al fresco in the midge-ridden gloaming on the few Indian

summer evenings which were dry.

That was quick! she had remarked.  There was a few singed curls of paper.

Where is all the rest?  Had you shredded them?

No, Snod replied.  I am of the old school.  All my lessons were, and indeed still

are, in my head.

At least she was assured that there had been no incineration of erstwhile

love letters.  She still had a little explorative rake-through with

Murgatroyd’s self-wrought poker.

She was right about the non-incineration of the amatory epistles. Diana

still possessed them- including the Valentine card which had gone astray

like many a Messianic sheep, all those years ago and which had led to the

current denouement.

But this seemed to be all in the past.  Virginia had been reading Sandor

Marai’s book Embers and an apposite quotation from it had come to mind:

Time is a purgatory that has cleansed all fury from my memories.

We shall subsequently see whether this is indeed the case.

Meanwhile Mrs C was showing her fatigue in her usual Malapropistic

manner: So, when will you be back from Chipping Snodbury? she asked

Murgatroyd and Diana, who had planned a little antique-hunting

expedition in The Cotswolds.

Sodbury! they had exclaimed.

 

 

 

Raeburn at The National Gallery of Scotland

Tags

Duddingston Loch, Edinburgh Festival, Enlightenment, General Assembly, Kirst Wark, Lallans, New Town, phizzogs, Princes Street Gardens, Raeburn, Rev Robert Walker, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, The Mound, Whigs

You didn’t go to The Edinburgh Festival this year?

Brassica enquired.

No, too busy moving house.  But I will never forget the year I

went to the big Raeburn exhibition.

Why is that in particular?  I mean, I know he was a brilliant portrait

painter…

Because, when I came out, I could recognise all those faces, or phizzogs,

in Princes Street Gardens…I wrote a poem about the experience, as I

recall…

I started to declaim it, but Brassie protested that she didn’t

understand Lallans.  For all you linguists ‘oot there’, as it

were, ‘read oan‘.  See if you can get the gist:

(Kirsty Wark- crop image by Frank Wales.

KW at Innovate ’08 Conference, London)

 

Raeburn At The National Gallery of Scotland

 

A’ they pitten-oan, pauchtie Whigs appear

oan the Mound, or even wi’ Kirsty Wark,

debating devolution. Tartan-trewed

museum staff hae a look o’ Sir John

Sinclair of Ulbster and the Kirk still skates

oan wabblie ice – no oan Duddingston Loch,

but at its ain General Assembly.

Next thing they’ll be a’ wearin’ pink trappins

as they tapsalteerie roon key issues.

Slidderie, crabbit, towtie judges

aye hae glancy nebs, and advocates

gaither airt traisures. Quate, lang-drauchit wives

keep oan winnin’ their marital chess games;

take mair to theirselves than thir marrow’s queen:

wummen catch oan fast tae Enlightenment.

Braw, harp-playin’ sirens still turn hoose-ends,

musickers are forespoken by thir world;

bairnies crack thir thoums, so ye gie yir tent;

chiels forget thir first wives efter echt days.

The high heid yins adopt designer cloots

tae hide the fact they are debt-bedevilled.

They sappie, pairted lips warsle tae rede

themsels. We can hear them bairge in New Town,

spoat thir reflections in Jenny a’ things.

Thir portraits can be traced aff Princes Street:

there’s that carnaptious phizzog, they chollers:

a’ they bachles oan erstwhile buckled feet.

 

Otzi- in the news again

Tags

Honstadt, ice man, Otzi, shaman, Viburnum

This time it is because of an analysis of his clothes,

which they could not do in as sophisticated a form twenty five

years ago, which is when I first wrote the poem.  Then they did

not have a name for him either.  So, this was my speculation…

Image by Wolfgang Sauber (Own work)

Otzi’s clothes.

THE NEOLITHIC MYSTERY MAN

Shaman or shepherd-

who was this heap of skin and bones,

secreted on a scoured slope, blanketed by blizzards,

frozen for fifty-three centuries,

his grave between great groynes of rock?

Like a freak in a formalin flask,

glacial aspic had preserved him

in cryogenic condition,

until he crawled out of the melting ice

to confront climbers on their unmarked expedition.

Iron had conquered copper;

Christ walked on the water;

man walked on the Moon.

Then, like a jewel unceremoniously ripped

from its choice mount,

he was gouged by as crude an implement

as his flanged axe, by probing policemen.

After five thousand years of wind and ice’s interaction,

a four day delay led to putrefaction.

Fungus formed before he lay

in an Innsbruck freezer, a fit subject for display:

humanity reduced to a research possibility.

Countries could clash over key ring franchises,

Icemen mugs and t-shirts in S, M and XL sizes.

Had he left Honstadt and his little house on sticks,

bearing his birch box of sloe berries,

Viburnum arrows and an Ashen bow,

to become a picture on a poster, or a commercial quid pro quo?

Did he hunt, or did he trade- where was he going that day?

Did the snows come early, or did he lose his way?

By picking at his corpse, what do they really want to find-

the contents of his stomach, or the purpose in his mind?

 

 

 

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Queen’s Bedchamber, Versailles

Tags

block, brioche, French Revolution, l'Autrichienne, Queen's Bedchamber, Versailles

An old one which I found while clearing out, prior to my house

removal.

 

Queen’s Bedchamber, Versailles

(Photo: Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike)

 

You laid your head on cushions embroidered

with heartsease, roses and eyed peacock plumes.

An eagle resplendent over your bed,

its outstretched gullet menacing the room

was ostrich feather crowned. L’Autrichienne,

you primped and preened before the tarnished pier.

Brioche? Cake? Bread?  Cela ne fait rien.

You never expected that you would hear

a distant drumbeat of insurrection.

Shaven, you were in it up to your neck.

No one admired your pale throat’s reflection-

your bolster exchanged for a wooden block.

No shepherdesses attended your beck

and peahen call- for you had lost your flock.

Those below, sheep without a good shepherd

bleated egalite, fraternite,

imagining they’d purge l’etat of merde,

as you bowed out to face eternity.