12 Towards A Definition of the Seasons by Duncan MCGibbon (free e reader .TXT) 📕

/> Sudden cloud-cover from the North- East
lumbers in on the same breeze
that rustles the beeches and young oaks
which surround the estate.
A line of grey creeps along
the stonework of Le Jardin Blanc
until its Empire fountain is plunged in deep charcoal .
Rain whispers its cold rumour
soon men, women and children.
Figures run hazardously for cover.
The Forrests make for the Crypt.
While the Dubois sisters decoy
Frau Wald to lead her to the Outer Gardens.
Herr Wald runs for the Refectory
where a raucous version of the Dies Irae,
bursts out again in response to an explosion
of thunder, which breaks over the abbey
and grounds, in a rattling downpour.
An ancient Angevin couple break
from the roofless stables to the cloister
followed by the Valois dead, who reaching the dry, ¬
ditch their shouds and light up ebulliently,
mocking Sylvie's gutter invective.
Children thicken the ground
with playful immanence like cherubs
in the Mannerist ceilings.

15. Book One.

This time in the Garden of the Senses,
the Dubois sisters seize upon Frau Wald,
whose husband's drawings
they claim to find exquisite.
How life-like... they coo
and add a remark on how little refinement
is to be found among these chance acquaintances.
Flattered but checked in her pursuit, Frau Wald
glowers at the leaden entrance to the crypt,
where Helen, wearied, but opportunist enough
to exploit her husband's misinterpretation
of her blushes, as the renewal of love.
feels her way in the dark with two hands searching
for a tactile surety; one held ahead
in the clammy air; the other held in her husband's.


16.Volume One.

Helped by the teenagers
who have broken through
the curtain wall, and under cover of the rain
the gendarmes move in.
They corner the tourists in small groups
in the Refectory, the Cloisters and the Dormitories ¬
They lead them to the church
where the coach driver is pushed
into producing his list
Only the Dubois and the Japanese couple
are missing.


17. Induction.

They explain that one among them
is a terrorist and had laid charges to the coach. They had no choice
but to hold them up
the unknown assassin
then transferred them to the foundations
of the chateau.
Still leaving his traceless messages
to release the convicted saints of the Holy war.


18 Prologue.

A task-force enters the crypt with shovels.
They crouch wolf-like
in uniformed raincoats
reading the inscriptions
with regulation pencil torches.
They mass together by a vault
in a corner and begin to dig.
Above in the church
Marie-Clair Alain is giving an organ recital,
or rather Boismortier in period costume to a tape.
On another's fingers rich,
Romantic chords fill the heavy air,
in a marche funebre while a trilling on
the high registers wobbles the Caryatids.


19.Exposition

It is time to go.
The travellers return
to the coach cleansed of all explosions.
with a litany of forgiving
An ambulance has arrived
for the Japanese couple
so unfortunately inundated by freak weather.
Such a slipper place to find ourselves
in Therese and Celine are busy with the police,
they having noticed the Pre-Vatican II habits of one.
Their cousin's remains have come back to earth
while several thousand pounds of heroin
imported with him have been stacked
by the police on the high altar


20.Lead in.

The terrorist never showed up.
Some claimed the gendarme had fluffed it
and blown them all up save the Japanese
and buried them in the crypt.
Others that an English pair were found
half - naked in the crypt and had been released ¬
without charges, the Gendarme having
overlooked the question of resisting arrest.


21 First premise.

On his seat in the coach,
Nigel finds a brown, buff envelope.
Inside is a drawing of a naked woman
with a characteristic smile.
It is signed on the crotch.
Delighted he shows his wife
who laughs in descant.
While the Woods frown in disapproval
at such uxorious tastes.
In the silence of the gilded chapel
The ornate, sumptuous tabernacle
drips with a white rain-sodden paste
hanging from a Bishop's Crook.
The Holy Spirit, an elaborate,
overweight gold-leafed pigeon
suspended on a chord
begins to flutter its creaking wings.


Ionian Summer
 
1.Io

I am Io.
Yes my son lies
in the clinic ward,
Epaphus, twisting
with pain and anger.
"Why did you bring me here?
to go through all this?"
He says it
to scar me,
knowing the holiday
was my idea.
I am Io.
I am to decide
I am hardship,
pulverized to a transparent glass
in miniscule, passive drips
So small, I am chance itself.

Each issue must be probed,
tested,
weighed, repeated,
put down.

My quickened surface, English,
calms to a chill.
This morning while tourists crowd
on the scorching sands. My daughter and I
waited, sweltering for the bus to town
just to visit him and see him lie there, my boy
sulky and disconsolate,
while doctors guess and hint at his complaints
and he complains that we arrived too late.
I am Io, alone, since my husband's faint-
hearted number telling me that it was better
he left me, than be distant
and kidded himself in the same letter
that I agreed it's for the best.
The classic poor cow, eyed by all
by my relatives for signs of new affairs
Tomorrow once again I shall crawl
to the nurses and put on airs
insisting my son goes. There is nothing
wrong with him and we shall leave
this hell and once we're flying
forget this place of pain and closed-eyed believe,
that like my grey-blue ruthless
eyes, have depths of fear pursued groundless.
correct, khaki and black-blowsed,
quivers with a willowish
uncertainty.


He must know I cannot look on death.

2. The Gorgon Pediment


The sea stirs and sucks itself
into the shape of a writhing coil,
she meets an English woman, solitary
and invites her to a meal.
She gets her confessing how she walked out
on her husband and three kids
to find some meaning to her life
The which, of course, Medusa-will provide
a pretty folie á deux.
The other woman wakes in a marbled bedroom
staring straight at a deep blue sky,
with a sore skin remembering dangerous pleasure
and the need to lie in postcards home
and always that flinch of the light bulb
after a power cut
that is blown with the surge of love
while the sea searches with its fingers
for pure eyes, teeth, a glossy head
basaltic weaknesses,
careless of exploration
or of lines of fault.

3.In Medea's Cave

On the most distant beach
against the rock,
lies Medea, the witch-inside to-be
She is wearing flimsiest pink,
has a troubled face
but a supple,
well-proportioned figure
which she unrolls downwards
for the sun to bless.
with its great, burning fleece
She carries
a Tom Wolf paperback
and accompanied
by two swarthy
Argonauts lights up
a joint.
At home, the Serbian shells
have finished
and her home
is being re-lived in
by a well-dressed
professional family.
Her father,
impatient in Germany,
will have her back,
family-ties,
but not if this Jason
really was born
in New Jersey.
The thrill kindles
deep down in their eyes,
but both so afraid to touch
even though they have moved
together to make room
for the English family.
Both knowing so much,
but not how much
is staked


4. Drepanie

The island
in the shape of a scythe,
though today it would be
a discarded condom,
or a broken beach sandal
It would have been left
by Demeter, on her way
to appeal to Zeus,
Pater Potestas,
watching in the Auxerre Icast game
wearing only a vest
eating pasta in the video bar.

It was then I saw her,
the chaperone, chaperoned
by her tall, larger -limbed daughter.
She with an aged,
still-beautiful face, Milanese
walking along side
that shapely girl
impatient to get to the disco.
Her mother, wore white Lycra,
a mignon ivory,
while Proserpine
was draped
in a white shapeless shirt,
and Doc Martens.
She knows her bambino
is going to hell
on a regular basis
It gives her matronly
rule
a certain resignation
at cereal time,
and a flair
for the language of compromise.


5. Nausicaa

Here everyone plays the
Nausicaa game.
Bare-breasted beach babies
stare out
as Odysseus' of the
spreading waistline
and the colestrol warning
whales himself up from the waves.
A maiden and the maids,
at the splash zone
among the vegetation
of fig-trees, cypresses,
Venetian olives
broom and ilex.
The one-epic stand
had its finer moments,
but the dream slips away
in the effort to get
the man to leave
the hotel bedroom
knowing, deeply,
hatefully
that when the real heros come,
little Nausicaas say their bit
then stand by the pillar
while the rich and grateful
vanish uncoupling
in the western skies.

6.Pyrrhus of Epirus

Scop owls in the
Angevin fort.
A video blares into
the Ionian night
its eternal odours
of heroes, viciousness
and virtue

To-day, trying to find
a way round
the valley, I fell
forty feet
breaking a foot
and a leg
and had to be led
dazed, along the path
by a party of
concerned Romans
in Tibullan style
Along the path
a beautiful bolt of green fire,
a lizard scampering across me.
To-night, limping,
bandaged with a pole
made from a ship's oar
I lurch as chthonically
as that owl.
A young man from Corinth
stares at my foot
and looks troubled.
His outpost is well-established, though
tomorrow, if the owls are right,
I will not need crutches
as I was saved to see
that lizard.
Soon only the owls will
do any hunting
as I will not be safe.


7. Sea-battles


Either
there will be a sea-fight
tomorrow, or there will not.

They have Athens
to thank for this