Eyes continued : III and an interlude

EYES part III

But what does it show ?

As this altar ego forges altered ego

Anywhere she go, we go

Trailing our lust imperial (inexhaustible, uncontainable)

Beyond common measure

Colonial in its thrust (insatiable, unsustainable)

Containing fallen empires, doomed by pleasure

Made of blues mist flecked with shards of sharpened rust

Fair exchange is no robbery,

Begrimed with feathers, willingly enslaved,

Held captive in a line

chained by an alchemy so rare

It transforms carmine carnality

Into the pure gold of anchorite exhilaration,

And tinkling to the ground, a small thing, a shield

But what does it show, and where does it go?

When will she know, why her glow grows and grows

Enough. How can she, when we want from top to toes   

Simply to gaze for days in praise, tracing with loving finger

Her ways, by ways, under stays -I did it glancing sideways

At the jagged strut, the ecstatic writhe

(four daze in a maze, Mr Underhill ?)

that is the promise, the bargain

to wit

one nurtured prurient passionate exuberant

without even hope of expectation,

Without the leaven of expectation of hope,

Neither hope nor expectation, then

Loss too vast for Jude’s compassion

dignity

Sacrificed on an altar of dead leaves

With a side order of lilies and roses,

Flanked by the departed parents of the passonists and, in big black boots, clutching his torn parachute, a paratrooper who fell to earth

A morbid mortification,

without even a bedwetters’

trust in unconscious release

INTERLUDE

“Here’s a cureospity in an age of liberalities,”

Confided shrewd Charlene to Ditsy Doreen,

 fussing over afternoon assam and fancy cakes,  

Antiques from an age vanished and vanquished,             

“when we may, if we please,

dot our Ts and cross our eyes

 when no molly, doxy or dolly

is forced to purge their urge

when carnations are to be had in many hues

not merely chartreuse, emerald or shades of old sage or …” Ditsy (otherwise Derek) an eyebrow arched across the Battenburg , picks up with abated enthusiasm “not just naughty noughts or winsome ones, can sup a cup of kindness,  tea can be for three,

my place or your place,

fast favours in your face

or at a more modest pace,

 in any base you agree

but not old spice and fresh lace’

‘No, not’ resumes Sharlene,

Shrewdly clever as ever

“Not to natter admiring on bona orbs and lovely lallies for those of us stuck, (tock tick,)

 behind the cursed hands , (tock tick,) of a struck clock,

the other side of a great divide, no lock to pick  

“ Key Mwar? Old drama queen!!” sidewinds Ditsy D, affectionate like

“Mere Princeling please, yours the majesty” explodes Sharlene in hilarity, spraying tea moistened cake crumbs in an artless arc plonking on direct on to Derek’s hoofers

 Look out boys not for Lily, no longer Lily but for our cross :  look, hear, look here at one cross chorus: how they bustle on, all harrowed brow,

 desperate to build new cages, exploit age worn rages

 now drag barbarous wire to hem desire,

 sow with mines the space between stars uncrossed,

stars like stars not to be crossed,

then

pushing glasses up his nose in a fug of overcheck twill

old tweedy -here comes pronouncement- dandruff on the herring bone –

‘’Iconolater” he spat  “Jung enough to be your slaughter, hardly bold enough to be her lava -no its……”

The boy exchange pursed, pointed looks

‘well I never!”

“Oh but you did’ murmured his self , placing a mottled hand on her friend’s wrinkled wrist –

I wish you well and long life, sweetest Prince,

Beyond the place where dreams go to die”

THE INTERMISSION IS OVER : HURRY BACK TO YOUR SEATS, GENTLES AND LADYMEN

but this was never the real story, the real story is elsewhere

to be continued …