Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Recall! I, too, have buried the dead
and seen the faces aptly avoided by the living. I have touched the pallid hand weathered in a desert land with and without misgivings. And I have even heard Alfred's sirens singing. Venir l'amour, venir.
The drowned Phoenician Sailor said,
"Dare not ignore the honored dead!
The Cheshire grin upon my face
is a permanent mark of my disgrace."
"Beware the siren's call!"
Alluring, beseeching.
A deceitful thing it was,
painted in white lies,
and much too lovely
to linger in.
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!
But I do not fear the darkness, nor balk at grinning demons haunting dusty halls sweeping cobwebs with ragged brooms. At spring mending-time the gaps are always pondered (as we swap lie for lie.) and one wonders how they came. Yet no one ever knows. It's four A.M. I should be sleeping! But I digress and sojourn in the desert. One decade more is all. Perhaps then I can rest. So I wander through broken pillars; somewhere I have already traveled, vaguely familiar—remembered. The siren's call combs the sands while the unstrung Ovation streams melodies
to muffle the inevitable doom
avoided for a time. Wandering deeper into a barren land, further and further from a siren's hand. The sun had set alone. A grinning moon now casts doubt
in slanted shards of lunar light.
I’ve felt the curse of mortal man throughout the somber day. I wonder what the night may hold to send the curse away. But in salted skies, where celestial entities thrive mortals find no answers.
Unless they die. And a parade of wind carries slings and arrows upon its back. Deadly, accurate—in earnest the siren sings. Je suis belle, ô mortel! Toujours tu chériras la mer, Venir l'amour, venir.
Horizons shift, scents of brine assault and white waves batter rocks below. A desert replaced by desolate crags. The siren's doing, I know. But I do not fear the darkness nor balk at a drowned sailor strangled by seaweed
red and brown. I do not fear the siren --alluring beseeching.
No, I do not believe I'll drown. A final flight to the water below caressed by a witch-maid's song.
Open arms await me to immerse in the welcome chill of the waters below. Perhaps now I can rest.
Note: Allusion and Direct Reference.
Utilizing a line from “The Wasteland” by T.S Eliot and a modified version of a line found in E.E. Cummings “Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond” and Robert Frosts "the mending wall" worked into different meaning.
And Charles Baudelaire stars with some lines from "Man and the Sea" as the voice of the Siren.
A piece intended to draw attention to these great works of the past wrapped into something new.
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