The Tragedy Of...

Since it brings ill-luck to name it, let’s
Say I am like the monarch of the Scottish Play:
No matter how fair (or foul) it gets,
I pace out my life from day to day,
Happily revelling in each present and motley delight.
I should be weaponed up on my battlements, scan-
ning for the wood that will come, the great might
That may prevail.  Yet I’d be more than a man
Had I the mettle and valour enough to see
Off the ultimate army – a fearsome, ancient en-
emy that affords us neither hope nor mercy – composed of three
Hateful witches called How, Where and When.
In the end, I can only wait, an impotent Macbeth
(Whoops, I said it), to be toppled by that varlet Death.

(17.8.1997)

Surabaya Johnny

Surabaya airport, Java.  The date
Doesn’t matter.  I first noticed the man
As he puckered and sucked his smouldering Havana with a great
To-do, sat back and proceeded to fan
Himself with an battered old copy of the thoughts of The Great
Helmsman.  He wore a linen suit and tan
Shoes, had hair en brosse and a face whose state
Flickered between weariness and wiliness.  But this is a sham.
What I saw was an Asian woman, aglow
With love as she dropped water with undiminish-
ed patience into the eyes of her stone-still child.  (And so,
- Ta-da! - the sonnet’s obligatory couplet to finish:)
In the light of that mother for whom her son was so bonny,
What am I, but some Surabaya Johnny?

(17.8.1997)

Herd And Scene

Did Herr Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schüssel really
Call the Bundesbank’s boss a “right old sow”?
The leading Austrian weekly magazine spent nearly
Ten pages going royally (and imperially) to tow
-n on the subject, as it weighed this, and pondered that,
In an orgy of Viennese navel-gazing.  Whether you
Know about the bores in question is simply a matt
-er of herd: ours (oh!) or theirs (who?).
This is yesterday’s News, nothing less
Than history – itself just grubby local tittle-
tattle where meaning is farrowed only later, when the mess
Has cut its cord to the past, and been cleaned up a little;
Then base “Did you hear?”s and “Did you see?”s
Become, behind the scenes, pigging Thucydides.

(17.8.1997)

Golden Oldies

It’s a sure-fire hit with the general pub-
lic when the bug-eyed monsters descend from their improbably rough-
looking flying saucers and proceed, not to rub
Out the primitive earthlings, but to take the very stuff
And essence of their minds and to convert it into a small,
Friable icosahedron to take back
Home as a witty souvenir.  And it isn’t at all
Far-fetched.  As a mundane routine I stack
Up every digital word I have written, and the data
And tools I need for those I one day may pen,
On a single, shining CD-ROM.  Greater
Compilations than mine galactically man-
y have made; but I’m over the moon that when dull and old
A young, alien me lives immortal in gold.

(17.8.1997)

In Mozart’s Garden

Act four, scene three: a rich,
Intricate landscape.  Figaro enters in a cloak,
Bearing a lantern.  Dark is the night in which
All find themselves, when, to the sound of a broke-
n chord, masks are dropped, hands touch
And hearts are mended.  After the torments of this Mad
Day, its folly and caprices, the confusion of much
Else besides identities, it is time we bade
Farewell and lit the fireworks.  Let us hasten 
Then, friends, to the dance, to the game, content
In our hard-won knowledge of the need for mutual pardon;
For thus we shall be cherished (if chasten-
ed), as we follow the beat of the march transcendent-
al, at eve, in Mozart’s evergreen, D major garden.

(17.8.1997)

Montezuma’s Head-dress

As I wandered idly through some ex-Hapsburg eth-
nological museum heaped up with the lumber of emp-
ire – odd foreign objects acquired through the death
Of tedious mad uncles, the marriage of unkem-
pt and idiot sons, and the bribery of oleaginous court-
iers – I came to a dark room.  There, mounted
On the blackest of velvets, I found what I had sought
For years.  The history books have always recounted
That a few score marauding Spaniards conqu-
ered a million war-like Aztecs.  Now I saw
How a bunch of good-for-nothing, greasy hidalgos, pong-
ing of garlic and sweat, could seize a nation through poor
Montezuma: to view them as gods was just natural for a king
Whose head bore this delicate, iridescent thing.

(12.8.1997)