Don al d'Uq - page 2

IV
For occupation, al d'Uq found a niche
- Or more a cave, its tenets were so wide -
Helping the victims of that force unleashed
(Of which they found themselves on the wrong side)
Across from Turkey to Afghanistan,
To rend those compacts between man and man
That now, unravelling like a skein of wool,
Left spirits empty that had once seemed full.

V
Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia - the list
Was endless of the countries bent
On scourging their own people, and the gist
Of all of it, the sentiment
Of Progress masked itself as Fate,
'Gainst which resistance is absurd, or late,
So that its victims, shrunk to a statistic,
Feel their just anger is anachronistic.

VI
As 'refugees' they crowded al d'Uq's desk,
Endlessly patient, loud, dissembling, lost,
A vivid picture, albeit hardly picturesque,
Of what a price their souls such refuge cost,
Till, overcome by hunger or despair,
Al d'Uq would go out for a breath of air,
To pace around at roaring noon , amid
Vast uptown towers which the noon sun hid.

VII
No rest! No hiding place! No quiet home! No heart!
None of the uptown faces he could see belonged,
Yet all belonged exactly, as a part
Within the very same machine that wronged
Them: reeling from this sight
Al d'Uq went back to work until, at night,
He ventured out again, and saw
The negative of what he'd seen before.

VIII
Here was the molten key to everything, if he
Could but grasp hold of it, then leave it cool
Into such clean dimensions as would let him see
Where might the fettered lock be, by whose rule
The energy of nations was held down,
And all the world in fief to this one town:
At length, to a knotted riddle fit to quiz you all,
He found the clue he sought for in the visual.

IX
Only the staggered skyline of this place made sense,
And only from the sky : all other points
Of view revealed it as a jungle, dense
With rancour and decay, and straining joints,
Where life, caged vertically, sought to grasp
Its meaning in these towers that made it gasp,
Grown - it was said - from energies prodigious:
Al d'Uq's less blinkered mind knew them religious.

X
The god was - Quantity - its limit, nil;
Thus all proportion was a kind of sin,
Endeavour one vast hole which naught could fill,
And aspiration folly. Mid this din,
Despair of soul was chic: no form of art
(Save advertising) championed the heart,
Each 'serious' artist - nothing but a Name -
Castrated twice - first by despair, then fame.

XI
Al d'Uq by this time was persona grata
At parties, functions, charity levees:
All High Society saw him as a part o'
That gilded upper world the city pays
Its dues to. Thus he did not lack
For insights from above, and could sit back
And fit this ruptured world together at his leisure,
Still seeking for some means to weigh and measure

XII
Its many signs and portents paradoxical;
The while, his soul and body burned and yearned
As though the town itself bred fever toxical,
But found no one, whichever way he turned,
Till, at the private view of some no talent junkie,
The snacks were passed round by a female flunkey
(In fact a princess) styling herself Jay,
Whose Dad was murdered by the CIA.

XIII
After nine words of conversation (three in French)
I want to go/ I can't/ Tant pis/ Oui ... they both knew,
Leaving Jay but to find some way to wrench
Herself free from her job, with wages due
To her of twenty seven dollars,
A sum so mean, it naturally follers
She was too broke to leave it, nor would let
Don al d'Uq give her money, or not yet.

XIV
Her boss, an enterprising Levantine,
Horatio Alger of the service racket,
Could at that moment in the hall be seen,
Selling the artist's agent a large packet
Of cocaine. Jay, with a bob
Of mocking politesse, said: 'Stuff your job.'
And, handing back her 'uniform' of apron, hat,
And little name badge collar, like a cat's,

XV
Added: 'Although I haven't known for long
'Your bovine features and staccato speech,
'Spitting upon your staff, who, always wrong,
'Must grapple with a world beyond their reach,
'I feel I've somehow known you all my life:
'You were that fulsome eunuch, with a knife,
'Procuring boys for merchants in the soukh,
'Till someone from my father's household took

XVI
'You off and shot you. You were that
'Man who led Kurds to safety, then
'Sold them to Turkish agents, whom we spat
'Upon. You and your men
'Led killers to my father's hiding place.
'All of these crimes are written in your face
'Though others did them: in their place
'Your actions were the same. Each subject race,

XVII
'Class, nation, tribe has such as you,
'Shrunken in soul, grown fat upon betrayal,
'Bland with false innocence. In all you do,
'The measure of success is, others fail -
'Your ocean of illegal, frightened skivvies,
'Drabs, flunkeys, maids, for whom to live is
'But to exist in fear, is what you float
'Upon, to make you such a 'character' of note

XVIII
'Among this coterie of inbred souls
'With ill bred manners, like a kind
'Of Ancien Regime but with no class, which holds
'A mirror up to nature, but can't find
'Its own reflection anywhere. Please pay
'Me out my twenty seven dollars right away.'
Her boss, fat features pale with anger, nonetheless
Quailed at the naked power of this address;

XIX
Could feel besides the way the multitude
- Who'd listened spellbound to her diatribe -
Admired her chutzpah (not to say her pulchitrude),
So, always keenly sensitive to social vibe,
He, with one light, false snigger, flung her thirty,
And she, as though the excess three were dirty
Returned them to him, turning to al d'Uq,
Who had three single dollar bills by luck,

XX
And then they left together. Thus began a time
In al d'Uq's life, that's granted to but few,
Who, cursed as much as blessed, know the sublime
As fact within their lifetimes, knowing too
The eggshell scary portents of consuming love,
Implicit in the vow they are presuming of -
That this is everything - which credo must
Mean each without the other is but dust.

XXI
Each day a round, full universe, an orb of light
That bore them both within it, like a moon
And sun flashing alternate. Every night
A thousand years of pleasure, and a swoon
Of sleep, that, melting to the clarity of day
Returned them, like the tide within a bay
To sated fulness, trembling at the flood
That flowed and ebbed and pulled within their blood.

XXII
To him, she was a dark star, that could find
Words for his darkest feelings, like a searching light,
As though the hidden places of his mind
Had borne her, who was now within his reach and sight;
To her, he was a haven, of the kind
She hardly dared to feel she had a right
To enter: knowing all her soul
And judging none of it, he made her whole.

XXIII
So much they knew, and so much else portended
From rapture that it seemed could never cloy,
For these two, so miraculously mended,
To whom Manhattan was an isle of joy:
Each one, the other's lesser self transcended,
Their souls' iron blended in one bright alloy -
While each knew that the shadows of their past
Must claim them, and it could not last.

XXIV
She, from a shattered home, relations dead
Or scattered, mad, imprisoned, lost,
Felt them forever crowded in her head
As though her life and freedom, theirs had cost,
A debt that weighted every word she said,
And left no passionate embrace uncrossed
By sorrow, anger, and a formless fear
That doom would strike at all she might hold dear.

XXV
Al d'Uq, for his part, sought to be a rock
That gave her shelter from her own self's storm,
As if he could absorb the aftershock
Of cold destructiveness, and keep her warm:
The trouble is with rocks, they cannot melt,
Which fact put him at odds with what he felt
For her - in playing God
He placed himself beyond her, like a rod

XXVI
That only he could grasp, and so she raged
At times against him, that would hold her fast,
But made her feel less dearly loved than caged,
And, in this posture, knew the dream had passed
(In nine short weeks), which left them with the stark
Realities of life (and Central Park),
Though life completely new before them ranged,
Unable to go back, forever changed.

XXVII
'You think,' she said, 'because you're generous
'You thereby animate some principle
'Of ancient virtue, but I find this tenuous:
'There's dark things against which you're not invincible,
'And half this darkness lies in our own hearts.
'The best that we can do is play our parts.
'The play's dark too, and though not writ for us,
'Within it we might find roles fit for us.

XXVIII
'You thought - perhaps - we might grow old and ripe
'Together, in a love like evening sun,
'Our children free, intelligent - a nobler type,
'So that, from us, a new world had begun,
'From whose new life new wisdon might be taught ...'
(Al d'Uq wept: this was just what he had thought)
'But - ' (this more tenderly) ' - you're just a man.
'Think less on what you should than what you can.'

XXIX
Al d'Uq, sad, chastened, lifted up his face
And looked at her, who, looking back at him,
Reflected all the passion of their race
(Or anyone's). His mind fell dim
Before the keen ferociy she wrought
From life, which paralysed his thoughts:
If he but could he'd counter what he'd heard,
But (rarely mute) just could not find the words.

XXX
So did his silence cost that ray of hope
That few e'er feel, and fewer still can grasp,
That passion place their lives beyond the scope
Of history - those ancient ties that clasp
Like mantraps to the hearts and souls of they
Whose minds can never see past yesterday,
The great unloved of any tribe or creed,
Whose habits furnish what they seem to need.

XXXI
Thus are they born (a habit) from the loins
Of those whose habit 'tis to dull the mind,
Till, driven by the habit to conjoin,
They in their turn new generation find,
While in between, the habits of despair
(Called realism), cowardice (but ne'er
So called) define their souls, but chief's
The habitual, willful blindness styled 'belief'.

XXXII
Al d'Uq had never once believed a thing:
Though he had known full well that radiance lent
By love to drab existence, like a ring
Or nimbus - but this was self evident.
To believe it was, to him, to overstate
That which, by being, serves to obviate
Belief: as well think that the moon,
If we but ceased believing, would have soon

XXXIII
Gone out, or vanished, or some other trick
Of dull inverted logic: but the point
Now, was that his moon (and sun) were sick,
Not waning merely or put out of joint,
But dead, burned, gone - the ashes of their fire,
To leave him feckless as a lute or lyre
With no strings: when Jay walked out,
She took his soul and scattered it about

XXXIV
In shreds, and bits and pieces on the wind
That whips in off the Hudson. Then she took
A plane back home, less hoping to rescind
The horrors of her history than look
Terror full in the face, since this was what,
As birthright or inheritance, she'd got:
Though devastated when his front door slammed,
Al d'Uq knew she'd the courage of the damned.

XXXV
'We're damned,' (she'd said). 'Yourself as much as me.
'You think you're bigger than your father's sins,
'And thus doomed to repeat them. Can't you see
'That destiny is written from within?
'The moving hand writes nothing but what's writ
'Already, and if you can't fit
'Your actions to its words, you can but dream,
'And reverie's more toxic than it seems.

XXXVI
'Our world has nothing else. It can't stand still
'Nor move on, therefore it goes back
'In dreams of its 'pure' history, its will
'A hostage to some tawdry almanac
'Of half invented virtues from its past.
'D'you really think such posturing can last
'Out in the face of power and wealth,
'Or 'Islam' find its own way back to health?

XXXVII
'Forget it. The old wellsprings of the soul are dry,
'Nor all your tears or blood can make them flow.
'I know you can't accept that, which was why
'I loved you, and the reason I must go.'
Al d'Uq stared at the door, too stunned to cry,
(For fourteen hours) and, feeling much too low
For anger, sought in vain to pray,
Then took a plane himself, the following day.

XXXVIII
Where to? Well that's the question. I believe
He went off to the desert. This might seem
Romantic, or a little bit naive,
But, when in trouble (or recurrent dreams)
People do go back to their childhood place,
That source of trauma, happiness, disgrace;
In short, of all which animates their life,
Which needs revisiting in times of strife.

XXXIX
What he did there, what secrets were revealed
To him, what great decisions took
Hold of his mind, what still remained concealed,
What pages he then added to the book
Of history, I'll do my best to show;
Constricted by what little more I know,
It's true - but still at least I'll try,
And that which I can't state, I'll just imply.

Canto the Fifth

I
Now, I must take a pause within this chronicle
To look upon the world with my own eyes:
We've seen how al d'Uq, with his gifts harmonical
Would strive to keep it from its own demise.
If 'perfect love' were ever born, then he
Of all imperfect men's the apogee,
And, now he's taken off we know not where,
The point to be considered's, do we care?

II
For myself no, not much - it may seem odd
To turn cold on my hero in this way,
But, when some dude goes off in search of God,
It really leaves one little more to say
About his life, much less to feel
For one whose feelings have become unreal
To him as much as us: it but remains
T'observe the poor sod must have lost his brains.

III
I know - of course - how singular his gifts
Of love and intuition, what a task
He had to see things clearly through the rifts
In his own world, the mask
That life presented, which his mind
Drove him relentlessly to look behind.
I also know the poor boy's heart was broke,
Beyond which point, survival is no joke.

IV
Better to die! But yet he lived and saw.
Better to sleep - but that he could not do,
Each day more empty than the one before,
Himself, condemned to live, more empty too:
'Tis little wonder that, in high disgust,
Concluding all his passions were but dust,
He sought the desert air, in search of One
Whose Word is more enduring than the sun.

V
The trouble is, that same poetic flair,
Which animates true prophets and their ilk,
And sees a holy spirit everywhere,
Transmuting coarse creation into silk,
Having no common language for its vision,
Is greeted by large measures of derision,
And thus retreats - a reflex automatic -
Into creeds toxic as they are dogmatic.

VI
And it is creeds which animate the flood
Of history. Few prophets want their words
Writ large on flying banners drenched in blood,
Their followers and foes picked by the birds,
Whose hunger shows no prejudice of souls
(And bland indifference to religious goals):
The greater truth a great religion claims,
The more its horde of faithful kills and maims.

VII
Thus is each prophet by his creed betrayed,
His vision a mere catalogue of cant,
His words debased into a law laid
Down by blind men ranting
Into the dark: as if Christ gave a fuck
Over what kind of church his name was stuck,
Or Mahomet, that gross bully of the sands,
Who at least strewed blessings with an open hand,

VIII
Cared which stairway to Heaven people took,
Save only that they took one, and could see
Christians and Jews as 'People of the Book',
Which, being so, they might as well be free:
Would that such tolerance to other sages
Might extend. Alas, the Middle Ages
Brought it to an end in the Crusades
(As has been noted), since which time, the shades

IX
Of history have fallen, like the pall
From burning corpses on each new belief,
Nor did 'enlightenment' help much at all,
Or scientific progress bring relief
From it: rather, new methods of production
Abetted each new course of mass destruction,
Until there dawned at last the world we know,
Where everything could blow up in one go.

X
Now - you might think - at last we see the pass
To which belief has brought us. Not a bit:
Like some mad yogi, head stuck up his arse,
The world blames sceptics for most all of it;
The rays of reason cause such stark dismay,
The world shrinks from the very light of day,
As though the dark itself were absolution,
Or mindlessness some magical solution.

XI
So - to be brief - some Ayatollah git
Could summon down down a fatwa on the man
Whose genius a Satanic Verse had writ,
Prompting the 'free' world then to show its hand
At guarding liberty: the Brits
Damned with faint praises, as an 'also ran',
That luminary, liberal Muslim scribe,
Leaving the poor sod wondering what tribe

XII
He might call his; then things got worse,
His name being called upon by racist yobs,
And suchlike literary folk, until he cursed
- I wouldn't wonder - his own gob
For running on, apologised (I wouldn't have)
For all offences caused (he shouldn't have).
The result - not just his book misunderstood,
The whole world thinks the man no bloody good,

XIII
Save for the French, who stated (vive la France!)
They'd print his book no matter what the cost
In retribition: if perchance
Such clear and open declaration lost
A friend, or made them enemies, tant pis,
Such risk being half the price of liberty,
And t'other, the insouciance to cry:
'Publish and damn the bastards!' (so say I).

XIV
Meanwhile, the Muslim world was in a stew,
With Imam This and Ayatollah That
Vociferous on what 'twas right to do
To one who had so eloquently spat
Upon the holy word of you know who:
How unassailable in judgement sat
These parasites upon the public mind -
In fucked up cultures, never far to find.

XV
For Islam's fucked: (do kindly cut the crap
About respect for others' cultural blah)
Their primitive and nasty faith's a sap,
A scourge, a rancid syphilis, a scar
Upon the mind of every hopeful chap
Or chapess 'neath the crescent moon and star:
N'import what talents can be seen at large,
Head up the bum men stand always in charge.

XVI
How very different from the fabled West,
(The west of what?) that temple of expression,
Where ought might be depicted, writ in jest,
And priest nor despot gainsay its impression;
Except - I'd be a little circumspect
With things that smacked too strong of intellect,
Or posed too great a challenge to the poor,
Like Socialism in, say, Arkansas.

XVII
How great the need, still greater its denial!
That ancient principle of downtrod fools,
Grasped by the crooked apes who place on trial
Philosophies posed counter to the rules
Accepted by the 'common man' - that mash
Of displaced peasants, lawyers, trailer trash -
In all essential points, the same from Turkey
Nairobi and Shanghai, to Albuquerque.

XVIII
Have I faith in 'the people'? Have I fuck.
Would it were otherwise but there it is:
Nor can I generate, like Don al d'Uq,
Faith in some 'perfect' God, whose vanity's
To make 'imperfect' men, then see how they
Strive to transcend the limits of their clay,
And always fail (then die), like putting rats
In mazes with no exit (save a cat).

XIX
Do I 'believe' at all? A question posed
From time to time to me, in that faint tone
Of injured sensibility, by those
Whose hobby horse is some creed, which alone
Makes sense out of the senseless roar of chance,
Which, sans Divine Will, paints the whole advance
Of Evolution, and puts out of joint
Dull human vanity - but that's the point:

XX
Just think, perceptive reader, of the stars -
Phone numbers to the power of ten (or more)
Against there being some other world than ours,
And even then, ruled by the dinosaur
As like as not. Then think about
The Milky Way of sperm within their spout,
Just one of which, with ovular blessing, might
Conjoin to make a child, who could be bright.

XXI
Then ponder that your Mum and Dad were not
Born in some dark age of disease and slavery,
Killed by the plague, an avalanche, flood - shot
By somebody's policemen, gulled by knavery
Onto some ship which out of Naples sails,
'Bound for the USA' - then dumped in Wales:
Think of all that's against it in this list,
Then praise the simple fact that you exist!

XXII
But now: - it's high time that I took a stand
Against all such diversions and conceits
Of mind. This canto's out of hand:
If ever I'm to even half complete
The story of al d'Uq, whom last we left
(Twenty odd verses since) in some cleft
Rock, I'd better find the boy - but there's the prob,
For it seems our man's still missing off the job.

XXIII
I don't think we will find him either. See -
You can't get characters to punch a clock.
You might think being the author is to be
Omnipotent; believe me, that's a load of cock
In this regard, and many others too:
The very best of characters will often do
Things you don't want them to. Take this
One here. I personally feel extremely pissed

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