- Don al d'Uq -
by Lord Biro

I wish men to be free
From mobs as well as kings; from you as me.

Lord Byron
Don Juan

- Don al d'Uq -

Canto the First

I
I want a hero: no uncommon need
When every turn of fate throws up another,
Who in swift measure falls from grace for greed,
Chicanery, base feelings for his mother,
Or want of Principle, that scourge of Moloch,
Until, alas: 'His principles are bollocks!'
Thus cries the world, whose heroes drop from sight:
Once punctured, none can make it through the night.

II
Better the antihero, far more durable,
He of an epic lust for groupies, gold,
Orgastic sex and toxins, only curable
By knighthood, and the sangfroid of the old:
'Screw all the world, they'll love you,' - thus the lay -
'And naught there is above us to gainsay!'
Charming in rock stars, but our hate the more is
When this piratic creed's took up by Tories.

III
Thus Nothing haunts the centre of a stage
Where spotlights play and tunes of glory wane:
This is the absent spirit of an age
Of zero soul, where naught prevails but gain.
Though pomp and razzmatazz alike in fief
Hold yearning hearts, the tune's a thief
Of aspiration - once he has your vote,
The Emperor streaks off, but leaves his coat.

IV
O Lenin, Largo Caballero, Fidel, Che -
What of our love of all your high polemic?
Yesterday's prophets of a brighter day,
Your notions now are largely academic.
Who can preserve us from a Yankee doom
Of hamburgers, and guns in every room?
For seventeen long years we pledged our prayer
To democratic change, which gave us Blair !

V
So do we float, bob bobbing like a bottle
With no message, vainly though sages warn:-
Whene'er a body social thinks it's got all
It could hope for, then is born
The Antichrist, destroyer of its dreams,
To rip the world asunder by the seams,
And, though its motivation stay a mystery,
Teach all and sundry not to mess with history.

VI
Meanwhile, inferior nations (no - developing),
That once were stable, solvent, proud or free,
Find that our Pax Romanum's one enveloping
Injunction to conform, for which the fee,
Paid out with usury au point, per annum ...
... Or sometimes ... 'What? Defaulted? Damn 'em!'
Lord, how their base ingratitude annoys us,
Saddled with debt to bankrupt Old King Croesus.

VII
Yet those are luckier than they as dwell
Under some ailing star not sick but wrong;
With institutions thus consigned to hell,
Its leaders don't stay round for very long,
Their populace demoralised at best,
('Torture the dissidents and screw the rest!')
Our culture's gift to them, one grim payola
Of Gideon's Bible, bombs and Coca Cola.

VIII
Nor does the Occidental Empire herd these sheep
In any pen or fold of civic bond,
Since all are free to gaze upon the heap
Remaining of what once they had been fond.
The Brits, that dull, sly, self regarding race,
At least displayed a modicum of grace
In things Imperial: the Yanks
Kill everyone and go, expecting thanks.

IX
This baleful state of nations does not pass
Th' attention of intelligent observers
Native to cultures wounded by the blasts
Of real or economic war that serve us
As ambassadors: the result's
A cottage industry of secret cults,
Sworn to regain their own souls if they can,
And, much more to the point, destroy The Man.

Canto the Second

I
Now: Islam's long subsisted, cheek by jowl,
With Christians and Crusaders on the make,
Their speech as pious as their deeds were foul,
Eager to knock down what they could not take;
But Islam's soul is made of more than clay,
(Or less), and's cultured, by the way,
As fine a paradoxical phenomenon
As anthropologists could hope to home in on.

II
One loose knit brotherhood of kindred minds,
(Its sisters a distinctly lower class)
One language - more or less - from Tangiers winds
Through hill and desert to the Khyber Pass;
Their art of numbers (with great Allah naught)
Much light into our own Dark Ages brought,
Though, since about the time Alhambra fell,
It seems that Arab culture went to hell.

III
More true t'would be to say, though Boabdil wept
While European nations strutted wide,
That, till about last Tuesday, Islam slept,
Like some old sea dog, waiting for a tide.
Now it's awake, though dreadfully confused,
Denouncing all by whom it's been abused,
And muttering about its holy roots,
Like some old sea dog searching for his boots.

IV
So Allah hears the Faithful plead for answers
To things it don't devolve on Him to know,
That spake last to Mahomet's holy lancers,
And that some fifteen centuries ago,
So Allah's dumb (His Imams even dumber)
Which lack of guidance really is a bummer
To people who, in spite of gifts abstractical,
Could never be accused of being practical.

V
The problem's gist is this: a nomad mind's
Impatient with all kinds of truck and trammel,
And, rather than take root, would leave behind
All but what can be carried on a camel,
Which list includes near everything we've made
Since thirteen hundred, since which date they've paid
The 'innocent' victim's price for what's come unto 'em,
Since they as haven't done it, has it done to 'em.

VI
In hypnagogic trance, they've seen the West,
- In attitudes of mutual abhorrence -
Their wealth and culture steadily divest
(In spite of stalwart friends like TE Lawrence)
From Palestine for example, led by Zionists,
Whose chutzpah makes them history's leading try on ists,
Since any of us would, I think, his neighbour damn,
That claims our house was given him by Abraham.

VII
But despoilation has its brighter side
For some; although the soul be lost
Or paralysed by trauma, there's a tide
In the rapine of men, whose cost,
Though it be paid by many, yields to few
A breadth of wealth and power wholly new,
To elevate them high above the mob,
And show them other bodies they might rob.

VIII
And, there by Allah carelessly bestrewn
(Though evolution helped, it must be said)
Beneath the deserts of the crescent moon,
Billions of fishes, many eras dead,
Pulped, like remaindered fiction, to a slew
With which no one would know quite what to do
But for the motor car, the airplane too,
Which, o'er our hero's childhood home, in numbers flew,

IX
Thence to strew bombs upon some erring tribe
That lacked the gumption to perceive what way
The wind blew: time then to proscribe
Their liberty, and blow a few away,
To teach them that the wheels of Progress can't
Stop turning, though it maim one's aunt.
The author of this slaughter, man of stone -
Our hero's Dad, the Sheikh Ben al Q'a'poan,

X
He of that class of oil bloated hauteur
That in a feudal lord's a devilish nuisance,
And lets him kill or spend without demur,
Spurning all censure with a bland insouciance;
Since 'Allah willed it', there's naught to be done,
(Though that's not how it seemed to his young son).
The while his tribesmen huddled in a ditch,
Ben al Q'a'poan himself was stinking rich,

XI
And getting richer: Allah having turned
The tap on, none could turn it back,
Or tried to very hard, lest they be spurned
For blasphemy, or treason, or a lack
Of understanding of the rules of Progress,
Which, though it might appear a frightful ogress,
Is dedicated - well - to going on,
Till every last impediment be gone.

XII
(But Progress is like any force in history,
In having its wheels slowed by more than friction;
Why this should be might well remain a mystery,
But certain 'tis, a straight line's a mere fiction:
Just when all roads to Rome run their true course,
Then back along them runs that counterforce
Of Visigoths, and Christians and the like,
To put the old patricians on their bike.)

Canto the Third

I
Ben al Q'a'poan had taken several wives
As was expected of a man of class,
But didn't much concern him with their lives,
Since none engaged his interest, save the last,
Young Jamela, whose beauty and whose mind
Left - in his view - the others far behind:
At first thought barren, she conceived by luck
One frail but captivating infant, Don al d'Uq.

II
Don al d'Uq knew, at first, the love of both his parents,
His mother, being passionate, and his Dad
Being passionate about his mother, whose appearance
Seemed to grow yearly more reflected in the lad,
As well her sharp intelligence and wit,
Far greater than could comfortably fit
In dull society, or its views extoll -
She had too much ferocity of soul.

III
So Jamela was ostracised by most
Within the household, but did not
Allow this fact to cramp her style as host -
Ess to a salon which had got
- All soon agreed - the chic of the haut monde,
With great minds flocking to 't from far and yond:
She took her own apartments in the palace,
And left the world t' its envy, fear and malice.

IV
Al d'Uq grew up the favourite of all comers,
A bright star in a coterie of bright souls,
Falling asleep amid loud talk, and murmurs,
Concerning love, economy, God, art's true goals -
The usual list for passionate young minds,
Albeit more lucid than one usually finds.
He had besides tutors for this or that,
Whom he generally talked into a cocked hat.

V
About the fringes of this world lurked al Q'a'poan,
Gazing with painful pride on his young wife,
His air that of some god who, all alone,
Stands wondering at the mysteries of life,
Which, though he made it, seems to pass him by,
A look of wistful yearning in his eye:
Young Jamela, perceiving how it moved him,
Knew too that he would never know that's why she loved him.

VI
For friends, al d'Uq could draw on every mode
Of life, or trade, or station that was found
Inside or round about their royal abode,
Who in him found that feeling, clear and round,
That forms such bonds between the sons of Allah,
Equals beneath the posh or torn djebelah;
For he could see, like any true born star,
Things, places, people as they truly are.

VII
So, all his growing years, up to eleven,
Passed in that spell of happiness fulfilled,
Lucid emotions, clear thought, shining even,
Which to a few, as children, has been willed
As in a legacy from some dour aunt,
Who knows full well life's frightfulness, but can't
Allow her loved ones to endure its truck:
In this way, time was 'kind' to Don al d'Uq.

VIII
The change - it was apocalyptic - came that day
His Dad blew up their neighbours; it transpired
To assuage the wrath of some oil Texan, by whose pay
Ben al Q'a'poan for years had been enmired.
The neighbours having baulked to leave their land
T' allow oil riggers in from every hand,
Ben al Q'a'poan renounced their kinship, and
Promptly reduced their legacy to sand.

IX
This broke that truce of love and troubled awe
'Twixt him and Jamela. It shattered too
That air of natural majesty he wore
Among his tribesmen, who now drew
Themselves to one side, passing in the soukh,
Glancing back at him with a distant look,
And, shot for good, as by a noonday gun,
The hesitant but deep love of his young son.

X
The palace, quickly, into factions split,
Of mutual hate, suspicion and much worse:
The moving finger having one graffito writ,
Wrote more and bigger, till it formed a verse
With which each side denounced the other one: -
'Assassin!' 'Ingrates!' 'Unbelievers!' 'Scum!',
And so on: 'mid this clangour,
Jamela specially was the butt of anger.

XI
She having closed her door to al Q'a'poan,
She thus her colours nailed t' its outer face:
Her husband, wounded, brooding, all alone,
This sleight would have enraged in any case,
But in the current atmosphere so tense,
When all who were not for him were against,
It branded her, by all who'd cause to hate her,
As Whore of Babylon, she devil, traitor.

XII
It was not long until she was denounced
Falsely - as it so happens - for adultery,
At which a troop of palace guardsmen pounced,
But found her gone into a night dim, sultry,
Below a hot moon, on a camel train,
Soon to be picked up by a private plane,
Flown 'cross two borders and then on to Paris,
Haven to exiled poets, and Frank Harris.

XIII
Al d'Uq by this was struck completely dumb -
He didn't speak one word for one whole year.
Not only the desertion by his Mum,
But waves of anger, shame, despair and fear
Took such possession of his anguished soul,
That Hamlet by comparison was whole
And hearty: then, by slow degrees,
Don al d'Uq started speaking, on his knees,

XIV
Pleading to Allah for some gleam of light
To penetrate the toxic gloom which clung
About him, like some chill and foggy night
Without a morning, and which wrung
His soul out: Allah said ...
Nothing at all, in fact (some think Him dead).
But al d'Uq's soul from this void took no harm,
Knowing silence to be the sound of balm.

XV
(As is my Muse's wont, if I might
Interpose this rather apt comparison,
Who makes me do the talking, as of right,
- She for herself finds eloquence embarrasing -
Like some exotic, fey, quixotic tart,
Whose occupation's more caprice of heart
Than daily want, she'll stay a season,
Then promptly bugger off, citing no reason.)

XVI
The antidote, (for muses or for gods)
Is ritual obeisance; since the spirit
Bloweth where it listeth, man must plod,
And cock a sail to catch, an ear to hear it:
Art and religion, though they often blaze
At one another, live both in the gaze
Of something bigger and beyond their scope,
Which cancels, by its power, despair and hope.

XVII
So al d'Uq prayed, and sensed more than he heard,
A steely calm seep from his solar plexus,
An implacable serenity, which no word
Could capture: all things that perplex us
Disassembled by it power, as sand by sea,
It leaves the soul one sole neccessity - to be.
After a few short weeks of cloistered prayer,
Al d'Uq then spoke, but with a different air

XVIII
Than hitherto. Some found him very strange,
Others took note, and blessed themselves for joy,
Or fear. His Dad sought to arrange
An education that would suit his troubled boy,
Whose manner t'wards him, steady and polite,
Seemed to blow coldly from some distant height,
Nor would it change (at least not in the time
Span covered by the present rhyme).

XIX
All al d'Uq needed, be it for science or art -
Tuition was provided. Al Q'a'poan
Paid with a free hand and a heavy heart -
Was happy, even eager to condone
Any caprice of al d'Uq's lively mind,
Than which the world scarce sees a better kind,
Or one more hungry. Travel as well
He craved, and pretty soon could tell

XX
Traveller's tales of corners of the globe
Undreamed of by his friends, or much at all,
Where, though well heeled, and dressed in Arab robes,
Al d'Uq seemed able to surmount that wall
Of difference, which other people find
Keeps them from entering the local mind:
Al d'Uq spoke, the world listened, and vice versa,
Who ne'er a more charming visitor had known, and many worser.

XXI
Paris of course he wished to visit, where his Ma,
In secret from her husband and his cronies,
Eked her exile's existence, feeling far
From well (she wasn't), as alone as
Juliet upon waking: she had left
Her son for his own safety, but bereft
Of him, her country, half her friends,
She wilted. Longing to make amends

XXII
To Don al d'Uq especially, she paced
The boulevards, drank coffee, smoked,
And thought of home: her coffee laced
With cognac (sometimes) made her choke
With longing. When her son sent word
(Through emissaries, in secret - you've scarce heard
Of such contrivance, for his Dad
Set spies to watch his movements), she was glad.

XXIII
Her illness though, that once had been suspected
When she was tiny, and then seemed to have abated,
So that all thought or care of it had been neglected,
Was in the chilly Ile de France exacerbated.
In few: like some anachronistic child of passion,
Whose fate's been written in more antique fashion,
Poor Jamela, one hundred years too late,
Died of consumption, in Montmartre, at twenty eight.

XXIV
Her son arrived the next day, just in time
To call at the pompes funebres. That he wept
Would be an understatement, though sublime
On the exterior: he scarce slept
While he set up a funeral to rival
Modigliani's, a revival
Of Parisian pomp, in black and gold -
Few people show such style at twelve years old.

XXV
First, prayers of simple elegance near Place des Fetes,
Then the cortege (its Muslims, militants entrenched
In their own creed, and knowing of, though few had met
Jamela, all malgre eux, looking distinctly French)
Bore her in grace and state to Pere Lachaise,
Where, unique among royal Arab brides, she lays,
With Piaf, Wilde, Modi, others of the great,
Whose graves are marked on maps sold at the gate.

XXVI
Then came the start of al d'Uq's missing years:
More likely 'tis, he spoke to no one known
To him before, having outgrown his peers,
But not yet being adult, much alone
With tribulation, he cocooned
Himself in learning, though we soon
Find he had friends and helpers, money too, enough
For food and lodging, clothes, books, all that stuff.

XXVII
The next we know of him, he's turned eighteen,
Still there in Paris, at some lycee where his brain
Impresses all: his lover (and landlady)'s Jacqueline,
Eight years his senior. Now the pain
Of Jamela's untimely death's grown fainter,
He's started to show promise as a painter
Of passionate nudes, all Jacqueline of course.
She's in his landscapes too, like some dark force

XXVIII
Or presence - heavy in skies of Fauve distorted
Mauve, or poignant in the spaces between trees,
Laid brightly languid in the light upon assorted
Patches of water with the sky flung free
Upon them. Jacqueline was his world
For this one season - luckily, a girl
Of poise and perspicacity who seemed to know
As much, while knowing too she'd grieve to see him go.

XXIX
Al d'Uq was also nipping into lectures
At the Sorbonne (don't ask how he got in),
And other well known places of conjecture,
Learning, debate, enquiry and bad gin.
The essays he wrote (sometimes) caused sensation,
Professors begged him stay for the duration,
But al d'Uq did not crave for the afflatus
Of doctorates or academic status.

XXX
He'd seen how specialities divided
People in dull compartments of constraint:
The philosopher's own experience derided
By his theories which tell him what he ain't,
The man of God without a god to thank, yet
Wrapped up in lore like some old comfort blanket,
The man of arts, who wants the world to know it,
His one great raison d'etre some dead poet.

XXXI
There were two kinds of thinking, this was rather plain,
So radically opposed that, n'importe quoi,
There was no way to change one to another brain;
As well try turn La Reine into Le Roi.
One type of mind produced and followed texts,
Required to know what's first before what's next,
Was sensible of essence and of thing -
The other kind did everything with string.

XXXII
O string! that from dark barbarism's pall
Delivers us! Without thee, what of boats,
Or Troy, or pyramids, or Venice? - all
Contingent on thy subtle suppleness, which floats
From th' abstract to the concrete, one strong line,
To fix or pull, raise, lower or entwine:
People cite stone, bronze, wheels, combustion - none can bring Th' emancipation of one goodly piece of string.

XXXIII
This man of string - homme de ficelle - looked round,
And saw the time was coming close to move;
As yet he'd no great notion where, but found
- As once before - waiting and listening proved
Quite efficacious. One fine day,
He knew - just knew - it was the USA,
Land of the rabid Puritan's dark knell,
Where even Atheists believe in Hell.

Canto the Fourth

I
So landed al d'Uq, near the coast of Maine,
Diverted there by backed up stacks, or fog,
Then to New York upon a crowded train,
And, daunted suddenly, began a log,
To trace all his impressions of a land
Already pressing in on every hand,
Forever on the move for movement's sake,
That Freud had dubbed: 'a gigantic mistake'.

II
Gigantic certainly - the monstrous buildings pressed
Upon him; spaces at once vast and squashed
Deranged all his perceptions. Folk addressed
Him with accusatory, stentorian swash
And buckle of the vocal chords - but then,
This was just how they spoke, especially men.
Within a fortnight, al d'Uq had found friends,
Apartment, occupation, all that lends

III
Itself to living on a fine, outgoing scale,
In tune with all the best he felt around him
In the city (which makes many people quail,
But al d'Uq was too steely: when he found him
Self surrounded on the subway by three crack
Heads, he laughed heartily, gave one of them a smack
And took another's throat 'tween thumb and finger
Till he passed out. The other did not linger.)

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