12 Towards A Definition of the Seasons by Duncan MCGibbon (classic reads txt) 📖

list.
The services of power broke the fluids
and defective genes were found inside.
We left that morning. Now we stay away.
Some innocents may yet stand a chance.
The surface of our tickets for return
are scuffed, now, frayed and torn
and yet we keep them safe.


The Massacre

They too can sprawl,
like figures from
French Neo -classic paintings.
The mythic dead
are as dead as the real.

(coincident with the ritual
barbarity, or Razoir National,
imposed on those who doubted
the wisdom of the elders,
a scene from the holy past.)

Exposed and dying,
most lie still now.
Only the surviving
children still play
in the oblivion of hope.
The mothers have been
painted out with pethidine.

As always, only
the painters
ever saw real bodies
as it was their role
to create a new
reality.

Vallombres,
or
the Right to See Only What You Want.

1.Overture.

In the Rococo dome of the South side - altar,
a gold-mounted mirror depicts
Mrs Helen Forrest's rosy, ectomorph flanks
viewed from the sole angle of visibility,
as seen by the narrator alone,
a Nineteenth Century Metaphysical absolute
who stands incongruously
on the edge of a high plinth.
Herr Hans-Georg Wald, who is busily engaged
in drawing them, does not seem to be
aware of this tell-tale transcendental glimpse
of her hiding-place below the elbow-rest
of the elaborately-carved misericorde .
Boredom has led to his taking up the pencil
and sketch-pad of his youth before he turned to cartoons
in the Japanese market. Boredom, too, has led
to Mrs Forrest's peeling off her M&S khakis,
though the cool, marble floor on which she lies
is a welcome change from the humid,
pre-thunderstorm heat of this wooded river-valley
and its ornately-landscaped surrounds.
She gazes at the gilt on fading woodwork
and wrought iron, on the fussy altar-piece
and the suspended putti
motionless in the dry, still air.


2. Chapter One.

In the winter-garden, Marie-Elisabeth Dubois
and her sister, Soeur Céline-Thérèse
sit on a secluded bench, deep in conversation
about Brother Adolphe Dubois who renounced
his earthly pleasures, late, to retire to this place,
in the sole companionship of the narrator,
a retrospective friend who takes the form
of a Mannerist Angel in granite.
Adolphe lived as one among the order
of the Petits Plombiers De L'Eau Sacre Perpetuelle..
but died intestate in dix huit cents soixante quatorze.
His quest for eternal peace hastened by Haitian
wandering from the light in early youth.
The body of an unknown companion
from the climate of his youth has just been
interred beside him.
3.Prelude.

Surrounding the curtain-wall
the gendarmes sweat it out
silently in the stubborn sun.
The have barricaded the baroque entrance.
The heavy glint of Kalashnikovs
punctuates their heat-haze whisperings.
An R.T.F. commentator rattles dictated
realities into a Tandy.


4.Preface.

The children have had a riotous week of it.
The range the terraced gardens,
having become denizens of the spinneys
and the woods, where the auteur, an ancient sprite,
has climbed to the heights of the oldest plane
and looks down through tangled honeysuckle and hibiscus.
Their timing for meals is completely exact.
The troop in across the lawns to the refectory,
where they are fed beneath Fifteenth Century vaulting,
under the rule of silence, imposed
after the first day, riot of pidgin-Eurospeak
by Red- Cross volunteers who resent
the give-away feasts of hamburgers and chips
which the health-authorities have sanctioned.
The kids know they are here by accident
and intend a few more just to stretch it out.


5.Vorwort.

Next door, the Germans
have discovered the wine - cellar
beneath the Abbey lodgings
and claim it for the tourists.
The goblin of the grape squints
a ray of hope through a ruby-red glass
in recompense for their isolation.
The others have left them to it,
together with their raucous send up
of plainchant which carries in the still air.
The coach that brought them lies,
cleaned and serviced in the grand courtyard,
faced towards the gate
in impotent alertness.


6. First Movement.

Upstairs in the crowded dormitories,
under the strategic aegis of dead-eyed,
military busts, teenagers hold conferences
on mixed-visiting and escape.
They are ill at ease,
now that the dope has run out.
They gather in switching pairs
forming mirage-like groups-like rooks in winter,
depleting and gathering without reason.
The girls have that looked-over feeling.
The day-dream of playing in the woods,
like the youngsters. Some regard these events
as presaging some great shift
in ordinary destinies, sufficient to fire
the halbstarken against their father-figures. _


7. Cover-Illustration.

The wire-net post-card holder
in the Chapter-house entrance trembles
at each vibration of chasing children.
Black and white photographs
present Dalcroze and Montnessori
sublime; a cold perfection,
where, in chiselled white robes,
a uniformed instructor announces
the eternal message
of the unachieved in frosted chalk.
Seated in wooden benches,
¬the doomed, tubercular class
smiles in futile industry
white, too, in their boiled, ¬
calico pinafores and shirts.
They would have us belong
to their world, it having been
so short, so full of pain.


8. Introduction.

Back in the church, the recumbent effigies
of the Count of Ponthieu, mort
à Crecy en Ponthieu in Treize Cent Quarante Six
and his wife , a sturdy supervisor
of Cistercian intercession for her husband's soul,
are less content. The pert pink of English nudity
merges jauntily with the arrow-pitted
dead of Philip's arm, who lay on the Chapel floor,
soaking the floors with their massacred blood.
Though no-one notices, as their spectral forms –
are taken for comedians, rehearsing for this evening's
son-et-lumière, except the narrator,
assuming the privilege of viewing
sub specie eternitatis.


9.Part One.

This is not the viewpoint of Mr Nigel Forrest,
standing bleakly before the bronze rood- screen,
scanning the stalls for his missing wife,
whose want to be alone he finds an irritation,
now that events have permitted
a more Romantic interval
than a weekend would allow.
Artist and model freeze,
almost become light carvings themselves.
Liturgical dust adheres to Mrs Forrest's tensed,
sweaty haunches. The wooden panelling
takes on an orange-pink glow
in the shifting light.
Baron Schuff von Schuffenhoffen
chisels them into the wooden panelling,
in Viennese style side by side
with the Angevin wood
that gripped the water-logged chalk
amid vanishing alluvium.
Nigel's footsteps wanly sound
and fade ¬in retreat through the Porch.


10. Entrance Gate

In the Marsh-Gardens, a Japanese export-clerk
in studied casuals and his slim wife, Norika,
rapidly debate the declining merits
of his portable phone and resign themselves
to another morning of Tai Chi and meditation.
This does not prevent them fearing infection,
or whatever the threat is that holds them here.
Their children have joined in
with the Western gang, though not without
the token jeering that makes it difficult ¬
for them to sleep at nights. ¬
The ever - present emptiness
a being, a kami of the woods
perceives the quiet couple
as part of the universal whole
as the walk through the gateway.
Norika, in black boots, white socks, scarlet
stocking and a black jacket
sets a mirror by the pool ¬
to make her silent offering.,


11. First Subject

Mr and Mrs Wood have decided to stroll
the whole length of the inner curtain wall.
They have made a study of such features. ¬
They bicker about respective invasions of privacy
and wonder why the police
won't talk about what keeps them here.
They witness that poor man,
Mr Forrest come out of the chapel,
looking unkempt and distracted,
passing the pleasant French nun
and her sister who are talking
in the shade, so sensibly.


12. Avant-Propos.

Jean Boissard, actor and singer, adjusts his hair
in the Louis Quinze moen, looking glass
grimacing at his unsure luck in having
a captive audience. Sylvie Aboi, his partner, steals his solitary viewpoint
to check how her
wool-white hair-dye has lasted.
Pudgily sensual with a well-dieted,
commercial svelte. She reckons
the whole business might get
get them some space in France-Nord.
Their apprentice-dead, mostly dancers
from the local summer-school,
follow them in ketchup-stained
dormitory linen to rehearse in the stables,
simmering with concern for a rise or a revolt. Meanwhile, the pocked, silver - gilt Cupidon
on the pediment, eyes them with a droll squint,
mocking at how a crook fooled a rake. ‚


13.Act One.

On the parterre in the Formal Gardens
the Walds are having one of their recently-famous rows
united now on the terrace by the chevet.
Mr and Mrs Forrest can hear
their teutonic badinérie.
Though only Helen listens
Her doting husband knows no German.
She blushes deeply and awkwardly
that she is the subject of the row.
Frau Walde has been unflattering about the sketch.
It is good enough, though, for Frau Wald,
a stock pharmacist from Aachen
to advance across the Avenue
to the Forrests , in no mood for aesthetic doubt.


14. Advice to the Reader.

Darkness fills the river-valley,
crowding the woods with shadows.