Quest (a poem)
So much has been happening since the beginning of T.S. Eliot’s cruelest month that National Poetry Month kind of got lost in the shuffle here at the Portable Bohemia nerve center. April opened with your oft humbled scribe deep in the muck hammering out an essay that ended up titled About Progressives, Patriotism, and NRP. My Phillies lurched into the season with an uneven start that has them standing at .500 after ten games, the first two a pair of lopsided losses to the Braves by scores of 9–3 and 12–4. And the spotlight shined brightly on women’s basketball as the Lady Gamecocks capped off an undefeated season with their second national championship in three years and a remarkable record of 109 wins and only three losses in their last 112 games.
So perhaps I can be forgiven for coming a little late to National Poetry Month. It would be nice to step away from the muck of current affairs and focus on poetry for the remainder of the month, but as the Greek poet Alexandros Panagoulis said, “Politics is a duty. Poetry is a need.” Maybe I can dig some more poems out of the files and manage a bit of both.
The poem “Quest” was previously published in the March 2012 issue of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
Quest
The secret vault lay open.
Scraps of rag and silk
poured out color
from vagabond rainbows
and dust of angel bones.
A caravan composed
of all the instruments in the orchestra
played by dwarves
and nuns on unicycles
traversed the city,
avenue by avenue,
boulevard by boulevard.
Fantastic doorways beckoning entry
looked out on plazas and fountains
where brightly colored ceramic breasts
sprayed diamond-sparks of water
high into the air
above all this marvelous panorama.
Gangs of schoolgirls
in blue knee socks
swiped lattes
and drank in verse
of criminal poets
while the distant trill of carnival
fused with evening's soft and dimming light,
an uncanny turn
of melancholy and gaiety
transported onto canvas
by sidewalk painters
of a distant century.
A raggedy crew
of bohemian intellectuals
badly in need of a haircut
gathered at the café at dusk
to smoke cigars and quaff pints of ale
while they renewed acquaintance
with the dialectic,
the Frankfurt School,
Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault,
the Marquis de Sade,
and theorized about whatever became
of the revolution that never came,
hijacked by discotheques
and feather boas,
a taste for designer jeans,
vintage wine, artisan cheese,
caviar, cocaine, self-actualization,
as sophomores in thrall to Ayn Rand
flipped houses and blew market bubbles
out their improbably collective lips
while night blackened
around us all.
Today beneath the outraged sky,
beyond the darkened realm
of all we might have been,
evening's promise betrayed
by morning light
that never comes,
things play out as they will
or must or can.
I continue on my way
bound by some strange quest
beyond fathom or redemption.
Keep the faith. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt