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For old Star-Gazer Master Khayyam – a name like Shakespeare’s for « some » other giants - Part One I Why don’t they ever come back? Even if it’s just to say We are still there or gone for a while Or just too damned busy That’s the reason why we’re absent And not for what people say We’re gone with the last breath Gone for good into the beyond If that’s so then just let us have a sign Why more than just a sign Make Shakespeare direct our hand Let loose Hamlet anew on the Strand And if that’s too difficult Ask of Aristotle The text of his lost poetics Cast in a hard disc Better still command the Son of God To make a grand appearance Fanfares heralding the event In a technicolour firmament Or make known to us The lost masterpieces The great forging inventions Bombed to ashes in wars Or for the departed father To come set his house in order Brother against brother For want of a better master O Where have they all gone Leaving us in their muddles Such a kyrielle of contortions We leave for those behind us Those of us who piled effort upon effort For a better day for ourselves Now going we rued the tightfistedness And the bitterly whining quarrels II We have no need to come back To see the mess we’ve left behind We who ourselves had to sort out Our fathers’ mighty ill-windfalls Nor to see what each does in quiet In your sleep in lavs behind walls What we ourselves did of course And thought no one ever the wiser To see how each of you clings to his shell To make it shine best of all Only to see how ours turned to loams Or into a fistful of ashes and bones All all for the pleasure of another body Bodies oozing with slime and foetid stench From all we stuffed them with in contempt Worse still what the voracious brain we fed Is it for this carpe diem reason And for all that they say is vanity For the futility of non-interference In whose favour might we intervene Since all sides pit against all sides Just to keep the inter-twining yin and yang In constantly conflicting tug-of-wars That makes for progress of sorts That we see no reason to pull either way For you do it well enough without aid Though some amongst us wish for revenge And perhaps tilt the balance now and then But you are none the wiser in your pain For you think only of your body’s gain And those in whose breeding chain You thought you couldn’t lose in vain But where’s the justice in this all Living we too strained to achieve Dying we saw the futility of it all Just a game dying from boredom Better we know now we see you in tether There’s no justice either way Somehow the particles come together And strive to make sense of one another With the result there is life There is a building in strife Mounting to an ultimate prize The creation of the perfect monster Once the form is gone the content Takes no form of its own The content is the form’s overall product Born of a lifetime’s construct Dying thus gives fresh birth To what is not of this earth We are free to roam and rollick Though we see no point to it Being without form we may merge Into one whole formless mass Or simply drop out inane As you the voyeurs in a train Here they waft those great Persian savants A sardonic smile all that’s left of them They who best knew how the heady wine Made one forget the burden of the grind Yet none read his verse for fear of contempt Those who do make little of the rhyme Others cried foul for he preached the impossible Are wine women and song bought for a dime Turn away from us for your time has come No need to ask us the reason for your end You too will know the total of your sum And face another dilemma round the bend June 16/18, 1996 © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016 from the collection : longhand notes (1999)
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