The Ruba'Iyat of Creteil Lake - Part Ten

The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Ten Of late dying yellowing orange rays glint through the turret Where neither muezzin nor mullah bids the sun to set Lyceen lassies in threes swear by a ghostly figure A gaunt gray-bearded lean man with hollows for the eye-socket Amble past their school his eyes fixed past the lake’s horizon Not one amidst the believers chanting on Fridays the orison Decked in white djellabas, black gilets and leather sandals Vollschlang women in wobbling overalls shuffling by their men Some say there he stood the Bard lone long at the swimming pool Others, nay, he passed oblivious the Boating Club’s rowing school His glazed eyes as in a mystic Sufi opium swirl The mad red poison coursing his veins for a long-pined girl He wafted through trodden paths of dark red cranberry bushes Passing as though through the unsuspecting strollers in bunches Sometimes he’d tarry to gaze at the waters along her supine spine And just as duty-bound waft towards where dipped her eye-lashes Alas! Not for Khayyam the chant of the murmuring masses Nor the bouncy cadences of West Indian steel band noises Nor the drunk-driven drumming of the marathon stompings Only the eerie wailing the Maiden of the Main voices! © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013