The Ruba'Iyat of Creteil Lake - Part Five

The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Five All day she toiled to keep her knees and busts in position The Mairie’s serrated metal-hearted spool of derision And the glinting fly-eye cutaways of the Prefecture She who must mind her own onions during dutiful mission: Let school-children slap her lolling belly with oars’ un-silence Let schools of swan swipe and furrow her concupiscence Let darting coots and grebes play hide and seek in eddying depths And let cyclists and dogged runners trample her dire patience And when the day’s work at last done prepares the earned shower Lo! a canopy as dark and dense as the Afro bowler Pulls the shroud down on her: dismal soot round the white of eye Resplendent sings the gilded orange band: sunsets in clover Restless parent coots cleave the face on the dream-lidded Lady’s Surge with rage to ward off stray swans from their young amidst reeds During some purdah couples’ chance of enlacement in the dark And the long breathless night returns to her adenoids She dreams the dreams of precious princesses warding off demons Her dreams fester in her clasp and spiral up to heavens In musk infused melodious gestures buoyed on lotuses Release streams of ruby wines from lutes strum by virgin maidens! © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013