The Jonniad (Book II)

Beneath the good how far has this, my poem,
Sunk. Poem? But you didn’t even know ’im!
He was my north and south, my east and west,
My final tension, and my final test.
Reader, the first book brought you to a stage
Of desperation i’ th’ poetic page.
No more, my friend! No more will harmless form
Create within my mind such mental storm,
Such mental turmoil. This time, I’ll be sure
To get it right. This time I’ll be secure
In what I’m saying, say it, then repeat
What I just said. No space, now, for defeat.
I’ve thought through all the options, and I’ve found
Unrhymed iambic to resound most sound
Within this, my – I say – poetic mould.
Unrhymed iambic’s bought me. Sir, I’m sold.
And what blends better manners rich with terse?
Nothing, my reader, better than blank verse.
Oh, Jonny, Jonny! How I’ve let you down!
I’ve dragged your name dirt-dingied throughout town,
Flogging you off as some Spenserian knight
When, truth to tell, your visage shines more bright
Than any of that so-called poetry
That Irish pervert left posterity.
But love! dear love, of one man for his leman
Beats any goblins! Love makes me a freeman,
And freedom, though ’t takes work, can make your love
Much richer, given grace from God above!
Give me another chance! Behold Book II
Of this my Jonniad, from me to you.

~~~

The Jonniad. Where were we? I forget …
My mind’s been shaken since the first attempt.
Ah yes. The White Knight, now become a man
And so far greater than a simple knight,
And so far greater than the beasts, created
Simply t’adorn th’Almighty’s mighty Garden,
Nightly in flight, yet daily in defer
To God’s last great Creation, greater far;
His dignity by rules of chivalry
Untarnished, his humanity intact
(By which I mean, to be precise, untouched
By prowling fingers) lingers on the plain
Awhile, and so from side to side he looks.
And so, from side to side his eyes inclined
A patch of dryness, or some paradise
Of sanctuary seek amongst the blear.
Man! as the greatest, noblest beast of all,
Last fruit of God’s Creation, first in rank
Although created last, and raised above
The thirsts and lusts of beasts below his stand,
Is, sure, ennobled greater, through reflect,
By love for such another as himself –
By which I mean our Jonny. Like you this,
My reader? Does this style poetical
Appeal to your delect, or art thou fall’n
Too far below the catching rungs of taste?
Oasis of my poetry, incline
Or up or down, descending in ascent,
If by such means your paradox may save
My reader from confusion, me from shame.
I fear – I fear! Oh, God! I fear these words …
My lines are far too complex for my sight!
Unleashed, the beast may break its burden loose,
And so undo the cowboy. Let’s recant.
Let’s rein this horse of poetry back in
To what extent we can. (I pray we can!)
This Man, this Lover, Tom (as he’s now known)
Is not a poet, though he longs to speak
The love that lingers, fingering his heart
And plucking, like a harp, its ill-tuned strings.
He shouts, and yet the rain blots out his words;
He screams, and yet the waves of sky are louder.
Here, where the River Isis softly bubbles,
Singing its plaint through this corrupted land
With purer tones, untainted by the plague
Which spreads its death beyond the farthest sight
And seems to herald some apocalypse –
Here is the place, surely, to meet a man
Whose lip is curled with lying, and whose teeth
Blackened with loss, yellowed with foul distress,
Announce inferior dentistry. Here were
That place, my reader, if this book you hold
Or screen you stare at bore a lesser poem.
The Prelude, say, or some foul Dunciad,
Delving into the mud of its own sewage,
Digging to dredge a poetry unsound;
Or yet, my reader, were this page the stage
For politic’s upheaval, written base
In lines of unformed rhyme (were the Revolt
Of Islam still e’er read, my reader (snort!))
– Were these lines carved from any one of these,
And not what ’tis, the Mighty Jonniad,
Then such and such a meeting might be meet!
Our hero’d hardly notice him, until
His stinking filth was half upon his body,
Half seizing him to throw him to the ground.
There would, perhaps, then fall some conversation,
A bitter combat cast in lists of language,
Bitter the language casting such a scene.
You see, a lesser poet uses tropes
Which are, to me, unnecessary. Why
Spoil poetry with characters? Or why,
When words have power to move the mind so far,
Reduce their scope to weak humanity,
Which closes in the mind, and which constrains it
Only to its own paths through dull, hard fear?
Humanity is subject, sure, for poems;
But only when its greatness, lifted up
To higher wordly power, loses that
Which makes it human, and, scarce fallible,
Takes on a quality of that poetic,
A node within a network vast of words.
Words! Words! Words! Words! The only sex I need!
Bring me more words! Give me excess of them!
But now, return to Tom, and to his path
Alone. He is alone. I am alone.
God’s shadow now lights up my choice of paths
And spreads, in creeping stealth, over the plain.
Such light, too visible to mortal sight
To let our eyes discern what lies within
(Man! Beast! God! Sin! Life! Death! Collision! Man!)
Is bright enough to blind Tom in his walks
To anything beyond the range of love,
Of Jonny. Punxsutawney Phil’s less blind
Under the shadowy, unrisen sun
Of windswept Philadelphia. But here,
Where light would seem so clear to light the way,
Darkness invisible perverts the sight.
He gropes, as I too grope towards his grasp,
Longing to shape from words his body. This –
Is this what makes us man? Is language ours
Uniquely? Tom knows not, nor knows his nose
Is deadened, sniffing down a deadend track.
Love only leads us hobbling back to loss.
The heart conceives its language to deceive.
Over the wasted wasteland, down the ruts
And pitted tracks of beasts with cloven feet
Tom struggles, dreaming mountains out of sods,
Considering the lily as an ent.
The puddles stream in floods around his feet.
The daughters of men met the sons of God
On these dark plains of light, and lit the way
For Sodom and Gomorrah to be built
Only to be destroyed, deep in this valley.
Tom sees the ruins, sees the work of giants
Through beams of sunlight bent in work to hide
The hands that raised these regions. Evil thoughts
For evil days, dear Tom; evil the tongues
That licked thee into life! He struggles on.
The sun declines. The day was nothing, nothing.
O for a guide of fire, to light the way
When all around is dark! A stream of piss
Shoots golden in the night, but not for me
The bat excretes, nor to my eyes again
Comes fire, nor to my nose the stinging scent.
Only an angel, sent from poetry,
Secular, bookish, could direct my pen –
And, with it, Tom’s numb feet, now silent-still
And resting in some nook of Zion’s grave.
Paint with your darkest paint, O Muse, since this
Is thickest among nights, where light of truth
Extinguished is along with light of sun.
Dangers abound; temptation tests the air,
Retreats, collects herself, then sallies out
Into the long, long night. Snatches of crickets
Spangle the textile essence of the darkness;
But no sound so escapes through subtlest holes
Of substance to arrive in Tom’s dark dreams,
Crawling through passageways of thought. What’s that?
Reader! I thought I heard something! What’s that?
What’s that metallic, shifting, sharpening sound
Rending the tent of night? Is it a knife?
What’s underneath the turban, Mr Singh?
We’re right to fear the foe we cannot see –
Beneath the burkha lurks a murd’ring steel.
Some of my closest friends are atheists,
Or Saracens. It’s nothing bad, I swear.
We’re right to fear the foe we cannot gauge
Or litigate against. We’re right to fear
The death of western morals, and the fall
Of everything our nation state holds dear.
Somewhere, a margined figure holds aloft
A spectral flag. Some metamorphoses
Cannot be trusted, cannot be allowed.
Tom is the vulnerable victim here,
If you’ll bear with me. Watch! Within a flash,
A shimmered darkness, Tom is snatched away,
A sodden vap’rous rag across his mouth,
Victim of all our timid years. What’s this?
What’s this? Is this Tom’s fault, or is it ours,
Who let him lie in some neglected spot
Unsung, far from the patriotic crowd
Who might have saved Old England from this rape?
When smugglers trod the sands of future Bournemouth,
Hiding their goods in cloaks; before the birth
Of barbarism new, the modern city
And all its hidden, dark inhabitants –
Who then was gentleman? Or was betrayal
Always around, back through the Mark of Cain?
Tom’s bundled back into a womb of sorts,
Age into youth, youth into something bleak,
Unformed, and hardly human. Now’s the time,
Dear, dearest reader, to abandon this
Old mould of mine (this (how!) poetic mould!)
Of blank verse, as its bleakness reaches peak.
Now, reader! Jump! Make for the other shore,
Where metamorphosis remakes us new!
We leave Tom hostage to some unknown power,
Though not relinquished quite. We will return.
I will return, and you shall be my guide.