Work Text:
“All around me doors into other worlds
began appearing” (Arne-Sayles, The Half-Seen Door,
Allen & Unwin, 1979, pp. 103–4).
The Prophet, leaving clues like fatty pearls
Fit to be followed by all his boys and girls
Picking their way along a distant shore
Between the bee-eyed woman and the minotaur
Where time bows inward and your memory curls.
He found them in between the roses
Coquette des Blanches, Antoine Rivoire:
A door for every lost thing, a map for every star
A world that opens and a world that closes.
Above your head the halls extend like bone;
It’s a hard job, coming home.
It’s a hard job, coming home,
The castle in front of you pared out of paper,
The tall tale you carry lit up like a taper,
The legend you’re lodged in on loan.
They smile, they say look how you’ve grown,
And your family twists closer —
The castle burns, later —
Mother puts her hand on the throne.
You wear your fault as a sash
You display your mistake
You’re a man now, you understand what was at stake
A story gone sour in anger and ash —
But the court bow their heads just the same,
For they all say, it’s only a game.
For they all say, it’s only a game,
A bell-book-and-candle
A glamourous gamble
For Knowing (the lust of), for Fame,
For History (stamping your name),
For seeing each angle
For fabulous scandal
For disciples to carry the flame.
Of course, for Colonial (overtones, explicit)
See e.g. Arne-Sayles, '69,
He refers to the World as, yes, “mine”.
(See also the entry for Arrogant Prick).
And for all this, they woke the dead
They called a voice of fire from a old cold head.
They called a voice of fire from a old cold head,
They moved the pieces around the board:
A girl your crown could not afford,
A knight, a queen, a lady, a bed,
A saint, a monster, a slash of red,
A king and a prince and a throne and a sword,
A kiss half-paid, a heart half-cored,
Wet boots, warm hearth, and the nameless dead
Laying undone on an unfair field
With some banner planted, some standard raised,
While you went, expecting to be praised,
To the end of the story, to kneel and yield.
To the hole in the world where the green gets in —
There’s a place out there where the world is thin.
There’s a place out there where the World is thin,
Where what’s lost has left a lovely hollow,
There’s a sign laid out for you to follow:
ARE YOU MATTHEW ROSE SORENSEN?
Breadcrumbs to lead some of you back again,
To fatten you up on some old year’s sorrow,
A long-ago version of tomorrow.
There’s a hole in the World where the past gets in,
Where it comes lapping up to your feet like the tide,
Bringing cars and grey pavements, a mother, a friend,
A father, a sister, a red light, an end,
A flicker of yesterdays passes on by,
And leaves you still inside the fine marble walls:
You’re content, you are home, as you walk the kind halls.
You’re content, you are home, as you walk the kind halls,
Take her hand and his hand and pay back a kiss,
For there’s no fire and no water, there’s no blood, just this —
Then you wake, for the story, the story still calls.
What’s a knight who does not ride out bravely beyond his safe walls?
Say you made every right choice, you kept every promise
You would still be swept on past both blunder and bliss
For the turns of the kingdom, its rises and falls,
They are carried on by you, they pile at your feet
The old years, the glories, one onto another,
The tales you brought back for the ear of your mother,
The victories, failures, each win, each defeat,
Until every new story’s the click of a lock.
You look for a door at the sign of the fox.
You look for a door at the sign of the fox,
As he crosses the road between Iceland and Tesco
Just a low streak of mange, a quick red come-and-go,
Pausing right at the corner to nose at a box,
Before vanishing back where the darkness unlocks.
You tell him, I saw you in marble, you know,
In the Fourth Western Hall, where the tides come up slow,
Telling clever stone listeners of knights, Camelot,
An adventure of Arthur or some equal wonder;
For they’re looking at you, fox, with focused attention
As you gesture carefully, building the tension,
Before the next turn of the tale pulls them under.
You look for a door and the night opens wide
You look for a door and you step in, outside.
You look for a door and you step in, outside
Of the story, the red-green, the castle,
The grin and the glitter, the whisper and rustle
The love of your mother, the truths and the lies,
The God in his chapel, the magic that hides
In the stitching of silk, the unseaming of muscle,
The hearth and the hunt and the bedchamber tussle,
The catch-as-catch-can as the game slips and slides.
You step sideways and outside, still wearing your fault,
Your fear and your future in one line of green,
You walk through calm halls all alone and unseen,
With no lie on your lips, just the small taste of salt.
You walk through the halls westward, leaving no tracks:
Your past slipped away like the fall of an axe.
Your past slipped away like the fall of an axe,
She found you but not him. But you both found the knight,
Walking steadily westwards, his footsteps quick, light
As a shine on low water, the twist of a fact.
He was polite to a fault, and much burdened with tact,
Still remembered his name, an old kingdom, a blight,
A test he was taking, a game or a fight,
And a husband and wife, a quick “kiss” as a tax.
You told him, to open a door, be a fox,
Know what it’s like both to hunt and be hunted;
Thus Arne-Sayles, who (with typical ego), “knew the one I wanted”,
(The Half-Seen Door, p. 104). Hold yourself open, the outside unlocks.
He listened and smiled. He said, I see them strung like pearls —
All around me doors into other worlds.