Yishaq's Bequest

No poetry for months and then two poems in a row. My ditties tend to be my less than most popular jottings from a statistical perspective. Nonetheless, they are a part of me: of who I was and, thus, who I am.

This one was written about a decade ago about the person I have most loved thus far in my life-span. Today I publish it to mark the young man's birthday.

*

Yishaq’s Bequest

The mansion rose from the waters,

afloat,

towering above the settlement;

the river, its moat;

on closer look

its wooden façade appeared

charred, ebonised

or covered in a layer of soot.

Even as he approached

the journalist was startled

for laughter was heard

tinkling, coruscating

cutting the pendulous air;

his jaded heart

let down the barriers,

shed its studied cynicism

momentarily;

a gleeful chortle

slipped out

reciprocally.

Inside: blinds wouldn’t go up;

windows’ shutters remained stuck shut;

plaster flaked in discomfiting chunks;

soft furnishings grew mouldy;

woodwormed furniture lay collapsed

where once it had proudly stood;

no pictures hung on the walls;

gilded treasures and objets d’art abandoned,

all hideous grotesquerie;

chrome and acrylic minimalist items,

installed here and there,

festered unused, unpolished

and coated in dust.

The servants tottered, torpid:

marionettes with strings half cut.

Her ladyship and the paterfamilias,

in Edwardian morning dress,

greeted the reporter:

the lugubrious formalities

and so-called pleasantries

cut short by laughter -

the joyous sound of a child.

Behind the ark spread the mooring,

a flowerless alpine garden.

Freikörperkultur was the fad:

the writer shed his inhibitions

and all in which he had been clad;

he reposed on his front,

bathed under the bright clouds

in the unfiltered UV-rich light,

his milky skin warmed;

laughter suffused his being;

his tightly controlled humour relaxed.

And finally the child emerged:

laughing merrily;

yawned once,

and shivered.

The man jumped up;

grabbed a rug;

swathed the boy.

The blanket, holey,

let in the cold.

Laughter died.

A steam-train rumbled in;

quaking shook the land,

the station’s promontory;

root vegetables spilled from a barrow

to the shaking ground.

Almost silently,

almost with dignity,

the mansion fell in on itself,

a house of playing cards,

and sank.

The dreamer, somnambulantly

made his way to his carriage,

clinging on to a solitary root;

a memento of love’s demise;

a promise of love’s future fruit -

an unconventional marriage.

But no more laughter.

*

To IJSH,

with my love…

*