“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion
rather than boredom.”
Carlyle
Far from the seraglio in Isfahan,
I ran aground at the small town of Letheville,
Where flourish exiled pre-Raphaelite girls
In Delvaux streets
Pretending business, pretending rush,
Pretending chess-like concentration,
For his woolgathering prince they pray.
The solitary fairies carefully dance on the tightrope of texting
While trying to keep up with the rhythm
Of boredom beating its drum in 6/8.
These archangels seem sieged
By the sinful temptation of flaneuring
Or losing the stride of their dance
Under the monotony of public sight.
Filling up the vacancies of attention
Lessening the tediousness of time
They shine. Douched by a celestial rain
Of golden tears of sparkling sameness
Running away from the deadly tornado of being caught
Living in sin with vulnerability.
In Letheville, no wind, no echo, no God of thunder
In the far horizon flashes of storms in mute.
Far away, out in the next door country
A carnival of lightnings. A feast of contradictions
A banquet of fragility, a rave of We don´t know.
Their horses of surprise never land here. What for?
In Letheville no Horseshoe Crabs´s eggs
For the exausted Red Knots stopping over
Heading up home to the Arctic.
Only the remorseless parade of roadkill:
Furry trophies all along the
Agonizing - beaten path of innocence -
Interrupting stridently in eternal recurrence
The cheerful song of driving around.
Over the thick wall, a gray storm of ashes
Downfalls in that Pompey where the sin never came.
The sky unfairly spits red flames of hair
And freckles in flakes over the carrot fragrance of her purplish skin.
The sulfurous rain kisses the gray-green eyes impenitent
Then the eyelashes, then the eyebrows; then the lips like pomegranates
Only kissed by cousins in endogamic games.
Instead of methodically knocking people's hats off
I finally trade in my quest of the Belle Enlightenment
For the aspergian beauty of the Methodist breed.
I reluctantly accepted to be queened over
By the childish authority of a Bozart princess.
My urban baggage sleeps in a velvet coffin
Missing no more the courtesy of the cosmopolitan flare.
Oddly my arrogant Euskara rose is intact:
Her wealthy thorns growing in perfect harmony
Amidst the yellow roses offspringing in this garden.
Under the ashes of Letheville, the time stopped
And I reborning, found the rosy door to the Remise
At the end of her sporty martial belly
Of fight and alabaster, my soul
Yesterday obsessed for sweat and constant training,
And constant forestall of idleness
Lies insouciant.
Her war stopped, her battle stopped,
Her engine stopped, the roadkill stopped,
The social code of boorishness stopped
The geeky cockiness stopped, the earth stopped
The fear stopped, control stopped, the cellphone stopped
The rage stopped. Blew out, wiped out, tore down.
Drowned in a creek, a liquid soup of pearl,
The rude Scythian beauty entangled in her hair
Fell fainted at last, surrendering
To a blast of Roman gravitas and moaned.
She lies not dead here for not being texted.
For not being indulged, for not being obeyed
She just sleeps in bliss. Peacefully. Wisely.
Out of this place.
