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  1. The Feast of Saint Valentine
  2. (second draft)
  3. Michael Cuesta
  4.  
  5.  
  6. A carrot is as close as a rabbit gets to a diamond
  7. ~ Don Van Vilet
  8.  
  9.  
  10. I
  11. (Setting the table)
  12.  
  13.  
  14. Let us set the table together then,
  15. For this fourteenth of February
  16. Some crackers and some lettuce,
  17. And a rusty tin can too
  18. For each attendant of our feast.
  19. Here they come now, like a reluctant rain
  20. Falling far too late over a dying land.
  21.  
  22. Emptiness fills the room, fills it to bursting
  23. As our guests find their seats.
  24. The unbearable plainness of the evening
  25. Seems somehow contrary to that old saint
  26. Who lies headless in the name of love.
  27.  
  28. Past the window wanders wistful winter
  29. Without even the familiar company of snow
  30. Setting the mood for the feast ahead
  31. All the while, a sullen minstrel makes his entrance,
  32. Dressed with bells and plumes of paradise;
  33. His stride is both a flock of birds and their cry.
  34. The lightness in his steps, the lightness in his arms
  35. Distinguish him from such shades as he is purposed
  36. To entertain for an evening.
  37.  
  38. A man amongs’t them speaks:
  39. Tell us troubadour, what say you of such subject, of
  40. These wretched relegated in death to tin sepulcher
  41. Poets say ‘the bottom of the sea is cruel’
  42. And yet, I can scarcely conceive anything
  43. More savage, more senselessly wicked than
  44. This lonely rock by which I built my home.
  45. From sea-brine to salad-bed our lunch had traveled.
  46. This must signify some truth of the world.
  47.  
  48. All around his sentiment of sadness was echoed
  49. By faces yet to weary to wear their frowns,
  50. Whose eyes separated them from the
  51. World like a plexiglass screen.
  52. Sing to us, troubadour, of the founding
  53. Of fisheries, of universities,
  54. Of ships and seas and raw sardines
  55. And king Oscar’s salt stained spleen
  56.  
  57. Thus spoke the troubadour to the pilgrims:
  58. At the edge of a dock, young Oscar,
  59. Outcast undergraduate, peers into the
  60. Mirror of black waves and recalls his life,
  61. Absurdity, banality, heartbreak and all
  62.  
  63.  
  64. II
  65. (An Angel)
  66.  
  67. The sun is rising, but remains
  68. Unfelt In the university’s roots.
  69. Deep down is a room where Oscar
  70. Lives in search of an element
  71. Of an equation of a theorem
  72. In a system that is not his own.
  73. His will itself is not his own;
  74. In this sense, a slave to his studies,
  75. Bespectacled by sleepless semesters
  76. Of reading postulates and equations
  77. And philosophical theorems.
  78.  
  79. In his cell stationed in the windowless
  80. Solitude, Oscar turns to find his
  81. comfort from books of poetic excess
  82. Of romantic flourishes and sublimity
  83. Glimpses into worlds of white roses
  84. Of romance both forbidden and forlorn.
  85. It was in this way that the book became
  86. The sole comfort of his soul, and it was
  87. By its words that the Angel visited him
  88.  
  89. Born from the center of a rose,
  90. Her eyes shined like syrup
  91. Her hair was alive with ivy.
  92. Her savage brightness blurred
  93. and dimmed the world surrounding them.
  94. when she spoke to the world,
  95. The sound of cicadas answered,
  96. And when she was silent, the wind
  97. Held its breath with anticipation.
  98.  
  99. Under a florescent skyline she taught him lore
  100. Of the stars overhead, of their whispering
  101. Flickers, and their supernovaed funerals
  102. She recited to him truths of the world
  103. So obtuse that Kant in all his indecipherable
  104. Wisdom could not obfuscate further, though
  105. Men in square hats often told him that
  106. Though they could not make north or south
  107. Of such things, there was a genius in her words
  108. That dazzled the dominion of the mind.
  109.  
  110. He asked which kingdom was her home.
  111. The holy messenger answered ‘Angeland.’
  112. A world, she told Oscar, where the
  113. Living and the dead cohabitate,
  114. Where poverty and plenty, war and peace
  115. Have themselves become indiscernible
  116. Where concubine and cobbler are rendered
  117. As noble as a pyx anticipating Sunday service.
  118. When she spoke of such phantasmagoria Oscar’s
  119. psyche forgot its pains and he was at peace
  120.  
  121. It was in this way, that is to say, by her light
  122. (The room was so dark without her he mused)
  123. That she squashed the poverty from his spirit.
  124. But on occasion, she would trouble Oscar with
  125. Talks of departure and of death, for she said
  126. That all angles must one day return to that land
  127. Which begat them, and with this the room would
  128. Go cold and dark once more, and Oscar was afraid.
  129. Despite these stray, grey clouds he felt at peace,
  130. And a greater companion he had yet to know.
  131.  
  132. And One day she was gone.
  133. And the two never spoke again.
  134.  
  135. That night he asked her memory
  136. Why and where. She smiled sadly
  137. and beckoned him to follow her
  138. to Angeland, to cross the seas
  139. to a place at the edge vision
  140. where the blue of the sky
  141. and the blue of the water
  142. Meld into one meridian.
  143. There She had told him
  144. She awaited his return
  145. And would continue to
  146. Wait, till death take them.
  147.  
  148. Again undistracted from his studies, Oscar
  149. Regarded his life’s work splayed on the desk.
  150. Such a messy thing his dissertation had been,
  151. So unlike the words of poets or of angles.
  152. He decided that this would be the day that he
  153. Would abandon sordid intellectualism, and
  154. Reanimate himself as a romantic warrior,
  155. Set on a sally across the world to that
  156. That place yet unknowns to mortal man.
  157.  
  158. Untethered from university life, with
  159. His dissertation filed away in some
  160. Draw, unfinished and forgotten,
  161. Oscar assembled what wealth he had
  162. (a modest student loan it turned out)
  163. And departed seaward on his journey.
  164.  
  165. The sun, that untamed and savage thing
  166. Seared his skin. He could only stand to bear it
  167. As reflected on the surface of a lake or a window
  168. Or as a tidy diagram on some JSTOR submission.
  169. What wonders, he thought, these years of seclusion
  170. Had done to him, as he squinted at the unknown world.
  171. And as he passed the unfamiliar faces, it struck him that
  172. He saw this street thousands of times as a child
  173. But hadn’t gone down it until just today.
  174.  
  175. There was still so much yet unknow to him
  176. He marveled, buying a bus ticket to the sea
  177. And wondered what roads yet awaited him.
  178.  
  179.  
  180.  
  181. III
  182. (Across the Ocean)
  183.  
  184.  
  185. At the edge of the waters
  186. Oscar gazed upon the vessel
  187. That would bear him off
  188. To a land sublime; The Adonais;
  189. Helmed by the sea-captain Sordello
  190. And Crispin, his first mate,
  191. Set to circumnavigate the world.
  192. For the nominal charge
  193. Of every dollar to his name
  194. They would suffer him as stowaway
  195. And carry him to the firmament
  196. That separates the earth from the heavens.
  197.  
  198. Always the inquisitor, Oscar asked Sordello
  199. what they sought at the edge of the sky
  200. So far from the comforts of solid things,
  201. So far from the world where the wind
  202. Was mere vexation of leaves as opposed
  203. To artificer of prosperity or death.
  204. And Sordello answered in sentence
  205. So impenetrable and obtuse, that it’s
  206. Hardly worth repeating, let alone remembering.
  207.  
  208. Forgive my father said Crispian,
  209. His words are choked by nonsense.
  210. The men aboard say he was driven mad
  211. By the music of merpeople and them
  212. symphonies of sunken bassoons,
  213. whose notes are bent to sound just
  214. sour enough to natives the
  215. More solid parts of the world,
  216. And by the hand of fire that stands
  217. As protector to the waters of Pandemonium.
  218. He was once called the most brilliant
  219. Philosopher in all the world, perhaps
  220. only because he is the least understandable.
  221. Regardless, a finer navigator never
  222. Skimmed the watery face of Gods grey Earth.
  223.  
  224. As windward seafarer, Oscar stood solitary
  225. From all other men, he alone was stranger
  226. To this Protean kingdom and its court.
  227. It was here that Oscar abandoned
  228. The opulence and the comforts
  229. Of soil, and set his sights
  230. To sea, to that landless latitude
  231. Where his candle burnet patiently for him.
  232. Only now would he discover a world
  233. Lacking in the terseness of theorems.
  234. The men at the galleys, he noted
  235. Spoke seldom, if at all of maters
  236. Philosophical or poetical, seemingly
  237. Preconcerned with matters of must-do
  238. And daily wages, and occasionally, of ale.
  239.  
  240. More so, Oscar leaned to be suspicious
  241. Of the elements, least they conspire against him.
  242. One moment a stray gale would drop him to
  243. The deck, and another, a gull stole
  244. The ham away from his sandwich.
  245. On one particularly irksome occasion
  246. His spectacles were taken by sea spray
  247. And fell starboard side into the sea.
  248. Fearing blindness, feeling lucidity,
  249. Oscar discovered that one hardly needs
  250. To see well to appraise the elements of nature,
  251. To appreciate the vastness of the waters
  252.  
  253. On its journey The Adonais bore witness to
  254. Curiosities much unlike those he knew from
  255. Either in the yellowed paged textbooks
  256. Or from the bleeding tongues of poets.
  257. Things like mountains of carbon and sulfur
  258. Oozing black smoke like furnaces
  259. Or peopleless cities of glass which
  260. Prismed the sun endlessly in rainbows
  261. Or opium dens inhabited by black eyes and bodies limp,
  262. But Oscar only saw these things as specter regards its life.
  263. A man of the galley suffers the whims of the winds
  264. And the vaulting of the tides he considered,
  265. Coming to resent his life as pilgrim of the seas.
  266. The words of his book were no longer romantic fixture
  267. As they were leering in arms against his spirit.
  268.  
  269. As if product of the resentment of his lot
  270. The hand of fire descended out of the sky.
  271. The blackness of smoke, and whiteness of fire
  272. Dazzled his vision like no artifice had before.
  273. He held his book out so that it may shield him
  274. From this creature more frightening than
  275. The romances of his imagination would ever allow
  276. And more terrible then the abstract sufferings
  277. He had spent so much time disserting in school,
  278. Yet in an instant, his corpus of verse vanished
  279. Into ash, and the ashes were tossed uselessly
  280. Uselessly onto the eddies of the wind. surely
  281. Oscar thought, past this burning aberration
  282. Lay the land Of Angels. Oscar would not allow this
  283. Final obstacle to be the un-doer of his quest.
  284.  
  285. He, Sordello, Crispian and crew quixotically
  286. Took arms against the inferno, but before
  287. He could discern butt form barb
  288. Of his harpoon, a flame fed updraft
  289. Overtook Crispian and threw him to the waves.
  290. The pitiless water, wrought black as iron
  291. Flung him from peak to trough to peak again.
  292. He was half drowned and fully trapezed
  293. A dozen and a half times before being given
  294. To a rocky Isle. In the distance, the vessel that
  295. From which he fell was shredded by the flames
  296. Of the demon, and its crew were taken
  297. By the maelstrom. Oscar alone, clinging to a
  298. Stony shore escaped to tell of such horror.
  299.  
  300.  
  301. IV
  302. (The Undine)
  303.  
  304.  
  305. Sputtering to shore against
  306. Limp seaweed shackles Oscar
  307. Saw A daughter of Poseidon
  308. singing in the shallows to the
  309. music of a half drowned synclaver.
  310. Her dress was woven of sea wrack
  311. And cracked shells speckled
  312. The disarming plainness of her hair.
  313.  
  314. Brushing the kelp from his eyes,
  315. He asked her if she knew the way
  316. To a kingdom called ’Angeland”
  317. When her brow furrowed at the name
  318. And she spoke in unfamiliar tones
  319. Oscar fell to his knees, fell to the sand
  320. And wept for seven years.
  321.  
  322. As he cried, the naïve romanticism
  323. Which polluted his blood as youth
  324. Bled its way out of his eyes.
  325. Whatever feathers still winged
  326. The angel in his imagination
  327. Had been plucked away
  328. Until at last she remained stark
  329. And unadorned as the sea nymph
  330. At his side, in all her plainness.
  331.  
  332. The Angel who he had knew,
  333. Thought he had known, would
  334. Have led him to a fiery death
  335. At Sea If destiny had not objected.
  336. He sat in tears, thinking of the
  337. Things he brought with him
  338. That were lost: his glasses,
  339. His book of verse, his student loan.
  340. Yet most significantly, Oscar’s spirit
  341. Once held fast to its delusions
  342. Had been scrubbed clean of its old
  343. Idealism by fire and grinding waves,
  344. And he stood in the fulcrum in the sea
  345. He no longer could answer who he was.
  346. Even if an easy way back to shore
  347. Was revealed to him Oscar wasn’t
  348. Sure if he had spirit enough left
  349. With him to return to the peopled world,
  350. Strength to tell them of his folly.
  351. He looked to that sympathetic Nymph
  352. Beside him and asked if there remained
  353. Anything in the world worth coveting
  354.  
  355. She smiled softly and said
  356. ‘That every sinner needs a saint,
  357. Every Helena, Its trembling Emperor.
  358. For Without Rome there couldn’t be Carthage
  359. And without salt, we’d suffer no sugar.
  360. There in the sweetness of life lies,
  361. And that is the truth of the matter’
  362.  
  363. he mused upon her word, and for the first time
  364. Saw how the salt and sand that caked her skin
  365. Were the same that caked the world around her,
  366. The same that now clung to Oscar’s own skin
  367. After seven painful years laying in the shallows.
  368.  
  369. For some time the two of them spoke,
  370. Spoke of the sorrow under the ocean
  371. Of the lamentations of leviathans
  372. Of the cataclysm that swallowed Atlantis
  373. (which as it turned out, was once her home)
  374. Of poor Phleabas and his death by water
  375. And at last, spoke of schools of Sardines
  376. struggling against the churning of the sea.
  377.  
  378. She told him they of all creatures
  379. Of the sea have the hardest lot:
  380. Before they are born
  381. The currents bluster on
  382. And after they die
  383. The currents bluster on
  384. Loosing their bones to
  385. An abyss beyond reckoning.
  386. If they can bear to live
  387. Against the blustering deep
  388. Having done no wrong to incur
  389. The demiurge’s wrath
  390. Then surely, we can too
  391. She said, preparing a cup
  392. Of coffee for the day’s work ahead
  393.  
  394.  
  395. V
  396. (King Oscar)
  397.  
  398.  
  399. Oscar’s taken to sail and hempen net
  400. for no clod remained in the world
  401. nor in the imagined world that
  402. could kindle his dimmed spirit,
  403. He gave himself back to the waves
  404. Not in defiance of fate or spite of sea-god
  405. or as stowaway traversing a strange world
  406. But rather as Ulysses made fish monger,
  407. As undertaker of the ocean,
  408. As a man who reached over the
  409. Deep, and mastered it. In this sense,
  410. Seafaring Oscar was Made king
  411. neither by grail not gallantry
  412. but by the denizen of the deep
  413. And steady supply and steadier demand.
  414.  
  415. What whispers of desire remained
  416. In me of Angeland had all sizzled out
  417. like spit in a fire, had echoed away
  418. as the cry of an albatross far from its roost.
  419. The promethean spirit was eaten away
  420. By the salvage beaks of the gulls.
  421. He was born anew as placid pragmatist
  422. No longer seeking that which wasn’t there,
  423. The nonsense words spouted from that
  424. Absurd angel no longer vexed his spirit
  425. Or moved his body with asinine desire.
  426. The stars no longer spoke to him of portents,
  427. But only of matters of north and south.
  428.  
  429. Indeed, It wasn’t until Oscar rejected the stars,
  430. And opened his eyes to the ugliness
  431. In the waves and the plainness of the isle
  432. that he was able to ascend from
  433. Absurd figure to comic actor.
  434. It’s the purveyor of prose, he thought,
  435. Who can vanquish tragedy on the pike.
  436.  
  437. Now, a pale complacency washed
  438. Over him in his makeshift shanty
  439. With only sea nymph as compony
  440. (Here name was Annie it turned out).
  441. The only thing he searched for now
  442. Was that most common of fish
  443. Lucrative for business and robust
  444. enough to get him through the day,
  445. predictable enough to provide steady work
  446. And Simple enough never to lose fashion.
  447.  
  448. At last, coronation: Oscar ascended to the
  449. Throne of a respectable fishery and exporter of
  450. Canned goods. Kingdomless and adorned
  451. By kelp-woven laurel crow, Oscar was
  452. content enough to watch the Moon
  453. Excuse the sun out of the sky, and at dawn for
  454. The roles to again be exchanged. These things
  455. No longer pained his eyes as they had long ago.
  456. How peculiar, he thought, to feel the open air
  457. Above you and the stillness of the world below
  458. And more peculiar still that these things would
  459. Have for so long a time have been unknown to him.
  460. He couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of such things.
  461. No need, after all, to be blinded by the sun
  462. While the waters around him glittered so softly,
  463. And what waste to be consumed by a muse
  464. When the world houses such multitudes.
  465.  
  466.  
  467. VI
  468. (What was gained)
  469.  
  470.  
  471. Having set his life in front of him in his memory
  472. Oscar mused upon it all. If he had known what
  473. He knew now as an undergraduate, would things
  474. Have changed, would he have been better off?
  475. Or were pilgrimage plight and repentance
  476. Each necessary to bring him to where he was
  477. As each act stands as antecedent to the resolution?
  478.  
  479. Whatever embers of the day that yet remained
  480. Were dimming. All around him, the shadow
  481. Was cast upon his kingdom, and its people
  482. Would soon be at peace in their homes.
  483. He should go home too least Annie begin to worry.
  484.  
  485. On his way across the beach, he wondered
  486. If the University noticed his work was incomplete
  487. Or if Sordello and Crispian had survived their
  488. Encounter with the hand of fire (and if they did
  489. Whether they would embark again, harpoons
  490. In hand and cannons ready to do battle with it).
  491. Last of all, he wondered if the Angel still
  492. Thought of him. Though that was only a wonder,
  493. A disinterested query directed toward the universe.
  494.  
  495. Inside, he filled in the day’s figures in his ledger.
  496. Outside, the waves continued in their undulations.
  497. The same pattern since the making of the world,
  498. That would continue long past the life of Oscar.
  499. He found comfort in the sound of the waves as he
  500. Lay in his hammock and peacefully drifted away.
  501.  
  502.  
  503. ***
  504.  
  505. The troubadour, having reached the end of his tale
  506. Surveyed the faces seated at the table around him.
  507. He looked for any change, some sort of revelation
  508. In their eyes. He listened for an indication of an affirmation
  509. But was met only by vacant silence. Slowly, he set
  510. His eyes to the tin before him, and fork in hand
  511. Signified that at last that the Feast of Saint Valentine
  512. Had begun in honor of the outcast and affectionless.
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