Friday, January 15, 2010

Greenock Inverclyde 7

After the Fall of Titian’s Angel nothing was the same. Ceuta Bratislava and Izmir Kodaly embarked on the noontime train, never to be seen or heard from again. Dejesus and the man in the hat and the harridan and her sister met to discuss the ramifications of Titian’s fallen angel; the midday sky as black as a licorice baby. The Greenock Inverclyde 7 arrived by railcar 27½ seconds after the train carrying Ceuta Bratislava and Izmir Kodaly left the station. Coming and going people arrived and left by oxcart and railcar, ferryboat and ship, the man in the hat watching portside, his finest boater doffed a thousand times over. They discussed Titian’s fallen angel, remembering a time when she stood proud and tall, her wings outstretching gathering the fallen and plummeted. Blissfully the world unfolded, Santa Aquitaine and Seignosse Pérez waiting impatiently for the noontide train. They awaited the arrival of Old Baubo, farrow sow in tow. Fawning Ceuta Bratislava whispers to Santa Pérez ‘they say he has eyes like golden calves’. Nodding Santa Pérez says ‘the devils smelts iron in Vulcan’s forge, lances made to pierce the soul’. ‘could we have the night canopy please?’ said the harridan’s sister, ‘and would you be so kind as to turn off the stars?’ Naught ventured naught gained. He thought in leaps and bounds, his head swiveling in circles. Delighted he watched the oxcarts file by, the road buckling under the weight of man and beast. Grumbling the muleteer flogged his botte, the mule wailing like a March lamb. ‘nothing will be the same after the Fall of Titian’s Angel’ whimpered Bratislava to Kodaly. ‘nothing’.

He began in the middle and worked his way forward, then he leapt over the middle and worked his way to the end, never once taking his eyes off the man sitting on the bench in front of the Waymart. As there was only one bench in front of the Waymart, a gift from Mrs. Llewellyn commemorating the demise of her late husband, it was easy to keep the man in eyeshot, the green bench sticking out amid the golden daffodils and carroty chrysanthemums. However, were the sky any bluer he could easily mistake the man’s jacket for the sky and the sky for a jacket. He was poor at distinguishing between colours and hues, his eyes playing tricks on him when he gazed upon things from the right or indirectly from the left. “Circumcise from all rashness and all lying both my inward and outward lips…” (Saint Augustine, the Confessions). Her late husband read the Confessions like a blue-plate menu, Augustine’s words sticking in his thoughts like molasses. ‘we can never leave… but even of we could where would we go… nowhere?’ whimpered Kodaly. Bratislava yawned, the worm at the back of his throat squiggling.

Tiscali came from Wetenschap en Kunst and Hogeschool Voor from Sint-Katelijne-Waver where he worked as a dockhand before joining the Herstal Liege pantomime troop. Neither had read the Confessions, preferring comic-books and hardbacks. Surely were the sky any bluer it could be mistook for a jacket or a bluebottle. The man in the hat met Mrs. Llewellyn at the Feast of the Annunciation, Mrs. Llewellyn taking note of his hat. That day he was wearing a felt bowler with an oilskin hatband, a gift from the rector’s sister, a frail creature with red brown hair and blue green eyes. Approaching, her carriage as stiff as a boxed corpse, she asked ‘where might one find a draft of water… I am surely parched’. Taken aback by her affront the man in the hat took a step backwards, his brow trenched with fear.

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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