A bird flew by; it didn’t stop,
preferring to go on to the
café around the corner,
no doubt to get
some evening scraps from a well-meaning jazz fan
in a roll-neck pullover, worn and pale,
with an unkempt beard, puffing on a Balkan Sobranie pipe,
grinning, yet
woozy, but pretending to enjoy it,
nodding in mock I-haven’t-a-clue manner, sipping Real Ale,
thinking of a fine dining bottle, but keeping up the pretence of a working man,
using
hand and tool,
but with Daddy’s investments in a quiet Jersey/Guernsey bank account,
far away from probing Labour Party members’ eyes,
perusing
the micro-columns of who has what, where and why,
curious to know the exact amount.
I had met them before, in many places;
watching them, trying to be
what they thought was the in-thing, one of the boys,
but in secret hating
their unsuccessful role,
and wishing Mummy’s cooking could be discussed in honesty
in polite society,
without the fear and worry of ridicule and scorn, loathing their ingratiating.
I looked at Psyche,
and in her eyes I knew she was on the same track,
despising the champagne-manicured Oxbridge-type crowd,
wrought
bitter at themselves and the life that had provided for them,
now a rack
of guilt; that they had in youth taken without societal thought,
and now, wretched in their self-imposed ignorance and solitude, bitter and mean,
pretending that soggy fish and chips and insipid watery greasy café tea
beats, hands down, a country three-star Michelin inn with French cuisine;
a bondage of hate in their vacuous, high salary insecurity.
Poison crust of secreting yellow cut,
scum of the earth,
you stink of rank discomposure,
fidgeting with your old school tie,
touching the corporate hospitality ticket for the Harlequins rebirth,
a wretch, cheering in unashamed ignorance of strip, when Wasps score a try,
waiting to notice your name go away.
Psyche held me close;
I responded, transmitting a thought of love; through
the thin summer dress I could feel the warmth of her body, knowing
that she felt for me in the same way.
Others had told me it was true.
We went on; the two of us, in lonely effervescent transhumance,
going
like a hot spring, an underground thermal warfare ready to burst
into
a cloud of vaporising steam,
imitating Julius Caesar in a quenching tear
the knife out, in March, in a bloody, power grab of thirst,
the extreme cretinism of those foolish enough to go near.
Ah, I thought; I love you, I love being with you.
You, the treatment of nagging torment, the rectifier of trouble,
the solution to the solvent of life’s misery.
A young precious thing rode by on a bicycle,
the long hair
and jeans confusing us;
I garnered my strength, and ran in hot pursuit,
grabbing, tearing the person from the bicycle without fear, attention, or care.
She screamed, and I apologised; it was Aphrodite Hesperia, rather cute
but earnest,
from ‘the Earth’, she told everyone; a student in a nearby college,
known
for its collection of Australian postgraduate students;
socio-linguistics, estate management,
town housing in Brittany in the fourteenth century,
the entrance no-coin accepting phone.
A case in point - roommate’s family, the husband, an adulterer, a self-made clown,
owner of a car-rental business, a genuine (rabbit pie, no bone) mock pub, skip for hire
that has, amongst other highlights of its existence, had rented out cars to
a) a former well-known pop singer, now in prison, downloading entire
you-know-the-kind-of-pictures, waiting to get the ten years or so through;
b) the co-pilot of the last commercial Concord to somewhere
the Independent readers had coughed up a thousand or two
for a day trip to Athens (?), chatting through champagne-salmon thin air.
The latter hirer had crashed into a lamppost,
but the owner had brushed through
the damage with a nonchalant
'it’s my pleasure, my boy. Hotel-Oscar-Mike-Echo-Romeo, copy, roger, copy that…'
The young girl accepted my apologies, and mounted; then,
with a coy
casual after-thought murmured, ‘we’re playing Kerchengratt,
Philby-Blunt, Xanekracon, Puellastramora, and Zygmonaski.
It’s really fun. Why don’t you come and join me?’
With that, she cycled off, the rear wheel showing a slight quake,
the result of the fire-hydrant, with the groan of the antique brake.
I half-laughed; if she wasn’t so young, (twenty-one, twenty-two, I would bet,)
I would have gone off, and left Psyche - she wouldn’t have objected, I think - for an hour or two.
The Xanekracon would be the Octet for harp, two sopranos, percussion, and string quartet.
It had ten movements, each with a different time and key signature; that much I knew.
I had last heard it in the departure lounge of a forgotten airport, sipping a beer,
watching third-world refugees trying to look sophisticated and rich,
on par
with the hoi-polloi of an inner city,
the fake politeness of an airport trying to appear;
but at the same time, thinking what riff-raff,
a dirty unwashed throng they are.
I had thought at the time it - the Octet - had blended well, in a way
it seemed to me;
the aircraft taking off, fleeing the opus, the quartet’s chromatic scales playing their part
of airport chaos. The words were from a poem - the title escapes me - by Harako Mikakumari.
Foolish girl, - Aphrodite, not Harako - I thought.
What do you know about life, people, and art?
I returned, both to reality, a hard thing, and, with hands in my pockets, to Psyche,
who
waiting by a non-working lamppost, reading a notice she had, I think,
torn
from the Bursar’s office a few metres away,
promoting an oriental blond-hair pop group new
to the west;
I held on, Psyche returning the emotion;
I watched being born
the affection that I had sought for many years,
but had not caught
I love you, I whispered into her ear, brushing away the hair, trying to explore
the woollen hat, and the earring that she had, in Joshua Taylor, just bought.
Je t’adore, je t’adore, je t’adore, je t’adore, je t’adore.
The Professor of Ancient Languages walked by, stopped for a moment,
and muttered, ‘Learn a real language, young man.’
(It was years later that I found out what she had meant.)
I clutched, taken aback a little, my empty soft-drink can.
The Professor looked long and hard at Psyche, and then spoke in a soft way.
You are a disgrace to feminism, and to Gender Geography.
Your beauty is nothing to that of the founding sisters; theirs was bespoke, to play
against the emotions of men, and their self-centred European biography.
Psyche just listened, in amusement; but then, in a split second, turned on her, and launched a
brutal tirade against the unexciting specimen of academia; then without warning, a heap
of obscenities begin to flow from her mouth, things I hadn’t heard before,
a hatchet of hatred for the woman,
now cowering, licking cheap
pink lipstick lips in nervous, taken-aback fashion;
I watch in awe,
as Psyche ends with a spit that would have graced a cobra;
the academic accumulation
of a feminist, stuck by oral lightning;
then, in recovering incompetence,
trying to make light (try Edison, Ohm, Volt, you bitch) of the embarrassment and humiliation,
in front of a small group of bystanders,
reeking of beer-fuel cretinism and incontinence,
none of whom knew the Professor, nor understood a word of Psyche’s harangue,
yet
were laughing in the way that students do, even when they don’t get it, maybe.
The Professor wiped her jaw with a filthy-looking college scarf, drew on her cigarette,
watching the broken pavement, sipping her polystyrene air-cool tea,
walking slow, hunched, a thrashing of a warped pre-Renaissance and germane play.
Psyche held tight on to me, in the way cling-film might hug a plate of cut pineapple,
the end of the time of my acceptance, with me alone now,
trying to grapple
with the way I might end this night,
the buildings now a cool, unwelcome grey,
waiting to notice our name go away.
