Patroklos

 

Patroklos

In the gloomy domed living room

Buck Mulligan’s gowned form

moved briskly about the hearth to and fro,

hiding and revealing its yellow glow.

And I said again: it’s warm –

even though my fingers shook. 
 

I peered above his bulky shoulder

to glimpse the mirror above the mantle.

A graceless twitchy thing I’d become –

who chose this face for me?

Its muscles are in anarchy.
 

And so I sighed the sigh of those

who must ask the question.

I watch him and he knows it. After all,

you cannot have such skin

and not feel the heat of admiration.

His hulk beams through my ghost-flesh;
 

a stomach growls, and I wince.

It is all I can do when he is there

looking twice my age, and I am there

looking at the nails in the floorboards. 
 

I shall go for a walk, I say.

I won’t be needing company.

I wish to feel the outdoors on my neck.

I will see you tomorrow?
 

Along the ridge of the oblong rivulet

a palefaced pimpled juvenile

scoops sand over toes

careful of shells, rocks,

bits of broken glass left

by college drunks.
 

This is what he mostly thinks of:
I’ve read the finest texts, met with

The most sophisticated guests –  so

Why can’t I glow with the ferocity of the giants around me?

I’m done with this spotty spit of

life, done with moth-eaten rags

that curl our bodies into themselves.

That’s it – that’s the order of the day.

And I will be his little fool no more.

 
I will tell Mister Fancypants what

I have discovered along the water today.

I shall tell the mailman too.

I shall tell the neighbors upstairs.

I shall share it with the

man on the moon, with the Pope in Rome.

 
So soon will the world change

because of the things that I know.

The things I am willing to give them.

 
I am no longer pimpled with weak legs.

I am Buck Mulligan’s heir –

 
without the gross attachment to feeble senses,

temporal materials, unworthy goods.

 
I will not shake in my boots or part

my hair too decidedly – I am wild,

but with the wisdom of giants.

Come and meet me, great sun,

grand center of the universe –

I now have enough words now to raise up at you;

and there is nothing to be done about it.

 
There are truths to be found,

real things to be spoken.

 
Whatever I can be as a writer –

A blue helicopter pilot, a hired assassin,

A dewy eyed goddess or a flippant schoolboy –

I will be, above all else, unabashedly

honest. Because we can’t suffer another

airy prophesy from A. E. and

there are already

enough Buck Mulligans in the world.