Argument: Falling and jumping to flowers and a parade of ironclad knights.A window frame of sandstone, solid thick and thuggish against the blue sky with tower blocks and glass and curved steel amplifying the crowd noise below.
Looking down…
Cheer! cheer! the crowd and the parade, four hundred million voices aloud and heaven made beat make the drum of the sky and the skin of the eye throb with the noise of the crowd cry, hooraying and holler… what a riot they make. Cheer! cheer! the flags are vaulting the heads on the wind, and they bird-like arrest the twigs and pinned-up twine and rope, and ropes supporting the held-up banners twittering, reporting all the riot they make. Cheer! cheer! the crowd are smiling, the crowd are asking the paraded for their lives - take our meal, our forks and knives, the bones you need to live, here, take what we give in the riot we make. Cheer! cheer! the paraded are knights of uncertain heights – from noses to heights, they confuse the matter so , but they marched in a line, down the street, lined by crowds on both sides, in stereo.
“Lathy!
[… I whispered…]
“look at them all,
they’re a thousand strong in armour!
So many, so armoured,
so short and tall.
“Could we –
I mean – should we
follow and place ourselves amongst
the cheer they listen to
their great applause?”
He waved me quiet – came towards the window, curled a hand to an ear:
“Listen!
Closer and through
the bombs care applause of the crowd…
can you hear her sweet hands
clap off the walls?
“Strip out
the audience –
I can hear her two clapping hands
one-two-three-four, they clap
to start again.
“I hear
her, I hear her,
I hear her hands and suddenly
I know my fate’s to fall
down there, to her.”
Lathy descended to his dream…
I knocked him, took a shoulder and shook some sense and woke him.
“We’ll fall
[… he said…]
“and join them all
to follow their path to meet her.
We’ll fall and land so safe
and sound as all.”
Julia laughed, and Cyrano too – I looked down to the ten thousand feet below us.
Quixana, I thought, you look so sad, so thesauresed and glum – I go with a knight, a squire does his duty to follow his master throughout a city by jumping from windows and scanning the globe and entering forests and coming to an end.
“This will
be our final,
our last, our post-penultimate
meeting with you, Don Qué,
my favourite.
“Farewell
Don Cyrano!
Farewell, dear noseless Julia!
The parade is calling
like distant bells.”
We fell – did Cyrano push me? did Julia push Lathy? laughter pushed us and laughter buoyed us, an updraft of good cheer, a blast of applause; the flag-wave explosions kept gravity a fool for wanting us so much.
***
There’s nothing like the sun on a crowd in celebration – it brings them up and holds them at the level of the moon… lunation, lunation and not a moment too soon.
And what madness makes a madman jump? what madness makes a madman? three letters, small, and bound to grow as the question is considered…
Reconsidering our fall as jump as push, we dusted ourselves and admired the view.
***
“Suppose
she thought of me
when I clattered to the bedroom
when I fell on the floor
and then whistled?
“My tune
was quite happy,
my knees only bruised in places,
my bones only shattered
on their faces.”
I coughed and reminded him on where we now were – standing in tickertape winding high at the knees, stranded in confetti watching the back of the queue of knights, of knights of variable heights – some short, some tall, some shrinking from view.
A woman of the crowd threw a flower my way, four hundred others followed and we sunk beneath the blooms – quite joyful, no? the scent of them all, the petals of them all.
She shouted at us:
“Take this!
And another!
There’s flowers aplenty ‘round here.
Carnations and roses,
nasturtiums too.”
We struggled out of the weight – had we shrunk to be buried in four-billion strong a storm of botanics and scents?
“Why jump
[… she continued…]
to the parade
from your towerview? Your window
on what gloried below
in noise and green.
“Never
would anyone
lose a window seat like that one
unless they were madmen
or pushed obscene.”
Lathy stood up, picked a rose from his elbow, blew a tansy from his wrist and ran away.
“Wait up!
Wait – I’m coming
to find you wherever you’re seen,
following behind you
and inbetween.”
We came to the back of the parade – what knights could I see?
One dwarf knight beating his battered tin drum; another slapping himself with a thumb – forefinger raised and battering on; a suit of armour, empty and useless it seemed, but walking and talking and being manlike it seemed, walking free of human muscles; and there, a knight with wax-formed wings, a father crying for some absentee; and a flaming knight interior with fire leaking from his eyes, a redness on his fingernails, his gauntlets red as skies; one scarecrow knight, one Spartan; one harpist throwing a coat over his head; a clown knight, noseless clowning scarily; some growing; some owing their presence to a memory; some remembered and nameless, some nameful and shamed.
“Are you
a knight like them?
Some grow before us, inches tall –
and others are shrinking
at the applause.”
Lathynarn, Sir Lathynarn, turned and blazed at me:
“Applause
for this parade
means nothing – they applaud the sun
on cloudy days, and cloud
on sunny ones.
“They clap
for near nothing
save themselves and their pirate roar,
like a thief of their own
entertainment.
“Pay nowt
for their offers
and I shall then be rewarded
with stature of my own –
an own-height-knight.”
We heard singing from the parade – should we learn their song?
“There’s a hole down where
all the feet go, there
the legs, beware
the hole – you shrink
and are left to sink
in the black deep ink
of the hole-y air.
“There’s a box up high
where our heads lie
swallowed by sky
and the hum of bees
sting and tease
around the lost faces
of those actors and I.
“There’s an absence in
the brains of men
forgotten as a sin
of frogs en masse
in an underpass
‘til then, at last,
the lights begin.
“There’s a door without
a window – shout! shout!
the windows out
of the wooden frame
with absent aim
of absent fame
of absent delight.”
Keep walking and follow – and we might one day learn the song.
prev - 3.4 About noses
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