The Ship

(After Tennyson)

Idling off the sun-soaked shores,

Pennants floating, polished doors,

Sad strangers in an eddied course

Tip-toe about the waxed teak floors,

About the lady of our dreams.

Dead-eyed they move, this lifeless crew,

In collars stiff and soft deck shoes,

As they dare not mar nor cloud the view,

Is nothing ever what it seems.

For there disrobed upon the deck,

Their lady lies face down, a wreck,

Palms easing round her glist’ning neck,

Across her angel form, and on, unchecked

Around the lady of our dreams.

With chasten’d look and pearl-eyed glance

Cast far into the shimm’ring distance,

The frenzied lenses fit; to enhance, more so perchance –

So nothing’s ever what it seems.

III

From shoreline and from trailing blimps

Those shutt’ring eyes snap half a glimpse,

For printing press’s paint-up pimps,

Whose harlots swim with sacred nymphs,

And the lady of our dreams.

Her honey’d locks and titled crown –

Which twinkled once on snow-white gown –

Did shine in pages; once bought, soon brown,

Is nothing ever what it seems.

Her hair pinned back as slip does clay,

Exposed she lies to all the day,

Unsexed, illumed in golden rays,

Entombed within her prison’d bay,

The lady of our dreams.

Deep-cloven in her body, cries –

Such pleas, for pity – ‘Oh intrusive eye!

What fate is this that I am I!’

Is nothing ever what it seems.

Apollo, high, spreads wide his smile,

In coral tide, so pure; meanwhile

The glitter of his stifling guile

Clots the pores – poor sceptr’d isle –

And the lady of its dreams.

This king who will forever reign –

Or would, if he could loose the chain –

Now shines his knife across the main,

Is nothing ever what it seems.

He paints an image of her past, and since,

Of her own eternal, unloved prince,

Who marvels on the fabled quince

And the hollow crown that before him glints,

But ne’er the lady of our dreams.

He questions of Selene’s marks,

Of nature, life, and squared-off arcs,

And if exist such things as snarks,

And whatever love may really mean.

VII

But what is love to Queens indeed

Whose lot it is but to feed and breed,

And most of all (these words take heed!),

To not give advice, or else the cogs of realm impede,

With any of their hare-brained schemes?

Like hangers twirling strapless robes,

Who dance and sparkle ‘cross the globe.

Twas ever thus their role: – But hold, and dry the sob,

For nothing’s ever what it seems!

VIII

Twas ever thus – the King did rule,

Their ladies but their regal tool!

‘Twas ever thus – plucked from the pool,

And then, once plucked – those helpess fools! –

Cast off – these ladies with their dreams!

‘Twas ever thus. – Excepting that it’s Gaia’s earth,

And ever since that natal kiss of birth,

‘Tis the Goddess white who’s fired the hearth;

No, nothing’s ever what it seems.

Our lady’s head turns left, then right,

A fugitive from all this light;

Her eyes, though shining twice as bright,

Here close, as sleep charms day to night,

For the lady always has her dreams.

The time its scarcely tripp’d past noon,

As the steely beams rove from the moon –

But oh – tis true – tis come too soon!

Will nothing e’er be what it seems?

There glitt’ring in her raptured eyes,

A horseman – ho! A knightly prize

Who round about the table lies,

But is not good, or true, or wise

For the lady of our dreams;

Violets strewn in opaque glass,

Discarded stars, like comets passed,

Distortions in a cuirass,

Is nothing ever what it seems?

The tempting shadows – ice fingers roam

All over her: This currency which weaves unknown

Between the Godly cloths of throne,

Rich tapestries, so richly sewn

By the lady – in her dreams.

This pagan spirit by her slumb’ring side,

Concealing yet his ring of pride,

Which may, or may not, be denied,

No, nothing’s ever what it seems.

XII

What silent fears do fly unbound

Within this tow’r her night has found?

Now drums her breast like the cannon pound,

Her heart, it is a ship aground,

The lady of our dreams.

There by the tempting tempest placed,

As to the varnished wood, her face:

‘What love,’ she sighs, ‘can be replaced?’

Is nothing ever what it seems?

XIII

‘Oh why must gentle warmth expose

This liberty night does compose,

Where fantasies surge unopposed,

And fear and sin do ne’er impose

Upon the lady in my dreams?’

The question thus for her arose;

‘I anguish, love, and here am froze

Between two world I so oppose.

Oh why is nothing what I wish’d ‘twould be?’

XIV

‘’Twas ere long since, indeed, it seems,

That she sat beside the trickling stream,

With jams and cakes and whipp’d up creams,

With swings, and gently fingered seams –

Oh a lady has her dreams!

A time when seasons were not ere bethought,

And life – not death – for isles aught

To harbour close such faithless thoughts.

But nothing’s ever what it seems.

And with those dreams, the moon half-winks,

And she before the sun-God shrinks,

As adrift in all this sea of ink –

A sea too shallow for the thoughts she thinks –

Lies still the lady of our dreams.

Ablaze in Phaeton’s fiery trail,

Which scarred the sky – her warder rails

With such a mighty roar, she quails:

‘Enough of all these might have beens!

Enough of all these playground dreams!

XVI

‘Creation born to Calliope,

The sheer and shining tragedy

Of love, and life, and victory,

Is born of this – inconstancy,

Of the ladies of our dreams.

For the string which binds Alcyone’s wings,

For the ballads that the minstrels sings,

For the madnesses of blood-soaked kings,

Are born of what they’ve always been!’

XVII

In her crystal eyes, the aftermath

Gleams, of the wreckage left by all that wrath,

‘Gaint fair defects and baleful halfs,

Which split the world – two weed-filled paths

That live by day and dreams.

Consumèd love, ah wretched power!

Asunder’d paths do such devour,

These parted stems of thorn prick’s bowers,

Is nothing ever what it seems?

XVIII

The conquering sun, his face now palls,

And across the shallow waters thrall

The dark clouds of the coming squall,

That soon upon her crown will fall,

And down upon her dreams.

Defiantly, she lifts her head. So placèd

Upon her arms, here framèd.

Her aspect thus in pictur’d glory crowned,

So nothing will be what it seems.

XIX

The ship, at anchor – this fine-clipped claw,

Drifts neither out nor into shore,

But sways serenely into lore,

Like all the tides and tales before

Of ladies of our dreams.

For what should burn upon this lyre,

Except a lover’s plaintive lyre,

And all the hopes the strings suspire,

Is nothing ever what it seems?

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