A Wave Read Free Page B

thing we never seem to run out of.

Purists Will Object
    We have the looks you want:
    The gonzo (musculature seemingly wired to the stars);
    Colors like lead, khaki and pomegranate; things you
    Put in your hair, with the whole panoply of the past:
    Landscape embroidery, complete sets of this and that.
    It’s bankruptcy, the human haul,
    The shining, bulging nets lifted out of the sea, and always a few refugees
    Dropping back into the no-longer-mirthful kingdom
    On the day someone sells an old house
    And someone else begins to add on to his: all
    In the interests of this pornographic masterpiece,
    Variegated, polluted skyscraper to which all gazes are drawn,
    Pleasure we cannot and will not escape.
    It seems we were going home.
    The smell of blossoming privet blanketed the narrow avenue.
    The traffic lights were green and aqueous.
    So this is the subterranean life.
    If it can’t be conjugated onto us, what good is it?
    What need for purists when the demotic is built to last,
    To outlast us, and no dialect hears us?

Description of a Masque
    The persimmon velvet curtain rose swiftly to reveal a space of uncertain dimensions and perspective. At the lower left was a grotto, the cave of Mania, goddess of confusion. Larches, alders and Douglas fir were planted so thickly around the entrance that one could scarcely make it out. In the dooryard a hyena chained to a pole slunk back and forth, back and forth, continually measuring the length of its chain, emitting the well-known laughing sound all the while, except at intervals when what appeared to be fragments of speech would issue from its maw. It was difficult to hear the words, let alone understand them, though now and then a phrase like “Up your arse!” or “Turn the rascals out!” could be distinguished for a moment, before subsiding into a confused chatter. Close by the entrance to the grotto was a metal shoescraper in the form of a hyena, and very like this particular one, whose fur was a grayish-white faintly tinged with pink, and scattered over with foul, liver-colored spots. On the other side of the dooryard opposite the hyena’s pole was a graceful statue of Mercury on a low, gilded pedestal, facing out toward the audience with an expression of delighted surprise on his face. The statue seemed to be made of lead or some other dull metal, painted an off-white which had begun to flake in places, revealing the metal beneath which was of almost the same color. As yet there was no sign of the invisible proprietress of the grotto.
    A little to the right and about eight feet above this scene, another seemed to hover in mid-air. It suggested the interior of an English pub, as it might be imitated in Paris. Behind the bar, opposite the spectators in the audience, was a mural adapted from a Tenniel illustration for Through the Looking Glass —the famous one in which a fish in a footman’s livery holds out a large envelope to a frog footman who has just emerged onto the front stoop of a small house, while in the background, partially concealed by the trunk of a tree, Alice lurks, an expression of amusement on her face. Time and the fumes of a public house had darkened the colors almost to a rich mahogany glow, and if one had not known the illustration it would have been difficult to make out some of the details.
    Seven actors and actresses, representing seven nursery-rhyme characters, populated the scene. Behind the bar the bald barman, Georgie Porgie, stood motionless, gazing out at the audience. In front and a little to his left, lounging on a tall stool, was Little Jack Horner, in fact quite a tall and roguish-looking young man wearing a trench coat and expensive blue jeans; he had placed his camera on the bar near him. He too faced out toward the audience. In front of him, his back to the audience, Little Boy Blue partially knelt before him, apparently performing an act of fellatio on him. Boy Blue was entirely clothed in blue denim, of an ordinary kind.
    To their left,