A change of pace - a piece from 'goliath.tmp: a memoir', with thanks to Alexander Pope
The Turncoat Prince
Ambivalence! Too oft the state of man
Who nobly strives, but ne’er entirely can
Encapsulate the spirit of his time
In dusty pamphlets, deeds of sale or rhyme.
What follows then? A moral tale of old
Which came to me within a dream so bold
It did so seem that I was there, I say,
Just as, just here, I clearly seem this day.
The Good Book’s land it seem’d to be, and though
So much was gain’d, so little’s to bestow.
In righteous vengeance regicide was done:
A bloody giant on a mountain won
The day, but in descent from there he glimps’d
Ascending thus, in haste, a turncoat prince.
They lov’d each other once, but then betrayed:
The giant had his heart through hate re-made.
His sword, still wet with blood, still keen to kill
Sang lusty songs of veng’ance and its thrill
And yet, despite the hate that burned so bright
Inside his faithful breast, he ran from sight
In faith the giant hid, but faith misplaced:
So giant he, far less the land embraced!
More body was unhid than hid. Of course
The turncoat Prince prepared himself for force.
Approaching though, his thoughts did twirl anew:
With thoughts came words, with words a plot soon grew:
‘Alive, a giant as an ally is
far more politic to my cause, and his.’
So, thus, as he approached with guile, he hailed:
‘O giant knight of old, my friend, please tell
me why, in open ambush, bold you wait;
Your lust for royal blood is yet to sate?
Come now, remember? We were once in love!
Let other men have hawks. For us? A dove.’
The giant stayed in place, concealed he thought,
Still bent on murder, though on less resort.
But then, the Prince drew forth a weapon sharp:
For what will soothe the savage beast? A harp.
For soothing is a death of sorts, you see;
Sans rage, the turncoat’s victim turns to me
And whispers: ‘Yea, though Beauty be no beast
And Splendour be no fool, O God, at least
This sound loves me! And ev’ry beast’s a fool
Who cannot hear their doom in Beauty’s rule!
The turncoat Prince, a David of the Jews,
In the giant the love of Spring imbues:
The daffodils, the violets and the rose,
The dancing lamb, the babbling brook: all foes!
So easy do the lovely turn their coats
When Princes use their cunning: sheep to goats.
Emerges he, our hero giant’s frame,
And dances, smiles, and sings: so quick, so tame.
But now, with me, he shakes with rage a’new
To see himself, en’storied, falsely true.
‘Lie down,’ the Prince he croons, ‘beside this brook
The water’s clear, the stones so smooth, and look!
Just there! A doe doth drink her fill, so sweet!
Such beauty, yea, so tender, and such meat!’
So swift the Prince picked up a stone and cast:
Fair beauty into beautiful repast.
The giant Knight saw not a thing struck down
His bread and circus head upon the ground
His bag of bloody royal heads forgot
Empty of who or where or why or what.
For princes or for philistines, what next?
This giant fallen in this field of text?
Which coat to wear, when ev’ry coat is worn
concurrently by ev’ry man who’s born?
The turncoat Prince observes the offer’d head
Decapitation? Worse: a kiss instead.
The giant’s weapon stolen thus and used
Against the vase where flower’d thought abus’d.
Less bloody, true, less bones left in the grass
The coat sown up with threaded pain, aghast.
But still, the giant hears the Prince descend
So left with bitter idyll to contend
The bag of royal heads across his back
The psalmic Prince sings to the bloody sack:
‘False fields! False fields! How can you be so true?
Weapons of war so fallen with the dew!
If I can stop the dew and rain with words
The mighty thus are fallen for the birds.
O Jonathan, the Prince of just one coat:
Your head is so much heavier to tote!
And as for old King Saul I must agree
That such a merrie old soul was he.’
And see, the giant’s tale to me runs short:
The swiftness of our loss brooks no retort.
The Prince, a giant-killer did become,
From strength to strength and coat to coat he spun
The giant grew e’er larger as he shrank
The more he striv’d, more perfectly he sank
Until he all but disappeared from view,
Save troubl’d voices, hereby troubling you.
