Electra Movie Camera image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
Port of Souls: Part 1
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
In the window idled they, where the wind,
Fragrant with scent of spices from vessels
Moored below, the cutters, and the pliers
Of winding routes through doldrums, humid zones
Beyond which a man’s mind seldom bothered,
Though here they came returning with drooped wood
In the hull-sides, and sails blackened with mould—
Where the wind laden with such memories
Played over them where she sat in a chair,
And he, behind, in his rich scion’s suit,
With hand on her bare shoulder aching stood
With knowledge this was to be their last day.
After a time of watching and hearing
(The hearing of hauling songs from the docks,
And the snap of sails, and lazy flutter
Of flags in the colours of all nations),
He went to the board and uncorked the wine,
A bottle that long stood in dusty gloom,
With script of some forgotten guild or caste
Who set it down for private use times past,
But at trifling cost it had come to him,
And now they nursed it, an edge for last hours.
She took the glass, and they drank, and she thought,
Is this to be it then? It cannot be,
I who was the daughter of a mogul,
Rich merchant of the highest hill quarter,
Who had heaps of gold, and a stout-ribbed chest
Full of rubies, sapphire, and loose diamond,
Which trickled through my fingers as a child,
And always these I counted, the touch cool,
As cool as glass, and the faint residue
Of ground dust, as the atmosphere of wealth.
Now I stew in a creaking, cloistered room,
With stink of fish. How did it come to this?
As for me, much the same, thought he, except
Threadbare were the carpets in his old home,
And worn the walls, where the once polished wood,
In work of artisans and master knives,
With scenes of myth and the heroes of man,
Had to time succumbed, and the wearing test
Of children’s hands, the generations since,
The years which passed in wasting use, descent,
Most steep, from that shrewd and able founder
Of the House: his portrait had been preserved,
Though slightly defaced by soot and chance cut
(All else had been sold, the rarest paintings
By genius long dead, the antique goldwork,
Even those lands first granted in battle,
The seed-source of fortune and noble name,
Though the name had not been sold, nor the arms,
That green field rimmed with blue, and ship and horse
Astride, for land and sea saw his success,
And still the scion on his signet ring
The crest maintained, the ring which now rested
On the bare shoulder of his companion,
A ring that signified some ownership,
Or strong obligation imposed on her,
With a hand that nonetheless gave some love,
Or did give love some time not long ago
Before to this room they had come, a room
And its larger hotel, which once belonged
To that very founder in the painting)—
Yes, the years had been steep in their descent,
And he, without guild, trade or merchant seat,
Had pawned and mortgaged all he could, until
With nothing left, except her, here they came,
For a last meal and drink of smoke-sweet wine.