THE ULTIMATE OASIS: MAD RUSKIN'S DREAM

{after Stephen Crane's BLACK RIDERS}

There was a dream before the dream.
He stood," Mad Ruskin" [so called by his foes] garishly framed
By Gothic arch and brush and strings.
His body, near tranparent, was like
A thing from the laboratory.
Behind the jewelled light
Arose a massive wall of stone. He saw
His lovely nymphet in her hat and earrings.
But all below, instead of stays and crinoline,
There was the furred, voluptuous form
Half hidden by the warp and woof
And gears of industry. He woke in sweat,
Then fell into a deeper, somber dream.

THE ULTIMATE OASIS

Mad Ruskin, infintessimal,
Before the granite wall:
"Where are the gates to this city?"

Within, the twittering of nymphs.
Above, on bent boughs,
The tasty luminous spheres
Crowded with spikes.


Like a mite shaken in an hourglass,
He lifted his voice in the sandstorm:
"Where are the GATES to this city!"


Finally, an unpaternal voice on the wind:
"Permit my metaphor, Mister Ruskin,
Would He let you in by the mouth,
That gorge and fountain
Of obscenity?


Mad Ruskin thought, and he thought.
Ah, the ancient wisdom,
The dead brought out, now in
Through windows!


Footsore, tracing the deific square,
Neck insufferable from scanning
High and low,
Ravenous he strained toward the fruit.
The magnified, luminous spheres
Were still more luminous.


The voice once more in the gale:
"Indulge me, Mister Ruskin, once again.
The fruits are rotten, Galileaeo-o!"


Mad Ruskin, hearing ghostly sirens
Deep within, abandoned his gentility,
Lost his cool:
"By God, enough of all these fallacies!
Where in the Hell are the windows?"


. . . . . . .
Far out in the desert,
The moo and the roar,
The hilarity of hyenas at the feast.


In his mind's eye:
The wall's, like clouds.
Four-leggeds and the great winged forms
Drift over, through.
Far out in the desert,
In the penultimate oasis,
The cracks of lightning
In the interspaces.


He heard his lover's cry
And howl above the rest.


Mad Ruskin, longingly, stared at the wall.
Silence. Still more silence, then
A whisper, like sand over stone:
"You may now indulge, Mister Ruskin.
Listen. Out there, the final shooting,
The world primiere, the cosmic flick,
By Pere le Dieu:
The Animals' Revenge Upon Trimalchio.

Max Cordonnier
A Revision of a late 60's Poem

The Animals' Revenge