Carrying On
Don Juan, translated to the realm
of meanings, bristles
at hints he doesn’t belong,
or not to the highest nobility. Duels
are fought. He always wins
and then must always flee. Which is OK,
for the realm of meanings is one
of exile, an interchangeable Berne, Estoril, Capri.
Yet he notices that his friends –
one must while away afternoons
before assignations – are not other hidalgos,
madly proud, but observers,
bystanders: Sancho,
Meursault. Remarkably,
he has a female friend he feels
no interest in conquering: Cassandra,
of the royal house of Troy. She has shampooed
and styled her matted hair,
and changed the shredded shift
she wore to protest fate for an outfit
by Mary Quant from 1968.
For in the realm of meanings, style
is absolute, unfading. Idly
Juan wonders how
she perceives him, early afternoons,
his eyes as sad and sagging as a hound’s,
his sword a mere encumbrance when he sits.
How she views his depredations
of wives, daughters, fair women
who are otherwise her now wide circle
of friends. Actually, she doesn’t.
Light sifts through the elegant
tearoom window, and Cassandra prates
of wars and gods sillier
than those which destroyed her,
of men like pigs as powerful as gods,
of the air stinking, poles melting,
seas rising, the surviving land
desert with no one left
to ignore her, or to blame …
Her métier, thinks the Don,
is still augury, but her mood
is almost jocular and almost grates.
But from the realm of meanings Care,
like Time, is banished. Actors there
view mortal life as all rehearsal,
perform forever as on closing night,
and bask in the enjoyment of being right.
He leaves the febrile, self-delighted girl,
walks out on the grand
Boulevard that devolves on trackless lanes.
The clock of some invisible steeple sounds
the hour of intrigue far above,
reviving Juan, who currently
is marking time with Emma Bovary.
Whenever husbands, fathers, rivals fail
to curb his afterglows, he likes
to stretch them towards eternity
with conversation, tea and cakes,
unpressured kisses and a wish
for comfort that is almost love.
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