The banquet proceeds where the pageant has come to an end, where the masque is over, and the princes sit astonished at their own gentility, schoolboys transformed to noble bearded princes, schoolgirls sweep forth like virginal maidens to the hall. Still, at first glance it resembles nothing more than a school cafeteria at some busy lunchtime, but instead of patrolling teachers and grim dinnerladies there are jolly serving-boys and buxom maids to dish out wine and pheasant, instead of harsh jokes and the threat of corporal punishment there is relexation and jokes passed along the table, mixing with the sound of sweet, tinkling music.

After the Banquet

On the white-washed castle walls silver streamers were hung. From the bank of TV's on the wall sultry presenters, plushly made-up, gazed forth, announcing the new banquet in the great hall. Venus herself seemed reclining among silk cushions there.
Everyone was dressed in white, the queen and her maids came in in silk brocades and dressfronts, giggling, the trumpeters delighted to see them, persian cats licked at pure white cream. All around were banks of cushions, sheen-red, luxurious, where the fat auspicious patrons reclined.
In the centre was a long brown-wood table, varnished and glowing healthily, set with candelabras, cluttered and laden with silver and gold platters of food, delicacies, jellied meats, glazed pigeons, stuffed pigs, exotic fruits bursting into ripeness. At the table neat chairs were drawn up, and the patrons that entered to the fanfares of trumpets sat daintily at their places, smiling prettily like medieavel princesses. Fat kings were there also, chuckling and biting at chickenwings. All the 4th year kids from the local sinful high school drew up chairs, licking lips, still half-ragged and smelling of eraser dust and chalk, but delighted, transformed in their raptures to princes and princesses, ennobled. They loosened school-ties, gripped wood, pilfered gold coronets which they set atop their touseled heads, relaxed with spiced wine.

part 4

Long-abandoned classrooms, offices,
Desks on which a century's graffiti has settled,
Endless glass doors, hints of promise,
Through which nothing was revealed
But corpse's memories.
Eventually, i opened the final door
And stepped into a corridor brightly lit
And polished endlessly by robotic hands
Till it blazed the whiteness of heaven.
There marched by a bureaucrat, an
Office worker, busy with his schemes.
He looked officious in a short-sleeve shirt,
A clipboard and tie. Going to check
Rivet five million in panel six thousand
With a grim mouth.
I spoke to him, asking for a way out.
Then, approaching along the corridor,
Came a cleaning lady. She had pink skin,
And blonde hair. Weary lipstick, but
Looked bedazzled, and bedazzling
In a white uniform, pristine, spotless,
Like an angel in my eye.
The bureaucrat stopped her, and entreated
Her to show me the way home.
She seemed annoyed, far too efficient,
Wanted to bustle past: "No time, too busy".
As if, she wants to brandish her mop
In upstairs rooms, or purse together her lips
Before the clock strikes twelve.

part 3

My heart beat. The way i had come
Under those bridges, through the rubble
Enmerged into a dark tunnel, dripping,
Descending, full of dank draughts,
Descending, descending, into the darkness
Till i met Hades. This path was not meant
For human feet. It was the train tracks,
Erected out of hell-fired steel, relentlessly
Marching on, echoing ghostly voices
As it marches, marches, marches on.
Now, relieved, i ventured forth
And walked to the wall. Saw the doors
Endless, row on row, face me. There was no light behind.
I put my hand to one of the doors, expecting
It to be silently locked, muffled, shut up.
But it creaked, sprung open easily.
And i fell inside.
Inside were empty corridors
Leading endlessly on, into a greater maze.

part 2

But then, the windows rattled
And the doorhandles shook. From behind
Hooted forth the midnight train
Arriving right on time.
The train was made of adamantine
Driven by ghosts who never reach their destination
Rumbling on blood-strewn tracks
With no passengers. Yet at midnight, in this courtyard,
Phantom porters disembark
And blow shrill whistles at the skeleton crew.
"Our graveyard is a train station,
Our death a train which never stops..."
This train, steaming, screaming, sightless
Bore down on me like a cyclops, so that i crouched,
And it seemed to me it wailed to me of death.
I leapt behind the garbage pails, frightened,
Past the scaffolding and refuse,
And finally, lay beneath a large red estate agent's sign
That had long since been abandoned
To the elements.
The ghost train flashed by, dispersing.

Prelude to After the Banquet part one

A long, grey road under lowering skies,
Dusty and swinging right. Under dark railway bridges,
I walk the path by myself, it is concrete, bare.
There is no sound.
At the end, under eaves and bridges, is a grey
Building of empty office blocks. Inside
The grey-blinded windows lights are turned-off
Computer monitors sit abandoned. Dust settles.
It was, perhaps, a vacant building,
A school once inhabited by gaudy teens, full of
Violence and lust.
Youth that flared up behind windows, blood that
Bloomed in cheeks. Even the strong rod of discipline
Laid down, abandoned.
In its empty courtyard, i wandered beneath its buildings,
Wandered, dreaming, over to the right
To face the shadowy wall.
There, outstretched, a long wing of concrete,
Reaching for emptiness, full of rusted-up windows
And the elegance of despair.
Frozen into solitude.
And, set in the wall, were fragile glass doors
Behind which could be seen
Emptiness, walls which once bore
Happy paintings; now not even the flicker of a ghost
Or a vandal's anguish
Lit the corridors inside.

Onwards, doll, doll of night
Or in my afternoon paranoia
Wideness of the arse surprised me,
Patience wearing thin.
Porcelain doll, i see my love expand,
Though it sees you, as, in me, grotesque.
Entropy of statues, teeth
Must be scrubbed if they are not
To turn yellow, breasts
Turn pendulous unfettered by bras,
We have to ingest
And shit out an answer
To our own shame every night.

prelude to the inexhaustible city part 2

Finally he ended up in a room with darkened windows, windows blackened-out or smeared in soot as if to conceal shameful crimes. The floorboards were chipped-bare, and creaked echoingly as he trod over them. He was by now in such a disoriented state that he couldn't tell whether he was in a basement or in a penthouse flat, nor did he care.
It seemed like an artist's studio, out-of-the-way, bare, with slim iron pillars that held up the plaster roof. The woman leading him in led him to a corner where there were the rudiments of a home, a red-shaded standard lamp that she clicked on and which emitted a dim yellow light, and a plump satin couch that she pushed him back on, and among whose cushions he reeled and sank. Half-comatose there, unshaven and ruffle-haired, M. saw her step forward into the lamp-light from the dust and darkness of the room.
Her curled hair was very honey-yellow blonde, and in it could be seen depths and tints of richer orange-yellow colour that shone and sprinkled in the light. Her mouth was open in a wide grin, and he saw the light blaze on her white teeth and red lips. She advanced as if to devour him, to mock or reprimand him. The thing that shocked M though were her eyes, that were madly blue, of a lifeless blue which seemed yet to have an infinite depth, which seemed to recede into her eye. Her naked limbs that thrust forward as she bent over his still form, and her breasts bulged sadly from her tight red dress so that the line of her cleavage was highlighted in shadow. She seemed vital, alive, blood pulsing through her veins, life-force so strong in her that it was frightening....

One

In deserted rooms in the inexhaustible city, passing from night to day, through half-ruined streets in yellow afternoons, basements with red-patterned wallpaper, large window frames, tinted glass and in the background industrial noise.
Or in deeper and more secret places like the places you can go to in movie theatres.
Monuments, fountains, vast unattainable cities of night.
Through these M. wandered, finding himself present in bookshops, arcades, over-horizon scenarios, markets and courtyards filled with afternoon light and red-blazing windows, filled with figures that now and then gesticulated to him, mouthing lines.
Drunken or sad he went with ladies into darkened living-rooms; there when quiet lamps were switched on he watched disinterestedly their glittering lips, the movement of their flesh, the fall of their hair. He saw the swell of breasts beneath fabric, he saw the flesh of knees and thighs. He saw all the phantom girls come alive and parade in front of him, mocking his excitement, and, falling in and out of shadow, bending and twisting and smiling, groping towards the final release, the final apex of desire, so urgent in its ferocity and yet so meaningless in its aftermath. Blonde women with well-fed faces warmed with blusher, smiling at his inexperience in the corners of garrets, dusky girls with pouting lipstick smiles that looked like grief, reclining in tight dresses. Flesh against flesh, touch against touch, daylight never intruding.

beginning

Through the endless boulevards of the inexhaustible city, where overhanging buildings shadow the sidewalks.
Driving through streets wet with afternoon rain, where little pigeons swoop and miss refuse...
Lumbering in the sight-seeing bus, past the museum and the bright flag and the endless Georgian terrace, or on the bottom streets past gardens, hedges, inconspicous Victorian weeds...
The bus was bedecked and painted with gaudy advertisements and messages, advertising in broad brown-red letters the sight-seeing tour. The top-deck of the bus where M. sat, dreaming lazily, was open to the sky so that mid afternoon breezes swept in as the stodgy bus meandered along, rifling his hair, scattering dropped sweetie wrappers up the aisle.

a wide range

a wide range near the cracked sunken graveyard where the homeless sleep under the tombs at night and the traffic swishes by men in proud flannel business suit and with fat jowl are going home in the luxury leatherette smell of their sepulchral volvo to pressure cooker suburbs or fatigue and rugged crowsfeet rubbings and heart attacks at midnight in the middle of the afternoon underneath the flags of all nations and near huge regency department stores faded to rainwash grey just like the big acidic crumbling blackened spaceneedle monument all over in backstreet and college digs geeks are grinning and handsome boys combing back hair like skydivers and skaters and punkers and motorbike boys and pale fat goth girls all surrendered near a flaky pane and a tiled roof wet with pissy rain or bespectacled n smooth haired prowling and yelling with their confréres in a wild college or clapping bigbosomed and eager in a basement dark deacon brodie venue for the international art fools spangling on a stage or gritting their mohican teeths over guitars in leather or rancid jean diving into oblivion thrusting arms of sweat and little alcohol rotten gangs shavenheaded in estates knifing prowled serial killers clenching fists with plots of shallow hole not forgetting the changeling ghosts of a thousand centuries who were drowned here or were strangled with their own rabbie burns cravats in a spectral candlelit drawingroom on a shiny cluedo table and came back in empty afterdinner mirrors at 8 o clock while dickens freaked and hid under the table with pearly moustache and tophat meanwhile big bostonian automobiles rumble past in the street and on hot days festival fools celebrate heroin in a gutter and common lothian disgrace underneath the old burned troy jerusalem miles of paved disgruntled sulking reek respectable downtown in a greenbush on a picture postcard......

Roses & Cream (Dream)

I was in America. On a long road there was a traffic jam. From one of the vehicles behind me came a song. It was an old-fashioned love song.
Songs were issuing from the door of an old-fashioned carriage behind me. I was connected to these songs.
A romantic song came forth, entitled "Roses & Cream".
I was accused of writing the song. I went back to the carriage and found out the name of the author. The author of the song was "Ghandi".
I admitted to authorship of the song. I approached a car and told the girls inside, "Apparently, i'm Ghandi". There was a girl there, smiling, in sunglasses. She responded and then drove off.

A girl came to ask me for my autograph. We were on a long street bordered by a low wall. The girl was blonde with big breasts behind a white garment. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. Her face was vacant and equivocal.
I asked her what did she want my autograph for. She said, "You wrote that beautiful song". I hesitatingly wrote it on a small piece of card she was carrying.