NEIL POWELL In Arden: Cambridge, 1982 (Phoebus’ Car: As You Like It) Space within space, fiction within fiction, An evening bathed in melancholic light: Through Petty Cury’s sadly shuttered set And Christ‘s linked courtyards, teasingly oblique, To this squat shape of concrete and smoked glass; Within, an empty unexpected space. We enter in the self-regarding way Small audiences have; converse a while; Settle at length into the secure dark. On stage, unlikely arguments commence, Compelling younger brother, good old man, Besotted cousins and bewildered clown To leave for wintry Arden. They arrive; Bepled, as we are, by benevolence - A vacant farm, food, hospitality, The freedoms of delusion and disguise. The season changes with the interval: New leaves proclaim contingencies of spring, Whose dance must undo mask and argument. The wicked will be shown as merely dim, The good as merely nice; and, as for us, We have to choose our representative And finally take sides: cynic or clown. The Epilogue, 3 held half-open door, Admits a chilling draught on what remains: Exhausted players, artifiaal light, And toyshop props of Touchstone’s circus act - Which recognition lengthens our applause At their sustained improbability Before we, Jacques-like, walk out on them. This summer night holds no security.

In Arden: Cambridge, 1982

Download PDF Report

Upload
neil-powell
View
217
Download
0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

NEIL POWELL

In Arden: Cambridge, 1982 (Phoebus’ Car: As You Like I t )

Space within space, fiction within fiction, An evening bathed in melancholic light: Through Petty Cury’s sadly shuttered set And Christ‘s linked courtyards, teasingly oblique, To this squat shape of concrete and smoked glass; Within, an empty unexpected space.

We enter in the self-regarding way Small audiences have; converse a while; Settle at length into the secure dark. On stage, unlikely arguments commence, Compelling younger brother, good old man, Besotted cousins and bewildered clown To leave for wintry Arden. They arrive; Bepled, as we are, by benevolence - A vacant farm, food, hospitality, The freedoms of delusion and disguise.

The season changes with the interval: New leaves proclaim contingencies of spring, Whose dance must undo mask and argument. The wicked will be shown as merely dim, The good as merely nice; and, as for us, We have to choose our representative And finally take sides: cynic or clown.

The Epilogue, 3 held half-open door, Admits a chilling draught on what remains: Exhausted players, artifiaal light, And toyshop props of Touchstone’s circus act - Which recognition lengthens our applause At their sustained improbability Before we, Jacques-like, walk out on them. This summer night holds no security.