.
Capacity
“This is too big and inexcusably
Extravagant, so next time I insist
We buy a smaller glass. This one will be
Always half-empty,” said the realist.
“You say this from experience,” replied
The visionary, “But should realize
That if our lot improved then you and I’d
Be sorry that it was not twice the size.”
.
.
Love’s Banquet
Love gave a banquet. Roses white
_And blushing pink arrayed
The golden floor, while candlelight
_In silver mirrors played.
Blue cushions trimmed with violet
_Softened each cedar chair,
Before smooth, creamy linen set
_With tasteful tableware.
Hares, pheasants, oysters, crabs and quails
_Filled trays of grand design,
While lobsters cooled their shining tails
_In cataracts of wine.
Guests were requested to arrive
_A little after seven,
Though some turned up at six or five
_And others at eleven,
In silk, embroidered costumes, made
_In captivating styles,
With curls on collars neatly laid
_And brightly painted smiles.
From violins and harp strings soft
_Flowed gentle harmonies,
While cupids from the minstrels’ loft
_Sang tender melodies.
Then chimed the hour and bugles screamed.
_Thorns from the roses sprang.
With sulphur fumes the candles gleamed
_At midnight’s solemn clang.
From violins a baleful bleat
_Soared to the gallery,
While cupids to a crazy bleat
_Sang loudly out of key
Of Love frustrated, Love bereaved,
_And Love’s inconstancy,
Love disappointed, Love deceived
_Or met with mockery.
While harps deployed as hunting-bows
_Let quicklime darts fly free,
As scorpions the lobsters rose
_Unappetizingly,
Their fickle claws of lust to swing,
_Over soft scalps to creep
And with suspicion’s jealous sting
_Eyelids and lips to sweep.
Tarantulas their burrows left
_Deep in the cushioned chairs
And picking loose the silken weft
_Began to knit their snares.
Roxana seized me as her prize.
_Over Love’s thorns we tore
And, almost sober, almost wise,
_Burst through the fading door.
We stumbled to the garden wall
_And tumbled through the gate
And laughed aloud at leaving all
_The others to their fate.
.
.
Morrison Handley-Schachler is a retired Chartered Public Finance Accountant and Lecturer in Accounting. He has a doctorate in Ancient History and has published articles on ancient Persian history, accounting history, financial crime, auditing and financial risk management. He lives in South Queensferry, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Scotland.
“Capacity” speaks to me of the reluctance to take chances in life with the realist satisfied to live at a lesser level. “Love’s Banquet” is an amazing sensory experience peppering the mind with colorful displays and auditory sensations, The transition from the peaceful love scene to the raucous behavior ending with the mad dash back to a loving environment had my mind reacting to all three stages intensely.
Thank you, Roy. In “Capacity” I have tried to capture the fact that we cannot always be limited by our reluctance to take some chances, as you say, and that being the realist is not the only way of being sensible. I enjoyed writing all three phases of “Love’s Banquet”, with all the opportunity for extravagant images.
“Love’s Banquet” — what a chilling picture! The sensory imagery is vivid and very acutely conveys the fickleness and precariousness of love.
Thank you, Rachel. I am happy that you appreciated the imagery and the terrors of the precariousness of Love. It was just what I was aiming for.
“Love’s Banquet” is purely figurative and quasi-allegorical, very much like a medieval poem such as the Roman de la Rose, or E.A. Poe’s story of “The Masque of the Read Death.” It creates a detailed scene of idyllic charm in the first six quatrains, and then the last eight quatrains become a metamorphosis into horror. This could be read as a commentary on love’s deceptive beauty, and how it can mask something horrible. The escape of two lovers at the end could be read as a sign of hope for those few persons who are careful,, or a warning to all that love’s immediately visible pleasures can be a trap filled with scorpions and tarantulas.
Thanks, Joseph. I enjoyed setting up that metamorphosis – but couldn’t resist putting in the fortunate lovers’ escape at the end. Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” wasn’t consciously in my mind but it’s a masterpiece and one of my favourite short stories.
I loved the philosophical turn to ‘Capacity’, where the truth could be in either stanza, or somewhere in between? This poem is especially poignant, today.
As for ‘Love’s Feast’, there are some great lines in there. I especially liked the ‘cupid’ minstrels, and the lines ‘As scorpions the lobsters rose / Unappetizingly’, which could so easily have sounded merely ridiculous, yet conveyed the horror of a transformed reality. I’ve written a few medieval feast scenes in my time, but this one really goes the whole hog, so to speak.
Thanks for the mouth-wateringly horrifying piece, Morrison.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Paul. Yes, the truth might lie somewhere between the realist and the visionary. Sometimes we can suffer from disregarding experience but sometimes we suffer from not seeing past it. I’m also glad you enjoyed Love’s Banquet – I was definitely looking for some comedic horror here. Scorpions struck me as being the perfect vehicles for jealousy and suspicion. It was a lot of fun to write.
Both brilliant poems. I especially liked Love’s Banquet and the midnight transformation. Chills! Yes and very like Poe
Thanks for your appreciative comments, Rohini. I’m glad that you enjoyed both poems. And yes, I love Poe’s stories.
“Love’s Banquet” is a well sculpted piece. The enjambments are nicely filleted and it appears that the rhymes came naturally to the poet. Thanks for the read, Morrison.
Thanks, Shamik. I’m glad that you enjoyed the read. I find that rhyming always helps to provide emphasis and to pull the meaning of a stanza or of a poem as a whole together.
Morrison, both poems are thoroughly entertaining although “Love’s Banquet” is a firm favorite. What a delicious cornucopia of sumptuous and vivid imagery and a zesty serving emotion you offer – from tantalizing to torment, from exquisite to grotesque. I particularly like “almost sober, almost wise” – perhaps a little understanding about love is knowing when to stay and when to leave. I’m intrigued by the name choice – is it based on Daniel Defoe’s Roxana? I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this – thank you!
Thank you very much for your appreciation and comments, Susan. I am glad that you enjoyed both poems. I enjoyed creating the exquisite and the grotesque phases. Defoe’s Roxana is a great novel, but I was actually thinking (as no doubt Defoe was) of Alexander the Great’s consort. Alexander himself was renowned for his wisdom but there are conflicting accounts of his sobriety.
“Love’s Banquet” is a delicious fantasy of fun–from my point of view. Once we arrive at the third stanza where “lobsters cooled their shining tails/In cataracts of wine,” the scene is a realm of humorous excess, with an echo of Lewis Carroll:
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
It’s not at all surprising that lovers fall into Alice’s Wonderland where you, Morrison, go “whole hog” on the horror, as you did so extravagantly with the pleasures. This is a delightfully composed vision in three parts. It does bear the many meanings about love that others have expressed, but in a light-hearted manner. “Burst through the fading door” is an exit for practical persons who will not be confined long to the illusions of their laughingly happy state. Really wonderful frolic in verse!
Thank you very much for your comments, Margaret. They are much appreciated. I had actually not noticed the echo of “improve his shining tail,” although the phrase must have been stuck in mind somewhere. Now that you mention this, Lewis Carroll also gives us the “Voice of the Lobster” and, of course, the ultimate banquet gone bad in “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”