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The Park
The Park he’d built, which hovered overhead,
Went far beyond the scope of any to
That time constructed. Architects were bred
For several generations: some were wed
To siblings just to purify the strain
Of perfect planners able to pursue
This massive project. Sure and steady grew
A corps of talent qualified to train
The legion needed for their hands and brain.
This floating reach was borne on columns made
Of stiffened air thrust up from underground,
And constantly the deep insurgent sound
Of mighty engines rumbled through the shaded
Realm till those who dwelt there were afraid—
Not for their life, but for their mortal mind.
Above it all, a ceiling vast and round
Enclosed The Park and perfectly defined
The grand array of what had been designed.
As gardens went, it was a modern classic:
Encompassed in the plan were inland seas
Endowed with many islands. Manatees
And other denizens were ill at ease
With fearsome beasts that seemed almost Jurassic.
On several isles forbidding castles stood,
And scheduled wars were waged to slake thoracic
Compulsions wealthy patrons had, for good
Or bad, to slaughter heathens when they could.
The largest sea may well have been the best—
Where nothing moved on water save a score
Of lobstermen who never stopped to rest
While laboring in order to procure
The Chairman’s meat of choice to please a guest.
* * * * *
The Chairman—as that brilliant man was known
Who oversaw this project—never showed
His face in public. Very rare, the times
A private audience he’d grant, bestown
On backers much respected and much owed
For their investment in his cause. The rhymes
He spent on formal praise were honed for climes
Subcontinental. Tributes thus bestown
Repaid him well, as when fresh seed is sown.
The outcome: once he’d pledged his word, his name,
And all of Mr. Spender’s guest a toast
Had raised, the deal was set—afoot the game!
The Park would hover over India’s coast.
* * * *
One corner of this wholly wondrous vastness
Was set aside for pleasures fine or tasteless,
To satisfy the whims of thronging millions
Encamped near modest booths and grand pavilions.
__A dozen chinless knaves
____Submitted one by one,
__Impersonating slaves
____Devoted to the fun
__A lonesome bishop craves.
__A score of sultry women
____Drunk on sugar-water
__Dared the most inhuman
____Done by any daughter:
__Eating living vermin.
__A hundred men by chains
____To elephants were tied,
__And through their lunging pains
____ So each the other tried
__To master with those reins.
__A thousand teeming hives
____With gaming tables fraught …
__Where husbands and their wives
____Each other sold or bought,
__Some paying with their lives.
__A darkened room and dreary
____Where sat the likes of Freud
__And Coleridge and Leary—
____There many have enjoyed
__Sweet potions for the weary.
__And twice-two -hundred cooks
____Prepared fine meals for folks
__Who got by on good looks
____And crude erotic jokes
__Not found in decent books.
Beyond this partial list of rare excursions
(Though misappraised by some as coarse perversions)
Lie many others to this day not told—
Nor will they be, until the sun grows cold.
__I see a dream-tomorrow
__Where careful planners live
__Who’d never dare to borrow
__What life will not forgive.
__With age I turn distrait,
__My memory now a sorrow
__For everyone: a sieve!
—My thin excuse for making you all wait
To learn what lobster I once gladly ate …
The day The Park first opened up its gates
For all the public to enjoy that much
Anticipated special place, by fate’s
Decree, was second on the list (where such
Events are weighed and ranked) of news alerts
Involving Mr. Spender’s project. First
On that long page, the headline that adverts
To failures in those engines underground,
Which caused what may have been the very worst
Disaster known to Man. They say around
Eleven million people died that day
When Spender’s Park fell down on Old Bombay.
.
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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
Undoubtedly this is one of the most amazing and creative poems I have ever read. I cannot even speculate on what was running through your mind while writing this detailed description that kept my rapt attention and made me gasp at the conclusion. I stand in awe!
What was running through my mind, Roy, was akin to the account of the destruction of the Tower of Babel. I’m glad you stuck with it to the end, as I, almost, did not.
I sympathize with the manatees. And I suppose from asterisks and ellipsis that this fictive dystopia, although capably full of ugliness and perversion, is much longer. Our editor showed some humor by scheduling the excerpt to appear right after Mark Stellinga’s “Dangerously Close to Too Late.”
No, this is all there is, Margaret. The ellipses were just a way to transition from the straightforward narrative to more “lyrical” segments. Now, Coleridge claimed he had much more to add to “Kubla Khan” but the more I read that poem the more convinced I am that it was a completed work.
A carefully planned utopia usually becomes a dystopia. This poem gives me a creepy sense of futuristic horror — which is fine, because poems are supposed to be shocking and disturbing to some extent. If this is just a segment of a much longer composition, it might well be the screenplay for some skin-crawling sci-fi thriller film.
The sci-fi angle is quite appropriate, Joseph, if only due to the references to unknown technologies.
C.B., I’m quite confident that I don’t fully understand this extraordinary poem. It is indeed “Kubla Khan”-like in its depiction of a decadent pleasure dome for the ages. That is, had Spender’s Park survived. There is so much to this poem. It is dystopian as Margaret points out, but also with echoes of everything from Xanadu to the pleasure palaces of Las Vegas, I would love to see a poet’s note on what inspired you to write something this complex and what the various references mean. For example, why Bombay? And why did you change the form midway through the work? Was this to consciously echo Kubla Khan?
The poetry itself is stellar. I love the rhyme of “classic” and “Jurassic” along with“millions and pavilions.” I also love that slyly Holmesian “afoot the game” with my favorite passage depicting that “darkened room and dreary/Where sat the likes of Freud/And Coleridge and Leary.” Your very explicit reference to Coleridge made me look up Kubla Khan and I learned that Coleridge wrote it after waking from an opium-induced nap (which creates an interesting resonance with Timothy Leary.) I like to think your poetic process was less scandalous. Either way, this is a brilliant, evocative piece.
Honestly, Brian, the plain narrative taken at face value is all there is to understand. Any hidden agendas are beyond my conscious control. The Park had to have been located somewhere, so why not on India’s coast? I’m pretty sure the executive committee did not put it there to ensure the ultimate rhyme in the poem. And yes, form changes were indeed done in imitation of C.’s magnificent poem. Alas, no opium was available to me during the writing of my poem, or it might have been more lengthy. Bear in mind that Freud had a drug problem of his own, involving cocaine, if I am not mistaken.