40/30/4/26
Mermaids Singing RF
By
Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia
( Part 1 )
They sit about on rocks.
Mostly, they sing or comb their hair, staring at mirrors.
Doubtless, they are vain creatures, fish- bodied female merfolk, but think of scales.
Inland Revenue does not know them. No income no tax, no interest.
They are the opposite of stamp duty.
Like fish but also like women,
they however live three centuries, then turn into sea foam.
Their young ones are like tadpoles.
Some used to be part birds. Their songs lure sailors to death on treacherous rocks.
At worst, as the Lorelei of the Rhine, they are sirens.
Their namesakes scream on ambulances.These days that is of little use. Human lives are worthless. Traffic matters, though.
Either way all die eventually.
They have forsaken counterparts and a metal statue on a rock on Langelinie Pier.
They give you a choice between Splash and Godzilla, Snow Princess and Batman.
One is any day better than Barbie for a little girl’s fancy dress idea.
One does wonder about their nether parts
as one would about anything wreathed in seaweed,
such as sea-horses , sea- snakes, seagulls,
flapping herons, bobbing brown mice, drowsy water rats and bubbles on frothy waters.
One would not like to think of them as lobsters in pots waiting to be curried.
( Part 2 )
Now since my own short poem within this long poem is done,
and I have successfully resisted the temptation of bringing in sci- fi , or Lamia and Keats,
let me allow myself finally to wallow in lachrymose melancholy and break into song not with Goblin Market Rossetti ( Come buy )
or Merman Arnold ( Come away, Children) ( not yet)
but with Celtic Butler Yeats :
“ Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.”
Wait, wait, Mermaids Singing,
there’s also like you, disinherited
El Desdichado Nerval
“I have dreamt in the grotto where the Siren swims …
And twice I have crossed the Acheron, victorious:
modulating on the lyre of Orpheus in turns
the Saint’s sighs and the Fairy’s cries.”
Be it Pegasus winging,
David slinging, or
Mermaids singing,
I can never resist the temptation
To turn my poem into a patchwork tapestry
Of intertextuality since remembered poetry
From rich human literary history
Across civilizations
Keeps coming to mind
Consistently,persistently,
Insistently wanting quotation
So bear with me, for if you will,
It will enrich you,endlessly.
Donne challenged his interlocutor
to teach him to hear mermaids singing
implying that they don’t.
They are not mandrake roots.
Eliot said he heard them singing each to each but that he did not think they would sing to him.
He did not part his hair behind.
Reader ,
Do you fancy a sea- change ?
A Viking Burial at sea ?
Join Shakespeare’s Ariel
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands.
Curtsied when you have, and kissed
The wild waves whist.
…..
Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.
Hark, now I hear them: ding dong bell.”
Would you, dear Reader, like to know
How and where Merfolk live ?
Then let go nowto Arnold’s Forsaken Merman and Merkinder
“Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?”
….
“Come away, away children
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing: "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."
Merfolk are more faithful then Humans it would seem
Though Humans have Souls of which Merfolk merely dream.
( ASA )
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