9. Some Churches Visited In the Ile De France (25a/b, 
										  26-31)
	`If music be the food of love play on'
	for in such fixed devotion let our praise
	find a voice in that which we seek to find
	that therein, through sweet harmony itself;
	in exchange, our reward is met in kind..?

i. Notre Dame (26)

A stiff, stone facade of regal figures
overthrown in revolution restored, remake
a sombre impression, standing four square 
in a solid basalt grey, buttresses flying
above the Seine, pinnacles pricking
the bland conscience of a graphite sky,
doorways that welcome the masses,
embracing a staring crowd easily pushing 
past ten thousand other tourists.
A swarm of shadows congregate in the aisles,
circumambulate anti-clockwise in this edifice.
In contrast solitary nuns slowly amble around 
the roped off regions of the distant nave 
beside the altar leaving half this church 
in the unreal presence of a surreal peace.
Side altars catching sidelong looks and glances,
rendered useless in this sea of humanity,
spoiled in the shabby passages of time.
At the back a renovated organ swollen in pride 
swallows the noisy silence, reinvigorating 
the air before two huge, magnificent rose windows 
whose individual pieces of painted glass
are fused in a complex chromatic scintillation,
a locked tension frozen in rotation
high in the recessed walls, down both sides,
of this impressive feat in sacred architecture...

ii. Sainte Chapelle (27)

In the midst of a palace long gone
stands embedded in newer ancient walls
the royal chapel of the kings of France.
Like a dim and dusty wine cellar
yawns one ground floor, we enter 
and pay our fares, then by the narrow 
spiral stairs we wind our way upwards 
unto this field of ecstasy in stained glass.
Around the walls, like delightful 
oriental carpets designed in light,
visual motifs perform dazzling arabesques
across these psychedelic window panes
raised in sky blues and glowing golds 
immersed in rampant blood soaked reds.
Encircled figures before the eyes of God
preach a message filtered a thousand ways.
A slightly later rose window shines behind 
our backs; an iridescent garden of blooms
in pale yellows and emerald greens.
In front the painted canopy of a Gothic altar 
broods along with a number of other bits and 
pieces from a past thoughtfully re-simulated...

iii.	Chartres (28)

How contemplative, 
how serene the mandala
of this wonderful edifice.
In the darkness the glass
glows with an ethereal blueness,
the floor undulates
under ten thousand feet
with a hushed temperament 
that still maintains 
a strict tranquillity...

High up in the middle 
of this cavernous space,
like the outstretched wings 
of a gigantic eagle,
nests an antique organ loft...

Once commonplace but now unique
panel by panel, almost complete,
the illuminated pieces of glass 
divest the twisted threads 
of a thousand biblical stories
fashioned and framed in lead...

High up beyond the altar,
in a separate chancel
faithfully bridged by steps,
rests the material cause 
for the erection of this building
for in a simple elevated case 
lies a fabricated piece of linen
with a story too inconceivable 
to re-tell, a tale re-told instead
in the labours of those craftsmen
whose silent skills put together
such a monument to the glory
of what man can do,
what man can become..?

But too sweet an anticipation 
left me less hungry for the sight
of this stained glass 
for in the dark quietness
of the semi-circular ambulatory,
around the bishop's well-carved chair,
found the pillared sentinel-like 
sculptures infinitely more engaging.
Like those portal doorways,
these instantiated signs 
of spiritual ideals
fleshed out in stone,
in perfect repetition
left my attention 
the more entranced...

iv. St. Gervais (29)

Couperin le Grand
once graced this organ loft,
spread above the front door,
and now another Frenchman
plays his music
along with the pages 
of some of his other 
European contemporaries.
The fluted pillars 
of this ancient church
repeat themselves,
in a broad sweep
a series of arches
span the centuries.
The tidal to and fro
of an army of pipes
obey the commands  
of the same tracker action,
a choir of notes
in a sedate dance maintains
a well measured pulse
with an air of majesty.
Rows and rows of pews,
some at right angles 
to each other, surrounded
by regions of emptiness,
have heard it all before,
but each time played 
like this renewed afresh.
Waiting at the door,
past the person holding 
the official collection plate,
stands a row of young beggars
with habits that will thank you
for the  mindless repetition 
of your last donation...

v. La Madeleine (30)

A classical church for pagan snobs
that hobnob before a public
that odd Sunday once or twice a year,
or more often if one's climb in grace
is equal to the pace that pressures
the presentation of ones face
once a week, four times a month...
through fear of falling in this race
for rats that insures one's name
remains on this roll call of fame 
in this elite that, under the sun,
knows well its place through the fact
of substitution in this long sad litany 
of forever uncertain mortality...

vi. The Chapel At Versailles (31)

Through the main doorway I stand and stare,
for here stood Louis the XIVth when he passed
on his way to church, an ornate semblance 
of a hall in cream and gold with a resonance
that allowed the finest voices to fill the air
with sounds not dissimilar to those heard
in those gilded salons around the corner, 
or, in those lengthy seasons of opera,
dramas perfectly performed in the confines
of his equally treasured royal theatre..?

	Everything must be done with style,
	be done to a silent music
	that has a beat and tone in sound
	that will delight the inner ear
	with subtle harmonies profound..?

10. London: Convention Center For Eccentrics (32)

Concentric circles encirle 
centers for eccentrics,
conventions for such 
solitary souls engender
a critical mass that nominates 
London as such a site
and in this tale I tell, 
or rather, more like short tails,
or even prophetic entrails,
will thread a yarn or two 
to paint a picture interwoven
that will surely prove my point 
that this capital attracts 
the very best, quality specimens,
whose collective vision 
finds us some where in between,
so that by scattered proxy 
pin points an approximation 
of this thoroughly human town!

Wandering around this city
like lost weeds, and bald
before their prime, puny skinheads
saunter past looking pretty mean
nervously holding hands;
boys with toy boys,
leathered girls with gals,
either sex in long rows
trying hard to shock the now
punk inoculated masses.
There in Picadilly Circus they merge
into the picture and theatre crowds,
equally ignored by passing 
gangs of noisy, long-haired 
motor-biking lads sporting
Harley Davidsons, riding
around and around, joking,
likewise speeding nowhere, 
not going anywhere too fast,
inevitably to that same statue 
					re-turning...

In London a thousand immigrant
tongues are spoken and in English
a thousand dialects more;
and here, in a small cafe, three 
middle-aged ladies meet for tea.
A first lady said, `Luv, I said Luv, 
I said Luv, look Luv I'v said 
I have said it all before
there's ain't no difference 
between them darkies and us,
when's all said and done
we's all bleed the same.'
A second lady said, `Yes Luvy,
I know, we all know that, Luvy,
but do them darkies think we know that,
you know them ones that agitate,
undercut yi' wages looking for work,
you know,' she said, `want our jobs,'
want my old job cleanin
them fancy offices I do.'
And a third lady spoke, `Oi, Loove,
you canny say that, them tanned 
fellows are friends with mi' hubby,
drink in the same pub they do.'
`Almost exactly them words I told 
my husband,' said the first lady, 
`I said Luv, I said Luv, yi' cunnot
read a booke by its co'ver;
they look's almighty fine to me,
and I like's their food,
I really do, but, still give me 
a really good stew any day.'
`Yi'canny beat a good stew
my mum used to say, puts hair 
on the chest of yi' menfolk,'
said the third lady,
`always did keep them brews
colour alternated, colour coordinated, 
all in all ne'er did repeat mi'self,
there's always some need for variety,
why, black one week, white the next
followed by a hale and hearty brown,
or a pale grey, or a bleedin orange
stuffed with carrots and veg.'
Nodded agreement all around 
signaled affirmation. 
The first lady then commented,
`mind you from experience 
I found that if, for a change, 
you use some curry 
don't make it too strong and spicy,
and a good cook shouldn't 
leave the pot overheated yi' know, 
and don't forget to re-stir it
from time to time too!'
`I like it hot, very hot, 
but not too hot, Luvy,
you know what I mean,'
said the second lady tentatively..?
`Aye, aye, that I do, Loove,'
said the third lady,
with a shy, half-hidden smile, 
or two...

I wandered into one more antique bookshop
and asked them if they had any volumes 
printed before the sixteen hundreds, 
and after the shop keeper said, 
`over here I have a few,' I was surprised 
to find myself being asked by one more 
customer what I might instead have for sale?
`I specialize in Shakespeare, especially
his religious thought, his Christian tendencies...'
This professor from Texas, I now forget 
his name, was then most annoyed to hear me 
postulate that I thought our William was 
more a pagan, Neoplatonic philosopher...
`Have you read my latest offerings, 
do you know my definitive works, I am 
a world authority in this field you know,'
and instantly wanted me to quote chapter 
and verse as if the flavour of an author can 
be tasted and digested in a sentence or two.
Without another moment passing then showed me 
two photos of his two safes where he stores
his collection, the best in existence
I am insistently informed, although obviously 
deep down still thinks it could be better,
the doors forever remaining open to improvement
(should I be mean and spin him a yarn 
about a folio of thirty plays I have, 
all hand written, given to me by an elderly 
English aunt from the good old countryside
that cultivates the folk from Warrick County?)...

It had just got dark 
and the restaurants 
were now starting to fill
when lo and behold 
two thin, long-haired fellows,
badly in need of a haircut,
barely out of school,
in full view of one 
fancy establishment
undid their flies 
and on tip toes with one leg 
against the edge of 
the nearest rubbish bin
decided that here was 
the perfect place 
to make a statement, 
to have a free pee,
a much needed piss
for all to see. 
The purple haired ladies 
and their husbands
seated in the front window
were all open mouthed
with astonishment,
like stunned fish in
an aquarium ready 
to be grilled 
and served on 
a banquet platter.
In retrospect they
hardly deserved 
a rave review,
a jovial joust at society,
a full frontal jest 
performed so innocently,
a performance dismissed 
by a hearty laugh
by these two uncouth,
uncut fellows responding 
to the calls of nature,
not too eager to wait 
for a second, or a third, 
curtain call, only
a final smile 
that said it all....

The roads in old London Town are want 
to disappear from view into simple lanes 
and then alley ways that merely interconnect.
On my tourist map these pathways were 
barely suggested, and lost in all but 
the direction of my flight was startled 
to hear from one dark doorway corner
that I was definitely not invited!
`Young man, do you have an appointment
to attend this court of mine, 
to travel through this palace
of Queen Marquerita the Magnificent?'
There, to the side, spread an elderly
overweight lady seated in the midst 
of a multitude of white plastic bags,
with a few here and there in vivid colours,
making the impression of an almighty skirt 
hooped in a low orbit about her presence,
her regal smile and well practised hand-wave 
then curtly re-sending me on my way.
Taken unaware, once more, one more voice 
from another doorway, further down this 
inhabited lane, then told me in the 
drawl of a drunken stammer that she was
`Maggie the Bag-Lady who ain't no lady,'
and was duly informed that she was
`always willing to share her virtue
if you care to give her a few shillings 
or, in a rough trade, a cigarette or two,'
his sentence ending in the hard-hearted 
laughter of a dis-loyal subject who had,
for the moment, lost his indispensable art 
of a social-climbing, self-seeking flattery...

`Jeremy, be a good chap and see 
if you have in stock, or could buy 
at auction, a nice ormolu vase 
like the last one you 
discovered for me, you see, 
I was practising my golf swing 
when the club inadvertently 
caught that vase from behind
and smashed it to smithereens.'
`Bloody nouveaux riches,' said 
the dealer to a close client-friend
well after his customer had left 
his studio; premises for fine design
and interior re-decoration.
`Thank goodness I don't furnish him
with anything too rare,
this is not the first time
that client of mine has failed
to appreciate those trifles 
lent to us in our passage 
through this decaying world.
Why don't I close a little earlier
this afternoon and together visit that 
gallery of fine oriental porcelain 
I had promised to show you.'
`Tell me,' said this valued friend,
`do you ever desire to own
some of those most elegant wares,
do you ever dream to be the 
proud possessor of such fine things,
and does such acquisition interfere
with one's pure enjoyment of such
perfectly crafted artistry?'
`You, my friend, are a connoisseur
indeed, such wonderful questions.'
`Yes, I would like to be their owner
if only for all of ten seconds.
On the other hand possession
shouldn't interfere with 
the purest of such fine enjoyment,
only, ownership usually gives us
a more intense interest in the same.'
`And the responsibility to look after
such heavenly treasures,' stated
the close friend, `although 
such appreciation should never 
be infested by an evaluation 
of monetary value - even a rock 
or a polished piece of wood, 
even that original tree itself,
can be enjoyed in the undiluted
light of the radiance of its own being.'
`Such poetic sentiment, so mystical
and sublime, unsullied by the grasping
and profit churning of commerce
in that heartless, artless art 
of the calculating market 
of the art-world; that hard, 
harsh light of a cold reality.
Alas, how sad it is that too often 
people with good taste have no money 
and people with money have no taste, 
indeed, how perverse can God get, 
should she exist that is, to make 
us all so unique, each and everyone 
of us an eccentric in some form 
or other, all equally bizarre, 
each person a person
of different taste.'
`I say, in this hierarchy  
of natural things, 
such awesome equality 
is dreadfully democratic, 
don't you think..?'

So a simple series of tales
have now been retold, 
a bold experiment 
in moral philosophy 
or virtual reality,
but where does the moral
reside but between these
crude and shapeless verses?
Can eccentrics be truly alone,
truly solitary,
are not cities really 
convention centers for 
the common similarity
of the differences
between the instances 
of our humanity?
Finding new meaning
in the shaping of rituals,
deconstructing the old,
rewriting deconstruction,
forgetting our displacement
as heroic individual
struggling against the world.
Sharing a cup of tea, or,
pouring it into someone 
else's waiting lap;
the meaning is always there,
always shared, never fully
understood, never completely
mis-interpreted, signs indicating
the manipulation of significance
re-investing a wealth 
of differing differences in 
a continually deferred deferment,
the encirclement of the phenomenon,
its re-simulation, a simulation
of the simulation in a direct
stimulation of the perception.
Friends always shaking hands
and shaking their heads 
in the grip of the body electric 
that surrounds the relationship.
Perturbations in our daily orbits
sending people to town;
countrysides revolving around
villages, satellites de-centered 
about urban conurbations in 
a mental community of nations,
marginalized in a world 
without edges:
eccentricities in cities,
cities of eccentrics, 
forever centers and refuges,
re-constituting conventions 
for the less conventional;
standards forever broken, 
the broken forever
	waving standards..!

11. An Apparent Pilgrimage To Canterbury Cathedral (33)

I leave the bus 
and walk towards 
the high spire passing 
an old castle mound 
now no longer fortified. 
The rain on the cobbles 
makes them slippery, 
hardly a danger now
for the careful 
when compared to 
those earlier times 
when pilgrims walked 
all the way on foot.
Making all the right motions 
I give the semblance 
of simple pilgrim soul, 
a lengthy church service 
waiting for me, waiting for 
my entry in this former shrine. 
No tourists please, 
only people attending 
the morning service, 
thank you, and I duly 
entered therein...

Sprinkled throughout
the text of the sermon
were innumerable, light-hearted 
allusions to attempts 
being made to attract 
church going customers.
Before me I hear a bishop
agonising over attendances,
or rather, the lack of them,
statistics reflected 
in the offered takings.
Between the lines see
an Anglican Church out
humiliating itself,
flogging the form 
of a dead horse,
gently flagellating itself 
before a dying public,
in a public today swollen
by the commemorative nature 
of this service - 
for here were even 
unofficial representatives 
of the local Catholic Church,
a sprinkling of the 
Salvation Army, chief
characters from the Police
and the military forces,
the Ambulance Service,
the local school for 
the developmentally disadvantaged,
a number of other organizations,
a few genuine pilgrims 
and, no doubt hidden
in this assembly of people,
a few more tourists 
like myself either posing
or passing for the members
of a faithful congregation.
Eventually the service 
came to a final conclusion!
Was confession in 
or out of fashion
I was to question myself
while I wait and watch,
were they part-time sinners
or token church goers
tasting wafers among
those long queues of persons 
taking holy communion..?

The cathedral was quite long,
and as I was to find out,
was even longer still
for beyond the lower altar,
ascending in an easy pace,
stretched the sanctuary
culminating at its highest point
in an empty tomb 
now completely shattered
and thoroughly scattered
of that famous British saint 
the saintly Becket, 
the appointed Bishop,
that poor politician
murdered by his king;
or at least by that king's
tacit assent, in effect,
a mortal sin, if only 
by the penitent acts 
of such an omission...

On an empty floor
stood a single flame,
a simple image
of a spirit that still
lives on in name...

A few paintings from the past 
stare sadly from the wall
rediscovered under 
the cracking plaster,
an intimation of the beauty
that once consecrated
and celebrated the home 
of the bones of this 
humble man at home in the flesh
like the rest of us
who could also rise
above the ways of this world
when the right occasion 
called for it..?

But Pilgrims take heart,
in this if you can,
for the atomic matter 
that once participated
in the body of any one hero
when perfectly distributed 
is forever underfoot
making the travels 
of a pilgrim sacred
and holy all the way,
each and every day,
making our passage 
through this world
forever one more moment
in the semblance and pretence 
of a spiritual play
where the body of the cast
is itself cast in sacred clay.
Eternally on the move
an army of saints
re-meeting each other
on a pilgrimage
in a mobile shrine
more holy than the 
mere resonances 
found in the sounds 
of one's own name,
a frame from which,
hopefully, in mediation,
only the immaterial movement 
of the spirit can escape,
moment by moment,
in the eternal second 
that forever echoes 
in the emptiness 
of the sacred landscape,
grounds without grounds,
whose brand-name `is'
that nameless `name' 
that knows `no name..?'

Outside, the sky is now
no longer merely grey,
a careless sun highlighting
bright patches of white cloud 
that some day must finally 
dissolve in the brilliant blue
of a translucent ether.
Putting aside all speculation
and remembrance of things past
for the concrete presence 
of the world before me,
I now re-trace my path 
back to that bus station,
re-catching my bus,
that takes me back to that ferry
waiting in port freshly washed 
by recent showers of rain,
ready to leave, beneath 
	those white cliffs of Dover...