THE SINS OF THE GRANDFATHER (a play in free verse)

End of Scene 3

(( BETTY
You may look out at all that vastness, young man; you may marvel at it, but to the black-robed judge in me, yes, even then … balanced, logical, by all means literal that’s naught but ground fog out there, held aloft by a perfect barometric equilibrium between the downward pressures from above and the upward pressures from below. And even as Robert read, my thought interjected: “Fog … it may look for all intents like something smoldering, but indeed it’s fog! Indisputably, it’s fog.
(Closing her eyes and speaking softly)
Young man …?

ROBBIE
Ma’am?

BETTY
Would it be too bizarre a notion in your mind to think for a moment of standing here beside me?

ROBBIE
Not at all. ))

Scene 4

BETTY
Thank you. You see, I knew I’d be leaving for law school in the fall and there beside me was this pink-cheeked tousled man-child transforming fog to smoke. And more … his mind created a magical land beneath the fog or smoke, then populated it with frightening phantasmagoria.
(And she adds with a finality that was as to latch and bolt the door or slam down the window against the weather of her mischievous memory:)
Some things there are that should be voiceless.
(As though to punctuate this, she clamps shut her lips. During the silence that ensues, ROBBIE glances down at her hand, brings his eyes up to her face, smiles self-consciously, then carries the smile back to her hand. He hears her in-breath, but not its release.)
BETTY [Continued]
Thank you for the loan of yourself.
(Still holding ROBBIE’S hand, she remains silent a moment more.)
I was such a young thing then and so frightened by how enormous and untamed was his vision of life.

ROBBIE
Strange … I grew up seeing Grandpa behind his desk, the phone to his ear, a pen in his hand, but numbers, only numbers on the papers that cluttered his desk. There must have been words written there, but only numbers I remember.

BETTY
He was not happy with his numbers?

ROBBIE
He never said.

BETTY
See the yellow splotches at the tops of the peaks? Will you, before the greedy, plains-eating sun comes—remind me of the Unpopular miracles?

ROBBIE
(Looking down at their hands entwined.)
I’ll start, then, where he poetically imagined the young Betty questioning him—I think scoffingly—of the land below the smoldering plain.

BETTY
And he knew full-well what would be my derision, for they were captured there in the lines he read to me from a paper he held, I remember, with shaking hand.

ROBBIE
(Reciting)
Why not take it on faith
What my imagination knows first-hand?
How, hidden in this valley
Are the unpopular miracles:

Secret groves that dazzle the eyes
As would an emerald sun;
Magnificent trees (those needly towers)
That are loftier and more splendid
Than any child’s dream could make them.
And everywhere, everywhere,
Wildflowers waft a fragrance
Much too delicately perfumed
For anyone … save those witches who,
In veils of white gauze
Whirl among the trees
Beside the path that winds
Round and round beneath their dance.
(feeling the tug of her hand as though it were in the prison of his. And she holds her now freed hand in her other and stares down at them.)
ROBBIE [Continued]
Then you do remember the next line, don’t you?

BETTY
If you did not have his same smile; if you were not the age he was then; if you were not holding my hand as he was—but yes … I remember it viscerally—though not its words.

ROBBIE
Then let me share them with you now, at your safer distance.
(Recites)
No! Don’t go! Not yet, my love;
Or rather we, hand-in-hand,
Step out upon that plain …. No?
Then, hush! And let my words paint
What below, together, we’d surely find;

Below, there are a thousand ponds,
And at each pond’s edge,
Water Sprites imitate the Universe
With their spritely feet
In water so frigidly azure
That on its surface snow and swans
Transform eternally as they drift.

BETTY
(Turning to him)
I must go back now, Robert ….
(Laughing)
Did I call you Robert? It’s because I was so much in that moment then that I was going to say to you: “I must go back, young man, before I test Robert’s premise.” It was to be a joke until Robert’s name popped out, instead of yours … and now … now I’m not so sure.
(Taking a step away from him, then turning back.)
I’m an old woman, but I want you to know that spiritually I was an old woman even then. Not wise in the spirit. Just old in the spirit.

ROBBIE
But if you had been spiritually young back then—?

BETTY
But I wasn’t, so how can I answer now?

ROBERT
Still, you can answer what I need to know. Supposing you had not resisted his premise, holding your hand, would he have stepped off onto the plain?

BETTY
I do believe he would, young man. And he would have been faithful to his poetic imaginings right up ‘til we were dashed against the rocks or impaled on one of those needly towers of his. You smile again ….

ROBBIE
I can see now the girl that Grandpa loved.

BETTY
I was incapable of giving what his spirit needed. Don’t you see? I’d have been that all-devouring sun. I’d have destroyed him.

ROBBIE
Instead, life republicanized him. And his destruction took so much longer. He loved you. He always loved you. Tell me you didn’t love him ….

BETTY
It’s complicated.

ROBBIE
Did you ever marry?

BETTY
I didn’t—no.

ROBBIE
You didn’t want a family?

BETTY
It’s complicated … and you’re being nosey, young man. And there—there’s that infernal smile again.

ROBBIE
You did love him~ And is that a smile on your lips?

BETTY
(Turning)
I’ll be leaving now. I’m going, but you can stay. I’ll wait for you at the rock. It’s fog here; make no doubt about that, but if you wish, you can wait for it to burn off. It’s already beginning, see? When it does you’ll see your Grandpa’s world is truly populated with bushes and trees and rocks—very unpoetic fare that—right?

ROBBIE
Then why don’t you stay with me? Why don’t we—together—prove you right?

BETTY
I’m going now.

ROBBIE
Stay. Let us, in the full glare of the sun, peer down over the edge. Of course, it will be trees, bushes and rocks we’ll see, and we’ll laugh the laughter of the enlightened. Come back! I’ll hold your hand and we’ll look down at the gift of reality the sun has given us. And Bett, listen—

BETTY
Oh, don’t! That was what Robert called me, Bett!

ROBBIE
Listen, we’ll gaze down over the edge, and if—of course, it can’t happen—but if we see, not bushes but water sprites, not rocks, but witches … why then gloriously, hand-in-hand, we shall step off into the delicious ecstasy of their total embrace.

BETTY
Goodbye, young man.

ROBBIE
You won’t stay?

BETTY
Goodbye, Robert.

ROBBIE
Goodbye Bett.

FINAL CURTAIN

THE SINS OF THE GRANDFATHER (a play in free verse)

Welcome to: SCENE 3

LAST OF SCENE 2

BETTY
(Even while doubling over, wheezing and coughing, she seems to rush to say:)
Of course, I knew. Ha! You mean he made you fulfill a promise he was unwilling to perform this side of the grave?

ROBBIE
He always loved you.

BETTY
(Turning away briefly, then back)
If we are to look out upon the muse who breathed into his poem, go with me along this leveler ground-clinging fog that strangely hugs one’s calves, hovering there and no higher.

Scene 3

SETTING: Downstage Right to Upstage Center is a rather freeform, bow-shape “lip” of the precipice. Shrubbery and brush, here and there, follow the contour of the “lip.” Everything on the other side is blackness. From Upstage Right to Left, is the backdrop of the snowy, twin peaks in the distance, which, from mid peak down seems submerged in an ocean of fog. Ground-fog, about one foot tall, covers the remainder of the stage. The tops of the twin peaks glow from the sunlight behind them.

AT RISE: ROBBIE and BETTY stand Centerstage Left, having just reached the crest of the mountain they had climbed. They stand in the ground fog.

ROBBIE
I know he wanted to come.

BETTY
We must hurry, young man, else all will be for nothing if we get there after the sun has burned away the fog.

ROBBIE
(Reciting)
All will vanish;
for nothing that mind creates
can endure that terrible sun,
the sun’s first shafts.

BETTY
Don’t talk; just walk.

ROBBIE
He really did love you.

BETTY
All those years … Why did he not come, then?

ROBBIE
He had my Dad and my Aunt to raise. He had obligations. He had his job. Besides, he said …
(Thinking better of finishing)
BETTY
He said?

ROBBIE
Grandpa said that Betty, above all, would understand that.

BETTY
And he explained those words, did he?

ROBBIE
No, he said it and then he only smiled.

BETTY
If you only knew the irony that smile contained.
(Pointing)
But Look! Look!

ROBBIE
(Having been so intent on their words, he hadn’t noticed, before now, those magnificent twin peaks that seemed to float on an ocean of gray foam. He recites:)
Those peaks
Which eat endlessly the valley
Somewhere beneath the smoldering plain.

BETTY
I think it was over there—yes—there where the edge curves out then back like a pouting lip. Yes, here it is—we’re here now where we stood hand-in-hand, while in his other he held the sheet from which he read.

ROBBIE
It must have been a magical moment.

BETTY
You may look out at all that vastness, young man; you may marvel at it, but to the black-robed judge in me, yes, even then … balanced, logical, by all means literal that’s naught but ground fog out there, held aloft by a perfect barometric equilibrium between the downward pressures from above and the upward pressures from below. And even as Robert read, my thought interjected: “Fog … it may look for all intents like something smoldering, but indeed it’s fog! Indisputably, it’s fog.
(Closing her eyes and speaking softly)
Young man …?

ROBBIE
Ma’am?

BETTY
Would it be too bizarre a notion in your mind to think for a moment of standing here beside me?

ROBBIE
Not at all.

END OF SCENE 3

THE SINS OF THE GRANDFATHER (a play in free verse)

LAST PART OF SCENE 1

(( BETTY
If you don’t mind, I’ll just have you pry me from the prison of this rock and if I succeed in straightening out these ancient legs and convince my egg-shell knees to bear my weight …
(ROBBIE moves, smiling, to the front of her and holds out his hands.)
… then I’ll let you be my crutch for the final hundred yards. When you’re eighteen—but you know this! —the step is truer, the lungs fuller, the trail leveler even when with forsaken, wounded pride you follow alone, mumbling and grumbling behind.

ROBBIE
As you did then?

BETTY
As I did then
(She lets him guide her toward the trail, gingerly over the soggy leaves and needles, her elbow as fragile as a bird in the nest of his palm. He glimpses the glances she tries, in the muted light, to hide.)
Let us agree the sins of the grandfather are now visiting the grandson. ))

ACT I

Scene 2

ROBBIE
(quickly protesting)
But I don’t mind.

BETTY
(On incline of the trail, she lays a cool-soft palm upon his arm, and with a voice strained with the fatigue of the climb, tries to sound oblique and casual.)
How was it Robert mentioned me to you?

ROBBIE
It was after I read the poem.

BETTY
(Hesitantly)
He gave it to you to read?

ROBBIE
He published it on a writer’s website he subscribed to. I read dozens of his other things. This one seemed somehow truer.

BETTY
How truer?

ROBBIE
More honest.

BETTY
(She stops him near the graying crest. Turning him toward her, she holds his shoulders in her hands and studies his face.)
Tell me this, please: I need to know before we are there … Did Robert tell you what he did after reading me his poem?

ROBBIE
After the poem?

BETTY
His cause for flinging that wadded ball of words over the edge?

ROBBIE
No.

BETTY
(After A long silence, she releases her grip on his shoulders.)
But he did ask you to find me?

ROBBIE
Yes.

BETTY
Allow this foolish old woman one question more. Is your grandmother still alive?

ROBBIE
Perhaps. We may never know. Grandpa’s wife, you mean? Yes, yes, she left him when Dad was only ten. Grandpa raised my Dad and Aunt Betty by himself.

BETTY
He named his daughter Betty? But then it’s common enough a name. And your Dad’s?

ROBBIE
His name? Robert as well. Robert—a junior.

BETTY
Ah. Robert.
(Brief pause)
Young man, as you let me lean my weight against you these last few yards, can you suffer one more question?

ROBBIE
Of course, I can.
(Coming to the steepest part of the path widening to the crest—compacted and slick underfoot—ROBBIE angles his arm down her back and clasps her elbow in his palm.)
We’re too near our goal to risk a nasty fall.
(Becomes silent waiting for the framing of her promised question)

BETTY
Why …? I can’t help but wonder why …

ROBBIE
Why what?

BETTY
Why didn’t he …?
(Shaking her head)
Is he ill?

ROBBIE
Grandpa? I’m sorry, I—

BETTY
He always fancied himself as impervious. Invulnerable. A touch of fool immortality in his blood. Why—

ROBBIE
I thought you knew. But then how could you have?

BETTY
I knew? Oh …

ROBBIE
(His arm across her back feels the instant of her insight; the loose flesh firefly shivered into it and were it not for this last incline’s strain on them, he’d have thought the simultaneous sagging of her knees to be from the same unsolicited messenger.)
Here, I’ve got my footing. We’ll not fall. Lean against me these last few feet. Here …
(he boosts her up to the level ground and pulls himself up after her.)

BETTY
(Even while doubling over, wheezing and coughing, she seems to rush to say:)
Of course, I knew. Ha! You mean he made you fulfill a promise he was unwilling to perform this side of the grave?

ROBBIE
He always loved you.

(CURTAIN)
(END OF SCENE 2)

WHEN THE WINDOW IS A MIRROR

Window man

I saw

enough to grieve

his fall;

then drew the blinds,

latched the door—

and proved it is I

who fell.

THE LOVELY YOUNG LADY

There is a lovely young lady

(you know her), the one

In whose soul you’d swear

Ambition speaks in such muted whispers

You might take it for selflessness,

Until, she deems you, like me, benign

Enough to offer a glimpse within,

And then you’ll see…

(As I saw, you shall see)

How, in fact, her soul shrieks,

Indeed, incessantly shrieks

For its elusive reward;

Pitched, though – as from one

Of those curious whistles –

So high that only dogs

And I (and, perhaps you) respond;

Still, she fancies those sacred vibrations

Resonate in her alone.

Oh, never do I tire of studying her:

Obliqueness and indirection

Are essential to the game –

Detachment vital. For it would be

Like studying the foam on a wave

As it swells to sweep over me,

If I am passive to the charm

Of her lassitude.

So, ensconced behind doorways

Peering from many a discreet angle

And at carefully chosen moments

I watch her loll

Her solitary body on her solitary bed

With that indolent sensuality

That one lover for another reserves.

How wondrously curious she is:

Savoring through distended nostrils

The warm fragrance of her mouth’s exhale!

How thoroughly content:

One moist inner thigh coupling the other.

THOSE WINGS

Unable to refuse gross or even subtle demands,

Yet failing always their every execution,

The young boy huddled in his chair,

The young boy made himself small and waited,

Waited for the sound of his name,

A sound to activate him like an automaton…

A sound to propel him onto yet another failure.

(And I could but observe, doing nothing).

If fear, hate, confusion, if dread and desperation:

If all these were given a singular body,

And that body, given movement,

You would clearly see it

(As I am daily doomed to see it),

See it hovering over him now.

More furious than a composite monster

Dredged from the midnight imagination

Of history’s every witch and child,

You would see this fiend,

This ogre with black and veiny wings,

Bearing down on him that moment,

Pushing down his fragile shoulders,

Beating against his bewildered face.

(While I — I can only sit and watch

His torment as my own);

Still…

At the sound of his name

Yet another creature, an indefatigable

And no less seductive, self-invented creature,

Would whirl through him,

And invade him, blood, fiber and brain,

Would send him staggering onto his feet;

Defiant! Ablaze! Striking out —

Though with strangely cautious rage;

And the ogre would rise from his back,

But to soar the while above him,

Nipping now, and now again

At the slope of his shoulders

And rumpled hair, patiently waiting

For another failure,

For the laughter

(For my hidden tears);

Then…

Inevitably then, it would fall again,

Fall over the frail body,

Push him down, down.

Those wings!

That dreadful left wing,

An impenetrable blanket

Over the past;

That horrid right wing flapping,

An opaque skin

Flung on the future…

(And I am left to watch

And watching, weep.)

THE MYSTIC CLOWN

(If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’ll be the only one not laughing…)

Oh ho! Oh ho! the mystic clown,

I mimic waves

And now spew Foam;

And, spilling madness,

Bite the ground;

Monocular, I strut

My one good leg,

Watching through

My one good eye

The Saprophytic faces.

They don’t even smile,

While I heap myself

A splendid sun of sawdust,

Then around it revolve.

They yawn as I, unfolding,

Disobey the Cosmos —

Stop their world to meditate —

My ruminating finger

In the slush-swamp of my nose.

I AM

The mystic clown:

Oh ho!

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THE BOOK OF GENITALS

Before the beginning,

When there was only God,

He writhed with the pain

Of Heaven and Earth

Within His Belly.

He birth’d and then…

There was the Sun,

Distanced from the Nebula;

And the Sun looked out

From the Nimbus

Of his savage heat

And he saw only the Darkness

That he illuminated;

And he felt the pain

Of his own congestion of Alchemy.

On the first day

Out of necessity, he spewed out Earth,

While he remained Earth’s Heaven.

And Earth, as a remnant

Of the pain of birth,

Circled ever around him,

Desiring the fatal re-union.

The Earth, revolving, desirous of love,

And unable to approach

The love it desired,

Spewed up from its entrails —

Out of its desire —

Man and Woman,

Who would forever remain rooted,

Not out of love,

But out of Law

To its mother, the Earth.

So the Sun established the pattern:

Necessity out of pain.

The Earth established the pattern:

Desire birthing its own necessity.

The Sons and Daughters

Of the Sun’s Earth

Established the pattern of both:

Law, which they defied;

Desire, which they deified.

A COUPLE O’ POETIC NIBBLES

STEPPING OUT

[A Haiku]

when fog shrouds pier’s end

Christ may bid your walk test Death’s

sweet promised reward

LOVE RECYCLED

[Not A Haiku]

Love descends –

Cocoons herself

In passion’s ashes,

Longing for her mythic rise

On Phoenix wings.