Itinerary in Zero

The fog lifts momentarily in places,
Unveiling long corridors shot through with weird yellow light,
Perspectives of the unmapped city.
A full moon bivouacs in the purple,
Enfilades of light mesmerize in glass globes
Under the arches of cavernous arcades.
A lunatic huddles at the base of a statue,
Gibbering and laughing at everything.
In the casino the croupier performs on automatic,
His eyes distant, dreamy and sad.

In the morning sonorous clouds of swifts
Invest the trees like thoughts in a nervous mind.
The purring green river stalks through the city;
A wind from nowhere haunts the trees
In the military graveyard where wild anemones
Thrive among the tombstones on parade.

In the forbidden citadel the corridors are endless,
Mazy chambers proliferate in echoing confusion,
Incongruous layers mingled in time.
In a peeling apartment stands a concubine’s bed,
Rotting, shrouded in cobweb curtains.
Sometimes you think you hear a ghostly flute
Calling form the prison tower.
Four hooded figures march out through the Gate of the Dead,
Carrying a long cocoon between them.
A secret staircase leads the favoured daughter
To an assignation in the mirror-room,
Where the master hides in fear of assassins,
Glancing all around him as he paces back and forth,
Stiffening at the slightest sound.
In the dungeon far below Their Excellencies, the Deaf-Mutes
Terminate a prisoner with swift dispatch,
Oblivious to anguished pleas for mercy.

Blundering through thorny thickets in the midday liquescence,
You emerge at strange ruins where hierophantic storks
Drift across inlets, and stone sarcophagi
Rest on the shingle like drawn-up canoes.
Shattered aqueducts, echoing amphitheatres, archways about to collapse:
Bone-bits, potsherds, fragments of iridescent glass:
Why did you come here? Why did you come?
You can barely even remember where you first came from.
Sometimes cloaked shepherd boys materialise, hissing,
As if they were the snake-eyed dead evicted from their graves
Into the vandalized necropolis, its broken coffin-lids askew.

In a heron-legged café in a coastal resort
Tourists sit gloomily as the surf booms underneath
And a waterspout appears offshore.
The omens are evil. This year has claws to harm us.
At night lightning shrills; instantaneous epiphanies
Of the sea delirious on the crags
And ghostly castles on the headlands.

Solemnly, slowly, the sun rises over the desert,
Non-existent lakes shimmer on the horizon,
Silhouettes of camels expand and contract,
Dust devils chase one another across the sand.
A beehive mud city hums into action,
Crowds moving in tremulous subaqueous rhythm
Through dappled shadow alleys half-riot half-dream.
Everywhere pious hands have obeyed
The strictures of cosmic asymmetry:
Rug-patterns hanging in the bazaar,
Keyhole arches of exquisite imperfection.
Shopkeepers crouch in their cubbyholes,
Telling their worry-beads hour after hour, year after year,
Dreaming of hard cash and the houris in Paradise.

You move on again, dissatisfied, never knowing why,
Embracing then renouncing, misreading the signs,
Standing apart from everyone, above all yourself,
Desperate for some temporary solace.
Look where you have landed now:
The city of penitents where a silent brotherhood
Process through the festive streets, their wizard eyes
Menacing through slits in their tall black pointed hoods,
Carrying wands and candles, swingigng thuribles of incense,
Accompanied by eerie airs on oboes and bassoons.

The ship puts in at a smouldering coast
Of white ash desert and blackened arboreal bones,
Where a forest fire has been.
This town is shaped like a fish’s skeleton,
The spooky wind ululating through its gills.
In the palace-hotel resplendent staff
Parade through the glistening marble foyer
Like a forgotten garrison of imperial troops.
Jaded habitués sip cocktails at the bar
As the pianist in his tuxedo plays a maundering tune.
The immense salon with its gilded columns
And affluent putti romping across the ceiling
Crushes all thought and action in its void;
Stricken with agoraphobia, you scuttle round the edges,
Avoiding the chandelier’s vast shadow.
From the window of Room13 you can see the postcard view,
You can order room service, ask for anything at all,
But do not linger too long before the mirror
Or enquire about the other guests who just disappeared somehow.