A Rambling about that English Hamlet 余談詩

A Rambling about that English Hamlet

O Man, do you see that merry English hamlet?
Those big gaping mouths on the mounded earth called doors,
an opening in a rising hillock covered in venomous grass?
The roof shingled with baked red clay, smoke-proof.
Fulminate with ash awhile there is something in the kitchen cooking.
The cool and dingy air blows from window seams, overspreading
Dust and brown particles, drizzling, brought by gales from some unknown upstream or downstream, un-prestine,
Sometimes with ancient, rotten fish stink.  Perfumed with saltiness of seaweeds. the seas besiege their cities eternally: an isle. 
The craft of the building appears to be adapted from that of building horse- stables. Its aim is to be capacious.
The doors---where once were lavished with elements of medieval or classic styles,
full of decorations and considerations for body and soul..and was beautiful.
lintels, knockers, Knocker plates, Pediments, Flanking pilasters, carvings, friezes,  finials----now you get a wooden plank and a metal knob.
And out from the sight of dull, greasy 21st century glass-windows one can see a yard of
overgrown dark-green grass, shady as if on the bank of an invisible stream,
from which shelter oft, many an overpopulated flock of hens straighten up their neck
dirty-feathered and full of unsettling verve for birthing… they steal a jocular peek at Man. 
there is a cock there sometimes with wan ruddy Crest, sometimes two, and that will be the sign of fighting.
the loser that loses one-eye in battle is said to be especially wise, witches and hags revered them in Wiccan superstition;
until in the butcher's shop they have their throats cut while gagged,
their blood drained quickly while from the post their body was danglingly hanged in inverse,
their claws hooked to that dead whorl-grained World-tree, the body was stretched by heavy earth downwards---that was some good wisdom-pondering!
O suffering of Odin!
Though in a slaughterhouse they have cocks hanged up in a line on the rail,
so many suffering demigods!
Within the House, divans and settes were from "Hardware Stores",
without cushions, or with ones bought with less than digital pounds.
The chairs were stubborn and inhospitable to guests; treewright-less, few remembers the noble virtue of guest-friendship of their athelingly forebears.
Markedly in the centre of the theatre, always a humble table or two
inflexible planks too, covered with plastic table cloth devoid of intelligent patterns.
to share some cold salted pork, eggs and uncooked greens, and dragon-belching "coca-cola". pillaged from some kitchen hearth under an anarchist government of English cuisine and bad cooking manners "a la mode."
The most worthy time were spent dining,
The cutlery made of fire-forged stainless steel,
polished by a brazen-ark of a butler-and-squire -- spewing from his tongue scummy bubbles
accompanying metallic drumbeats of polishing machines till they are as if war-ready spears and seaxes burnishing (ach, "dish-washer");
eating, that was some un-chivalric combat to them, honourlessly frantic, the English folk, the House of Commons ; 
for survival, loud and brutal smack down the chopping-knives and piercing-forks upon smoky dead pig-flesh that yells back in jumping oil,
there was some pain from ploughing and sowing, and animal fattening in a cold land-nation…
raiding berserk rage of the seas too, lo:
how the raw egg yolk was lapped up greedily
close to the widely open jaw
as if by a slobbering blood-lusty hunting-hound,
and then the dog bites into the tender white flesh
even if it were long dead and charred, as if in galley-melee smote
by the black cooking-hammer of an intemperate and oafish Thor;
though after the carnal revelry over body-juice and red-meat which seeds of calorie surely would deform their flat belly,
they became from hungry beasts to timid goats and cows, gentle but unthinking,
munching on that green herby mess,
dressed with fragrant sauces looking like white bird-droppings,
ruminating perhaps, though apparently they turn to each other
full of dumb livestock-stare in reciprocation, and their bleating talking.

The soup is usually Indian lentil and funky, they stole their soup not the sense for spices. 
The bean tins are undecorated sentinels guarding their uninspiring sculleries
(from the Frenchmen over there across the channel,
defending their virtues and mores to this day.
especially in terms of culinary customs and understanding of art and literature.
the Britannic knights-of-boars charge at everything blindly
with a tin-can (of baked beans) in place of helmet upon their head!) 
If one fell into a Christmas pinch, they would be your Gen d'arme 
where more generous guet-royal of canteens and shops close their doors to
hungry outlander students due to ongoing charity behind the holly-adorned doors.
When the clock in the belfry of unoccupied churches strike 12 times twice, 
Then all retreat like hopping idiots to the overwarmed drawing room
heated by a big-boned and clumsy, magic-fanner dwarf,
with ceremonial white paint covering his face,
feeding on lightning fed through cable-gyves…
a slave never complaining, only fuming.
The Room was vast and full of immaterial substance,
unread books veiled by dust labeled to be worth a fortune,
whose golden sleep no one dare disturb on a student loan,
pamphlets with trying limerick verses of ads ---lucklastre hawkering poets who read humanities at Anglo-Yankee universities.
The magical Palantir has the Power of Television.
It makes farm animals stare with a blank mind,
In submission to the All-Seeing Eye of the worldly political entities and their interests,
Remember that chicken charmed into staring
at the while chalk line as if having lost its soul,  in the film by
Herr Werner Herzig?
It was probably due to some working of the chicken's eye or brain nerves, making white noises in garbage television to be perceived as if rainbowy poetry. 
They discussed---regurgitated what they did for the day--
idling with technical farming paraphernalia in the field
while watching cash-crops grow,
about the sentiments and motions of their Lieges, Ladies and Lords of Kingdoms,
and the whims of the prices of grain in the market;
or how much gold they hoarded or hid under their floorboard,
boasting a tale or too about found and stolen treasure-grove in sham bucolic heroism *1;
more often they have nothing in life worth telling,
they spew out names of some selling chapbook-wrights
rehashing again with their venal words in quackery
(that they half-read and half-understood, for they wrote poor English),
and in concluding this Mundane-World is doomed and joyless, 
in hypocritical and utterly cryptical laughter of dead Romans (did they conquer Britain as a fact?) they spirited away to their chamber 
holding spittoons and chamber pots fit as vessels for tonight's secret carousals behind the door.
(oh, those serfs, boors and peasants…
they never do change.)
in the empty room left there is only the Night of Naught…
the winds blown from the dwarf-slave…his fanning
were unbearably hot and agonizing,
the talking of Englishmen was the counting-down
of how much time left till the meat becomes ripe…
t'was fitter warmth for smoking---bacon in a smokehouse.
That was when I have understood, the gaping holes of Hobbits,
are undoubtably the opening mouths of Orcus.
English-folk rose and lay everyday within His cavern cavity,
struggling with heat and smoke in his bowels,
seething with unfulfilled or broken
oaths for great life and adventure, or marriage
(that is most likely to be a disaster…),
but all died as husks of pallid worms
(that was the end of the Lamb who derided the existence of Tyger)
carried out on a litter, destined for crematorium.
The priest often stutter when they bid the last rites
in front of that smokestack-forged urn.
or has too thick an accent to be understood;
which is no trouble as it was always Latin
or Greek to them. They did not read the Book.
And if they live a bit longer,
they gaze at their neighbours in the continent with more clement weather and a sunny disposition with jealous green eyes.
And when they have gathered enough
magical power---of hoarded gold
under their floorboard below the earth,
enabling their transatlantic flight to their neighbours like assaulting
horse-flies dressed in full shining black English Panoply, (dinner-jacket)
in their head with half-witted verses in dog Latin, school French and No German No,
bumbling their way through the maze of
those old and decaying medieval cities, revived
for tourism economy,
ate their meat, eggs and greens again at a table (aha! that's reason for the dinner jacket! good occasion!),
asked their new-fangled electronic status-devices to paint
a pretty portrait of English gentlefolk during travels, boasting a little 
over the telecommunications.
and return again on a boat or plane with either emptiness,
regrets, (for having not truly experienced…
the culture, the spirit, the richness of humanity's commonweal)
or that dumb gladness of being able to return to their little hut,
(sleep, to sleep!)
to their little hobbit hole, to the mouth of the profound Orcus….
enter their would-be graves, their last destination for earthly pilgrimage.
the rest, the stop, the sleep-cave..the entrance to the underworld…
the dream…
Well, England sure is a gateway to Hell. 
O Orcus. Orcus. Who hanged upon the cavern wall before us.
I live upon the night, but I desire that missing volcanic forge-fire.

*1 (if a cock or a hen is to slay a dragon. he would have to resort to being deviously smart, or funny, or ridiculous. or how can such a person win in the world without turning into a clown? fighting those he or she is powerless against with absurdity and the morality of self-denial or world-denial? or in rare cases, by ill-gotten or mis-begotten gold. sheer luck. serendipity. alas. the gist of the English adventuring spirit. there is no more strange lands to explore and get lucky in. colonialism is commercialized and industrialized now.)