At a signal from a white glove, the feast begins.
Carried in on salvers, shoulder-high
By braided flunkies
Thick squeaking slices of torchon ham
With mustard slipping on the lip.
Thick white flesh of hake
With warm wet flakes
Placed among low tables.
A gentle tug –
Dull metal forks and spoons
washed and wiped a thousand times –
A liquor peels off the flesh and pools
Amid the buttery oils of dressing.
A thousand shell curves of mussels
Cup into one another
Flecked with samphire.
As the sun bleeds into the western sky
Nightingales ignite the twilight
With languid melody
Echoing through the cedar trees
Which edge the royal platform
The day-long heat lingers on brows
As beads of sweat.
The drooping day proposes shade.
The President and his companions
Lying down
Absorb a cooling ale.
Light winds susurrate
The languorous grasses
That grow beneath the terebinths,
Preluding the effervescing beers
Brought to their couches
And their thin, exhausted lips.
A distant echo.
Sleeping Agamemnon’s Mycenae mask.
The round of beaten gold
Holds sway on the cerulean sea
With its all-seeing oyster eye.
Inside the cooling wood
Clytemnestra slices open, with a single cut,
The royal windpipe.
Aegisthus skulks and smiles.
The sound of
Sluiced saliva dripping drops
From gums and cheeks
Sucked down with fresh fish soup
Chowder clink and chowder clunk
From ceramic oriental spoons
And languid langoustines
Disport on terracotta plates
Curled in unison.
Segmented membranes of grapefruit
Acidic lemon rind, pith,
Bursts of juice encapsulated in
Capsules of bitterness.
Acetic clamp of jaw,
Narrowing of eyes –
Seeing tightness.
Thick steaks of still-bleeding sirloin
Seared outside, raw within,
Small jugs of sauce add heat
And scarlet scald to the plate –
Palette sliced open.
Flesh stretched tight with scorching heat.
Whirlpools of rhubarb strands
Float on bowls of thick yoghurt.
Cloying clotted cottage cheese
Studded with ruby beads of pomegranate.
Processing salvers carrying
Glacial breaks of crumbling cheese
Piquant crotons smooth-pressed and
Snow-white spheres of dulcet chevre
Leaking milk-white liquor-whey.
Blue-veined sharper tangs
From denser segmented Roquefort –
A salty mineral deposit
Grips across the tongue.
Rough-hewn slices from hand-kneaded loaves,
Slathered thick with
Salting butter
Process among the couches.
Upon another salver
Cream rills of fish fat separate
Flaking pink salmon
Encircled with green cumbers.
Cooling quaffed ale floods the mouth
With gentle bitter hops. A-gulping down.
Relieves intensity.
Leafy folds and flaps of chlorophyl
Wrap around the teeth and tongue
Stained with garlic mustard and oil
Tea tannins tighten the
Glossopalatine arch
Sting the uvula
Rasp the buds
Slide across the teeth
Of the modern feasting Belshazzar
And his sweating court.
Rich brown Olmec chocolate –
Xocolatl solids cloy upon his tongue.
And then, ghostlike, the hand appears.
Disembodied it crawls across the
Lapis and turquoise tiles,
And scrawls once more
‘Mene mene tekel upharsin’ it begins.
The frozen silence sinks all sense.
A foreign servant decodes the words.
“You have been weighed in the balance,
And found wanting.”
“You have stewarded the earth
And made it desert.
“You have invented droughts
And tortured land.
“Drills of vines are
Wizened, gnarled and dead.
“Floods wash away the land.
“You feast on what the tilth
And salt sea bore.
You feast in the face of
What you have produced – death.”
The purple mangosteen,
Cargoed from India
Accompanies the bloated President
To his sanctum
Where he voids
Into a golden bowl
Returns with
Vomit on his chin
And laughter in his eyes.
He rolls onto his couch
and the feast resumes.
Courtiers, in sycophantic sympathy,
Who had held their breaths
Begin to breathe again.
Hell bent on self-destruction
Read the words
Boustrophedon.
Outside,
The tide rises higher.