Canto I

In history, one might entertain

A thousand moons align, a celestial arrow

To intersect the conduit of a thousand destined suns

Before you might guess at the journey to come.

I was relayed a request, in late November,

From a widow who resided with her son

In the gully of Saint Le-Mon.

It was near unknown, that a pensioner

From the ebb of the failed metropolis

Should procure the materials

Necessary to warrant My attention.

More curious yet: her request.

“It seems her ward contests

To depart her stead,”

Sayer Tintom dictated,

Scanning the manuscript.

My inkling was Freudian,

But perhaps premature.

“Reserved?” I asked.

Sayer Tintom nodded.

“Obsessive?” I assumed.

Sayer Tintom nodded.

“Pubescent?” I reflected.

“No,” Sayer Tintom frowned,

Bemused, “she’s nearly fifty now.”

“The boy, Miss Tintom!” I sorely begged,

My head weighing on the strain of my neck.

Sayer Tintom smirked knowingly,

Near mischievously.

“He is no child at all,

A bachelor of befitting age.”

A frost flooded my brow

Contradicting the toxic combination:

Heated air and tension.

To be blessed with the curse

Of the Hypochondriac!

The Manic! or Melancholic!

From the lowlands they creep,

Sinking in their fortunes of paper and plastic.

So fell tension with arms, to a windowsill

So fell my gaze to the wards of staff,

Where a guzzle of youth gathered ‘bout

An elderly nurse with blistered palms.

Held high a tome of medical merit;

Holding it so that God might approve

Of her exalted interment.

“‘Tis not the duty of Doctor to indulge

Her… familial affairs.

But if a mind should be ill,”

(Knowing the state

Would compensate

My despair)

“I might indulge her still.”

I turned to fasten the smug buckle

Of My windbreaker

To set foot toward my fellows

Occupying the philosopher’s lounge-

But, was halted abruptly.

“Speak, Sayer Tintom,” I said,

Rubbing the beads from my forehead.

My receptionist humbled me

With an odd expression

That one expects when sympathetic

Toward a suffering beast.

“I beg of you, doctor,” she pleaded.

“My family is in debt to Ms Farebell,

And so too,

Would she be indebted to you,

If cast, you might,

But a moment to delight-”

“Farebell?” I postulated,

A spark in the leisurely fragments

Of my imagination.

“This wreck designated ‘Farebell’

Had she widowed the late Charles?”

“I think so,” she stammered,

Receding from my frenzied grasp.

No sooner had she gasped in shock

Than had my claws seized the scriptures

And my senses took stock.

And a fragment of notation anointed such glee,

That common sense faded to aquatic clarity.

“Ms Farebell is bedridden?”

I prodded Sayer Tintom for accuracy,

Secretly delighted of remittance

I was certain to receive.

“No, doctor,” she reply,

Much to my dismay,

Discontent and dismissal.

“Then marked thee a stroke

That burdens us both!

Check another falsehood

And so be your employment,

Sayer Tintom!” I thundered

In a most precautious tone.

But, far from relapsing,

Sayer Tintom wound her chords,

As to finish a thought.

“Some years ago,

A younger Madam had found herself,

Disfigured

Without the constitution

For public persecution.

She resides in isolation,

Fearing contamination

Of her fragile disposition,”

Said the Sayer sternly.

I turned my cheeks away and panted,

Exhausted,

“Well… very well and so be it then.

Tell her that I shall see to her case,

No later than the Sun’s next gait.”

And, in reflection I mused

I was to bemuse a xenophobic

And her Oedipal creature

The gruesome often clamber to the pure:

Charles Farebell and homage too ensure!