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[A Ship's Captain, loquitor]

1

I was not then a man who gave much thought
for words, or for the poets who command
them on the page to dance for joy, or trudge
for sorrow's darkest burden.  Seas and ships
had been my interest and my living wage.
The world and all of its well-meaning friends
would not have had me, in the common course
of navigation, meet the Poet who
was known among us as Jaufre Rudel.
He had booked passage on my vessel for
a voyage from France to Outremer, where he
would serve as civil envoy for the knights,
and as the secretary of their vast
possessions---both in lands, and wealth, and books.
But this was just ostensible, of course,
a calling meant to be the handy means
to pay expenses:  for, as we all know,
the world and all of its well-meaning friends
intrude in matters (practical or not).
And coin must be earned for the basic needs
of life.  But his intention (so we knew
and so we, at the onset, jeered and mocked)
was pilgrimage, and love's homage to the
Countess of Tripoli---whose beauty is
still famous and quite justly so; but whose
heart was unknown to him, or to us, then.
For some time prior to our voyage, he had
sent her a multitude of poems, the fruit
of his intense and honorable desire
to love her.  Of her image, he had seen;
and of her goodness, he had been told much.
But of her presence, both in flesh and fact,
he had not yet partaken.  Hence, he voyaged
to his appointment to the envoy's post.
I laughed behind his back, at first, to think
that he had loved her so exclusively
(that is, with absolute fidelity;
his whole desire was hers, and hers alone)---
a woman he had never met, who dwelt
in an unusual land across the sea.
And so that I might more enjoy the joke,
I offered him accommodation in
my private cabin.  But, at his first talk,
the joke was turned upon me (as it should
have been):  for in his words of love for her
(always his foremost subject), I could hear
the highest aspiration of mankind
to Love and Beauty.  Oh, he spoke a lot
of ancient history, and obscure names
of people whom he mentioned as if they
were somehow close acquaintances of his,
so deeply he had sought to know their souls.
But all of this---vast of itself, profound
in learning and in polished courtesy
(and precedents called up from scholarly
pursuits)---was really all for her.  All that
he had, and made to sparkle (so his words
shone in a splendor) was reflective of
the Countess---everything she meant to him.
Our progress had been slowed, the ship becalmed
(as happens sometimes).  And my officers
seemed just as eager for his company
as I was, having heard him talk.  And we
insisted on his dining, daily, with
us and, as he enjoyed our common fare,
he told us of the towers of Ilium,
the pyramids of Egypt, and, for him,
the greater, vaster monuments of words
that ancient poets had raised up to sing
the praises of their lovely ladies.  Thus
we made our way; and what in me had been
cruder before, seemed just a fraction more
improved (oh, just a fraction at that time).
I even thought that I would love the bliss
of loving someone (much more, being loved
by someone) with the faithful ardor that
he meant to lay before the Countess' feet;
lay (as he mentioned sometimes with a smile
more radiant than any I had seen
upon him) "at her silk-sheathed, stockinged feet,
shoeless for me as I have long desired."
Yes I would much have liked to love like that;
or be loved.  But, alas, I have had more
success with any laughing, harbor whore.

2

Sometimes, no matter how pristine the sky,
how much we are devout to beauty there,
a bit of shadow seems to fall from it.
Even a moment's passing of a cloud,
across the sky's perfect expression, brings
too suddenly and without warning sign
a shuddered chill upon the finest joy.
And so the illness, that in course of time,
concluded his existence in this world,
had its onset upon him while aboard
my ship.  (And how I curse that battered tub
of wood, if it had brought the pestilence
upon him.)  Just a little bit, at first,
but more severely as our journey neared
its destination, he began to fail.
And by the time we had the coast in sight,
he could not sit up from the bed at all.
I told the first mate, he who manned the helm,
that smoothest entry into port must be
ensured, that we must slide against the dock
without mishap, or even bump.  And he,
as moved as I was by our passenger's
devoted adoration, brought us by
with such finesse, and with so deft a hand,
we scarce knew that we had slipped into berth.
We had prepared a pallet aforehand,
with pillows, quilt, and comfortable detail.
Having still had connections in the town,
I sent a messenger at once up to
the Bishop's house (that overlooked the sea)
there to receive the Poet as a guest.
And then the first mate, himself, volunteered
to bring the tidings to the Countess' home.
On to the pallet Jaufre, weakly, crawled,
and my remaining officers bore him
across the landing, them accompanied
by sixteen sailors as an honor guard.

3

Never I saw such combination of
a soul so eager and a body so
exhausted; and his love caught in between.
At last she came, in no particular
haste or distress, his verses in her hand.
Oh, God, I never thought that I should see
such evidence of such a surge of bliss
upon a man's face, in that moment of
his triumph . . . then, as suddenly behold
him cast upon despair's unyielding stones,
writhing in shock.  She handed him the poems.
He did not, not at once, reach up for them,
but simply stared at her in disbelief.
Embarrassed for them both, I turned to leave.
She bid me stay, that one (that one was me)
might hear, as witness, what she had to say.
The taste of bile, foul, putridly intense,
rose up into my throat.  She turned her back
upon me and began to speak to him.
She had known of his love for quite sometime
(so she commenced), and, yes, she had enjoyed
the lines he sent her, and the comments that
had issued from them.  But, well-meaning friends
had raised concerns about it, such concerns
(of her well-meaning friends) that she must draw
back from the adoration she had loved:
that which, by her admission (as I stood
behind them both) made dawn more perfectly
brightened.  But now, due to well-meaning friends,
they must take steps back from each other.  I
have seen men die of wounds received in war;
have seen them hacked to pieces on the field;
or drown like morsels eaten by a wave;
or jerking on the gallows; or else crushed
beneath a load of freight.  But I had not
before that day (and never since that time)
witnessed a soul be shriveled in its flesh,
shriveled in agony upon the shock
that she had brought him.  Like the fading light
of his first sunset in this foreign land,
the light dropped from his eyes, as his world turned---
pushed by her---from its canopy of sky.
Where had the words gone, that he once invoked,
at table on the ship, in lyrics of
vast ancient cities, or the peaks of love?
I have thought, sometimes, since that stricken hour
that even in the lowliest of graves,
the silence there is not as silent as
the silence in that sumptuous guest room
within the Bishop's house.  She turned, to go,
upon a very visible high heel.
The Poet had not taken, from her hand,
the pages she had brought.  As she stepped out,
those went with her as if forgotten.  We
sent for the Bishop.  Prayer began at once.
The Poet never spoke again that night;
and, as the new day's gray sky poured, he died.

4

I stepped out, shaken.  Not before, or since,
has any other man's death struck me through
the way his did. And here was paradox:
having belittled his great gift to her
(to satisfy, instead, well-meaning friends);
having held their opinions greater than
the love that she had one relied upon;
having cast him into abject anguish;
having done all that to him, willfully
(such that her choice revealed as much of her
as---or, more even than---well-meaning friends),
she (nor they) could not bring diminishment
to his great love for her.  Oh yes, she was
supremely, fully beautiful:  of that
I can bear witness.  But such beauty fades
unless ensheathed forever in the words
of poets, only in their words.  Despite
the ravages that time would someday bring
upon her, as upon us all who live
she---not my women---and no other man's----
could have remained forever beautiful
within the temple of his rhymes for her,
that he raised up for her before they met.

5

Here is another paradox.  As I
stepped from the front porch of the Bishop's house,
I saw, caught in the hedge's thick, greened limbs,
a few scraps of the poems that she had brought;
that she had brought, and then saw fit to toss
away.  The morning sky's grim, rainsoaked breeze
had taken most of them.  These few were left.
Laughing and weeping both at once (and these
emotions are quite inappropriate
for such a stern sea-captain like myself;
and I admit to them only this once),
I gathered them up with alacrity
befitting some small child who clutches at
abandoned baubles at the gutter's edge.
The paradox?---that, in preserving these
for his sake, I do just the same for her.

And all who read will know her beautiful.

And some who read will think her wonderful.

And some will know how she betrayed his soul.

Starward
 
[jlc]