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The Adagio Quartet

Book Three

The Field of the Lilies

Michael Shea

Copyrighted in 2014 by the sole author, Michael J. D. Shea

©
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Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;

they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you,

That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew

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All quotations in The Field of the Lilies are from The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.

The first quotation is from the first verse of that gospel, the second from the second,

and so forth.

A quotation comprises the first line of each quatrain on the left side.

The same quotation comprises the last line of the accompanying quatrain on the right side.

The translation from Greek into English is from The King James Version of the Bible.
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‘The’?

Uh huh:

That is, indeed, the first word in The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.

No Québécois noun rhymes with ‘the’?

Try gar.

A Gatineau gar

Says, “Uh huh,

I’ll write this side backwards: The last word, this time, must be

‘The’.”

‘Abraham’

Begat Isaac. When Yahweh told him to kill the boy, did Abe say? “I don’t give a damn

What gives you your jollies. I will not murder my child.”

No. So is it okay that, a few verses later, Abraham just slaughtered a ram?

The ram

Gave a damn

When he was approached by the knife and

‘Abraham.’

‘And Judas begat Phares and Zara.’

And Zara invented the alphabet. But backwards, beginning with the sign of Zorro: A

Letter Canadians pronounce as ‘zed’ and Americans as ‘zee’.

You think that’s confusing? Zorro spoke Castellano. So he pronounced ‘Z’ as ‘th’. Huh?

Huh:

Hebrew is Arabic spoken backwards? Or is it the other way around? A

Frenchman says, “Zee mec named Nietzsche begat Zarathustra.

‘And Judas begat Phares and Zara.’”

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‘And Naasson begat Salmon.’

And Salmon went fishing. And caught one.

And he lied about how big it was. Some guys do that.

And then Jezebel was not pleased. Ecclesiastes: ‘There is no new thing under the sun.’

The sun

Also rises on zoologists. One

Said, “A bull elephant has four feet. And, thus, begets baby elephants.

‘And Naasson begat Salmon.’”

‘And Salmon begat Booz.’

And Booz was to boozy

As Jezebel

Was to floozy.

A floozy

Picked a doozy of a daisy. Then she preserved that fine flower in alcohol. Boozy,

The floozy commented, “Booze pickles salmon.

‘And Salmon begat Booz.’”

‘And Jesse begat David the king.’

And David had a fling

With the wife of Uriah.

Then David set the guy up to be killed. That’s how Wee Davie did his king thing.

The king thing

Gave David the power, but not the right, to fling

The soul of Uriah into eternity. And time and eternity haunted the head and heart of Jesse.

‘And Jesse begat David the king.’

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‘And Solomon’,

Is a Canadian judge in The Judgement of Solomon. One,

Two, three, and four judges speak their jazz and spout their jive

Under Nod’s clouds and Eden’s sun.

The golden eye of the sun

Is the singular Cyclops of the heavens: One

That gazes on the sun-warmed raiment of the lilies of the field

‘And Solomon.’

‘And Asa begat’

A cool cat

Named

Josaphat.

Josaphat

Was such a cool cat

That he just shrugged when his widowed father started chasing a sex kitten.

‘And Asa begat.’

‘And Joatham begat Achaz.’

And Achaz lives in Natchez,

Where he itches. And therefore scratches

Until his clothes are torn to patches.

Patches

Was the name of that sex kitten from Natchez.

Why not ‘patchez’? Why not ‘Natches’? Why not an end to endless begats, suchaz

‘And Joatham begat Achaz.’?

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‘And Manasses begat Amon.’

And Amon said, “To itch is human.

To scratch, divine.

And ‘Amon’ and ‘human’ sort of rhyme. But here’s a much more serious case of cheatin’.

“Your cheatin’

Heart will tell on you.” Hurtin’ songs, though embarrassingly human,

Are treacly as molasses. And molasses begat glazed salmon.

‘And Manasses begat Amon.’

‘About the time they were carried away’

With their amorous play,

Salmon and Jezebel

Invented the roll in the hay: Too bad an invention became a cliché.

A cliché

Is too lazy to work or even to play.

It prefers to veg out. Les grosses légumes, the big vegetables, were thrown off thrones

‘About the time they were carried away.’

‘And after’,

Les grosses légumes swung from a rafter

In a vegetable-storage barn:

A source of vicious titters and laughter.

Laughter

Should never be cruel. And a barn rafter

Is for swallows that sing about the bird on the wing: The bird of time.

‘And after’?
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‘And Zorobabel begat Ablud.’

And in the days after Noah’s flood,

Ablud was stuck in the muck.

Some people inherit the Earth. And some, unjustly and unfairly, the mud.

Throw enough mud

And some will stick. Pour enough water and some will flood

The floor. Write enough nonsense and a scribbler will cover the alphabet, backwards, with

‘And Zorobabel begat Ablud.’

‘And Azor begat’

Nineteen times: A human rabbit. A begetting tomcat.

And Azor begat Sadoc. And could never remember the kid’s name.

Oh say, Doc, can you see anything truly human in that?

That

Begetting tomcat

Begat eighteen times. Then Missus Azor forgot to stop at the pharmacy on the way home.

‘And Azor begat.’

‘And’

That genealogy was written in the blood-stained sand

Of the sardonically named

Holy Land.

On the shores of the ocean called eternity, the holy land

Is holy sand.

It borders the holy water extending on and on and on and on, and never attaining the final

‘And’.
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‘Of whom’

Is the bell that tolls and the bull that toils? Doom

Awaited him for whom the bell tolls.

And the bull that toils is chastely concealed by the foggy gloom.

Deep down in the foggy, foggy gloom,

Lurking doom

Awaited Azor. For exhausted Missus Azor bought a razor. And removed the prolific balls

‘Of whom’.

‘All the generations’

Of all the nations

Are bewildered by Yahweh’s

Inscrutable ratiocinations.

Ratiocinations

Doesn’t rhyme with nations:

A literary scandal bequeathed to

‘All the generations’.

‘Wise’

Guys

And foolish virgins

Are in the gospels. Though those virgins are wise when the guys just get the booby prize.

Prize

Number one: Twelve books written by the hack. Second prize: One book by the hack. Guys

Speaking the name of Mac The Thane win third prize. So here’s silent a word to the

‘Wise’.
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‘Just’

May mean honest and benevolent. Or merely merely. Must

The just vanish forever

Into the cosmic dust?

Dust

To dust: A fate with the inevitability of must to must

Descends, sure as rain, upon the just. And on the unjust: He who stole the umbrella of the

‘Just’.

‘Thee’

And me

Are grammatically objective. Not merely subjective,

Like she and he.

That’s because she and he

Have human failings and foibles: In contrast to thee and me.

Though sometimes me has doubts about

‘Thee’.

‘Sins’,

Grins,

And a thousand mocks his failing flesh is heir to,

Are part of the game that Jack Falstaff loses and Atropos wins.

Although Falstaff wins

Great grins

On stage when he plots a passel of sexual

‘Sins’.
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‘Spoken’,

Words are broken

On the wheel of deceit

In Shakespeare’s plays when advantage is taken and verities are token.

Token

Hoity-toity vowels are ritually broken

In Hoboken, where New Jersey English is

‘Spoken’.

‘Behold.’

Or don’t. Do as you’re told.

Or don’t. Be a mountain goat in the wilds.

Or a sheep in the fold.

In the fold,

It’s safe and warm. Yet, on the mountainside, the bluebells have tolled

A paean in praise of the mountain goat that the eyes of eagles

‘Behold’.

‘Sleep’

Is the chief nourisher in life’s feast. Angels weep

To see that metaphor stolen from Will Shakespeare.

“Hell is murky.” And its pits, for thieving hacks, are deep.

Deep

In Hell are the souls who weep

Because visions of Heaven shine in their

‘Sleep’.
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‘Till’

The soil and it may fill

The bread basket. Or be gone with the wind. Or both -- for a while.

Can a land be strong if the earth is ill?

Ill

Will to Will will fill

The sails of the Governors when Shakespeare’s recent duds empty the box office

‘Till’.

‘East’

Was east. And west was west. At least,

In Kipling’s day. Does Yahweh say

That none should starve while others feast?

Famine or feast?

The most or the least?

Sunset? Or sunrise in the west and in the

‘East’?

‘King’

And pauper, if all the crops fail, will come a cropper. Sing

Backward, angel. Sing of the abundance of Eden.

And of the arrow of time: Flying where the vulture is on the wind and the wing?

Wing

Homeward, angel. And sing

Of the Creator: (S)He who is the universe’s queen and

‘King’.
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‘King’

Is a canine cop in Stratford. ‘Ring

Around the rosies, pocket full of posies’, is a song about smallpox. “A pox on the shocks

That flesh is heir to,” says the husky where wigeons whistle and stool pigeons sing.

Stool pigeons sing

Until they fall off their stools in the Boar’s Head Tavern. Then ring

The closing bell. For time is a knave. And the wind-swift eagle of time is

‘King’.

‘Together’,

Wigeons of a feather

Are whistling in the gods: Ducks damning the hams, on the Stratford stage,

To the infernal regions that are under and nether.

A nether

Feather,

From an Avon swan, scribbles Will Shakespeare’s latest play about boys and girls

‘Together’.

‘Written’,

And bitten,

Will’s lines are more than the hams can chew

Where phonemes are swallowed and smiting knights are smitten.

Smitten

May mean dust to dust, or lust to lust. Bitten

By lust’s arrow, Falstaff is the fall guy in the newest comedy Shakespeare has

‘Written’.
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‘Juda’

Had a weakness for the lewd. A

New play by the Queen of Sheba is elegantly erotic.

But Juda’s sense of humour? An uppah-clauss Englishman says, “It’s cruda.”

“Cruda,”

Is a-rhotic: That means without ‘r’. Sheba’s play is erotic: That doesn’t mean lewd. A

Masterpiece of erotic poetry was written by King Solomon. And blue jokes by

‘Juda’.

‘Herod’

Wasn’t fair: Odd

How language is loaded. Sheba is a fair woman, and dark as the night skies

Held in the mind and the hand of God.

‘God’

Is never mentioned in The Song of Solomon. It’s odd

That God can be unfair as

‘Herod’.

‘Ye’

Was once pronounced ‘you’. ‘Me’

Was pronounced ‘moo’? The toiling bull

Is too busy to consider this learnèd question again and anew.

Anew,

The bull can hear me, pronounced mooooo.

It’s floating from Holsteins making fake Oka cheese to scam who? To scam

‘Ye’.
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‘The star’,

So far

From Stratford, was guiding King Henry the Sixth

And his 1912 Tudhope car.

In his car,

With its dead brakes and broken steering column, King Henry was far

From sure of surviving the ride. He implored the blue star of twilight, beseeching luck from

‘The star’.

‘With exceeding great joy’,

King Henry the Sixth rescued Jack Falstaff: A very superannuated boy

With whom the Fates

Trifle and toy.

Trifle and toy,

Toy and trifle, it gives the Fates something to do. And that old boy

Jack Falstaff would steal and bury the scissors of the final Fate

‘With exceeding great joy’.

‘Gold and frankincense and myrrh’

Are gifts that lure

The mind to ponder symbols

Of ruling and praying and suffering: When the wings of wondering, ascending, whirr.

‘Whirr’

Rhymes with ‘were’ in Canadian English: The daily speech of the guy whose scripts lure

Fans to watch his plays about rulers and prayers and pain: Will Shakespeare’s plays about

‘Gold and frankincense and myrrh’.

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‘And being warned’

About Will Shakespeare’s plays the critics had scorned,

The fans, gripping and grasping, clutched and clasped their loonies.

But no longer: The critics have been bribed. As Will writes, “They were suborned.”

“Suborned”

Is modern English: Surprised? Surprised by the violent nobles he had scorned,

King Richard the Second learned the difference between being attentive to the warning,

‘And being warned’.

‘Behold’

Gold

The Governors have slipped to the critics.

All the carpers are bought. So all the tickets are sold.

Sold,

Big Mac’s soul hasn’t gone for the gold:

Mister Mackers sold his soul for the power and the glory that his victims

‘Behold’.

‘By night’,

The Scottish scammers in Mackers’ kingdom take flight

To India, where the laws are often not enforced:

Where con artists continue to cozen the people whose lives they blight.

Blight

Burrows into the hearts of Mister and Missus Mackers. And their souls take flight

Into the eternal darkness that their crimes have earned

‘By night’.
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‘The Lord’

Is bored:

Having to spin every electron in the universe, for eons, wins for the Boss

The Te Deum tedium award.

The tedium award

Is conferred by the chairman of the bored:

By a guy who has retired to Florida -- to God’s waiting room -- where he waits to meet

‘The Lord’.

‘All’

The gall

Of the wise “fool” in King Lear

Can’t save the foolish monarch from the hearse and coffin and pall.

A pall

Of trivial conversation descends upon that former chairman of the board who bought Gaul.

He divided France into three parts, and then made a profit by selling them

‘All’.

‘Jeremy’

Cricket is invited to tea

By a hungry frog:

A cricket to be and then not to be.

To be or not to be?

Hamlet hears those words in the chirping of the cricket. And in a cup of tea,

The leaves spell out their sad answer to the question asked by

‘Jeremy’.
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‘Because’

Many laws

Are asinine, as Charles Dickens wrote,

Justice is devoured by the sharks’ voracious maws.

In front of the Supreme Court, the poppas and the mommas, the paws and the maws,

Are gazing at the statute of Justicia. Holding his broadsword, and interpreting the laws,

He glares at the Bank of Canada. “Why are you going to decapitate the money men?”

“‘Because.’”

‘Dead’

As a doornail: That’s what Dickens wrote. And be it on Dicken’s head

That, at the end of the book, a perfectly satisfactory curmudgeon and misanthrope

Becomes soft and mushy as wet bread.

In the house of bread,

The thorn-crowned head

Speaks of hope for the living and the

‘Dead’.

‘Arise’

From your sleep. And reform, Mr. Scrooge. Be one of those nice guys

Who doesn’t stomp on kittens, or curse Claus, or broil the Easter Bunny. Humbug!

Back to ripping the wings off nightingales. And sticking hot pins into bluebottle flies.

Scrooge awakes. His dream, of silver denarii and gold crowns, flies

To the realm of nescience. To do unto others, Scrooge will stick it to the other guys.

Then the angel of avarice appears and commands,

“‘Arise.’”
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‘And he arose.’

And sprinkled woes

Onto the pebbly paths of poor people pitied by pious Peter:

The fisherman who stands where the golden gate glitters and gleams and glows.

Flashing purple and pink and puce, a neon sign glows

Outside Thee Eezee Sleep and Sweet Dreemzzzzz Motel in Stratford. And the woes

Of one of Shakespeare’s visiting fans were increased by the bed bugs. And he awoke.

‘And he arose.’

‘Thither’

And whither,

And whence, and wherefor: They all leave Shakespeare’s critics

In a perplexed dither.

Dither, dither, dither:

Get to work, Hamlet! Bump off Claudius. Send him whither

The flames endlessly bite the toes of the damned. And they never escape thence

‘Thither’.

‘By’

And by is easily said, says Hamlet. If your first language is French, try

“Oui c’est those thirty, thoroughly thrilling, thoughtful things thus there, though that thieving

Throng’s thirsty throbbing throats threaten then thwart the thrifty thriving throne.” Aie yaie!

“Aie yaie!”

Says Jack Falstaff. “Pistol will try

To send me to the eternal by and

‘By’.”
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‘John the Baptist’

Is the patron saint of francophone Canadians: “Moi, I insist

That it should have been ‘Three thousand thirsty throbbing throats’.

But there wasn’t enough space to complete that unpronounceable list.”

Pistol’s got Falstaff on the list

Of guys who have propositioned his wife. And Pistol’s blunderbuss will insist

On peppering Jack’s butt with buckshot. Should that old buck pray, for help, to

‘John the Baptist’?

‘Repent’?

“I’ll wait til Lent,”

Says Jack Falstaff. But first comes Fat Tuesday: Each week.

Yet Lent will come: Too bad that time’s bow is drawn and bent.

John the Baptist has heard Jack the lecher’s prayer. And the Baptist has bent

Pistol’s ear toward the soft sound of a plea for mercy. So, for Lent,

Pistol gives up shooting guys who have propositioned Nell. But only if they reform and

‘Repent’.

‘Prepare ye the way’

Of Shakespeare’s newest play,

Oh ye flack artists. Advertise till shamefully shameless lies reach azure skies.

Over and over, tell the fans that February is May.

Pistol may

Also give up shooting lechers for Advent: A season when children play

In snow. And chickadees sing black notes on that white background. And seraphim sing,

“‘Prepare ye the way.’”

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‘Loins’

Are busy when Jack Falstaff joins

With wenches

In an evening given to gasps and groans and groins.

Groins

Are covered under a Stratford bylaw that enjoins

All lechers from uncovering their

‘Loins’.

‘Round’

Round Jack is found

An invisible legion of imps and implettes

Hoping to haul him to Hell, so far underground.

Underground,

The roots of a tree of knowledge have found

The heart of fire that this planet wraps itself

‘Round’.

‘Confessing their sins’,

Every imp and implette grins,

Remembering the fun they had

When luring souls toward Satan’s steaming cauldrons and red-hot bins.

Bins

Of beans and barrels of bread bring forth Falstaff’s gluttonous grins:

A minor matter when Jack and other Catholics are talking with Friar Lawrence and

‘Confessing their sins’.

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‘O generation of vipers’,

Your venom is gluing down the windshield wipers

Of lechers and kvetchers

And grousers and gripers.

The beefers and bellyachers, grousers and gripers,

Have cause to complain: Their windshield wipers

Were pasted down by scoundrels using snake venom bottled at your glue factory,

‘O generation of vipers’.

‘Meet’

And greet:

That’s a banal cliché

As mindless as Falstaff’s massive seat.

Jack Falstaff’s seat

Was glued to his chair by O Generation of Vipers venom. When he tried to stand, to greet

His chum King Lear, Jack found himself using language that, in public, is never proper or

‘Meet’.

‘Abraham’

Is on the lam:

He had no permit

To slaughter a ram.

A ram

Named Sam is on the lam

From Mackers’ Knackers Inc. That other ram was caught in the brambles that scratched

‘Abraham’.
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‘The axe’

Attacks

The trembling cows about to be

The burgers called Big Mac’s.

Big Mac’s

Is a registered trade mark. Mister Mackers owns that apostrophe. And legal attacks

By another burger chain ceased when the lawyers saw Macker’s weapon and the blood on

‘The axe’.

‘Fire’

Engulfs the pyre:

The critics are roasting the hams.

Roasting actors is legal, of course. So burn, birch. And blaze, briar.

A briar

Is any thorny bush, including the wild rose. And in mediaeval England, a pyre

Leapt higher when the House of the White Rose tossed all the red roses into the

‘Fire’.

‘Whose fan’

Is watching? Will Shakespeare’s: That almost-broke scribbling man

Whose currents turned awry

Where the Avon dawdled and the hours ran.

A Japanese film titled Ran

Is about that tragic man,

King Lear. But off-stage, he finds a fan decorated with scenes of old Japan. And he asks,

“‘Whose fan’?”
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‘Galilee’

Has a sea

That isn’t: It’s a lake. And there, Jesus walked on water? And on the Avon, a water strider

Skitters between the sky and its reflection, between the intangible and its not-quite reality.

Reality:

What is that? Whatever people who are really real say it is? Really? A sea

Of contention swamps every attempt to define, and thus control, the reality of the man from

‘Galilee’.

“‘Thou’”,

Said the cow to the sow,

“Hast not my big brown beautiful eyes.” “But pigs are intelligent,” said the sow. True.

Is it the hour for beef and bacon now?

Now

Is the hour for them to say goodbye: The hour for the cow and the sow

To be slaughtered at Mackers’ Knackers. Beef with tea. Pork for two. Anything for

‘Thou’?

‘Now’

How, brown cow?

“Not too bad. Could be worse.”

An unofficial national motto. The other is “Ça va? Pas pire.” O Canada, now how?

How

Is Mackers’ Knackers expanding into the British market? By slaughtering every mad cow

From Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. That’s how Mister Mackers is making a killing

‘Now’.
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‘The water’

That flows past Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter

(Yes, those villages do exist.) is a sun-flecked rill

That dazzles the eyes of Will Shakespeare’s daughter.

Will’s daughter,

Strolling from Lower to Upper Slaughter,

Listens to a voice that is clear as

‘The water’.

“‘This’”,

Says the chuckling voice in the rill, “Is water that the breeze and the sunlight kiss.”

And Suzanna, remembering the clear skies of her vast country,

Reflects that little England enjoys so few days of golden light and azure bliss.

It was bliss

To be alive, Wordsworth wrote: Especially when one considers the alternative. The kiss

Of the angel of death may be gentle. And yet, better not that. Better

‘This’.

‘Then’

A rural wren

Sings about the future

That melds into an intangible and elusive when.

It ain’t over til when

The wren

Sings: Head for an exit of the Globe theatre

‘Then’.
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‘Forty days and forty nights’

Have seen enraged fans turn out the lights

Of Hamlet’s hambones

Mumbling lines and fumbling fights.

Hamlet fights

In his own being: Inclination against intention. And reason’s lights

Leave the heart of the matter dark: Ebony as midnight in the prophet’s soul during his

‘Forty days and forty nights’.

“‘Bread’,

Give me many loaves of bread! That’s my bag, man,” the Festival’s Chairman said,

Because he’s of that generation:

‘Bread’ means money. And that bag used to hold chemicals that screw up the head.

The head

Of the Board, and the Board at the head of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, said,

“At the Seder, that prophet saw the future -- the suffering of his own body -- when he broke

‘Bread’.”

‘It is written’

That Juliet and Romeo are smitten

With each other. Smitten. Not in love: That’s impossible,

Because they don’t truly know each other. Yet, Cupid’s arrow has struck and bitten.

‘Bitten’

By the arrow of infatuation, and smitten

By language and by the night and by the love of love, they say what the Fates penned:

‘It is written’.
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‘The holy city’

Is the hometown of a witty

Sceptic who wrote the lyrics

For Jack Falstaff’s favourite lecherous ditty.

Dittoing that ditty,

Jack sings it again. And a skylark, witty

And ascending, sings about sins in Stratford: A town no one could confuse with

‘The holy city’.

‘And’

Falstaff conducts the band.

The musicians play midnight music near the Globe theatre,

In the upper-park grandstand.

Trying to impress the women, Jack grandstands on the grandstand:

Waving his arms like a demented Beethoven, he conducts the band

In a truncated version of ‘Moonlight

‘And”.

‘It’

Is lit by Shakespearean torches. And lit

By jeroboams of sack, Jack

Sings a Biblical song about Goliath, the guy who took the hit.

Hit

Between the eyes by a stone flung with the force and accuracy of a bullet, and lit

By the last daylight of his last day, Goliath saw a brief vision of the farm. Then he bought

‘It.’
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‘Exceeding high’

On sack, Jack tries to ply

Doll Tearsheet with liquor.

But she laughs at that horny old guy.

A penny for the Gunpowder Guy?

Why ply

The Guy with pennies since he commemorates a plot that never happened: No treason

‘Exceeding high’.

‘And saith unto him’,

“Jack, though the torchlight is dim,

I can see the intent

That your actions limn.”

Going out on a limb,

Jack Falstaff comes perilously close to telling Doll Tearsheet that he loves her. The dim

Light would hide the fact that, in truth, he does. Doll frowns.

‘And saith unto him’,

“‘Get thee hence,’

Jack. Get thee lost. Go back to whence

You came: To Will Shakespeare’s script

About lust and money, sex and pence.”

Pennies are pence

Are obsolete: Exiled from Canada, whence

Les petits sous, the little pennies, received their marching order:

‘Get thee hence’.

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“‘The Devil’

Is on the level

About as often as you, Jack: Your patter and spiel are smooth

As my silk blouse that your fingers dishevel.”

Never dishevel

The very smooth and level

Fur of Satan’s pet pussycat. Or you will risk the raging wrath of

‘The Devil’.

“‘Now’

Scram, you rusty old scow.

Sail to Byzantium,

Where golden larks sing on a silver bough.”

With a parting bow,

Falstaff leaves. He strolls to the Avon. And watches Stratford’s municipal garbage scow

Sailing from Byzantium, from yesterday to

‘Now’.

“‘Zabulon’

Is on

The way to Byzantium,

Where prisms glow in dewdrops on a moonlight-silvered lawn.”

In the dew of the lawn

Jack’s standing on,

He draws the roadmap to Byzantium, by way of Zagreb and Zaragoza and Zanzibar and

‘Zabulon’.
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‘Which’

Rich

Emperor is sporting in Byzantium?

Where the emperor has no clothes. And his harem, not a stitch.

A stitch and a stich and a stitch

In time save nine rich

Men, and nine poor men, from being naked. Without their clothes, could one tell which is

‘Which’?

‘Galilee’

Is beyond the sea:

The ocean where galleons and brigantines sail

Toward the shore of not to be.

To be or not to be?

That is the question Ophelia asked when she contemplated the endless sea

Called eternity. And she sought an answer to her question in words of the man from

‘Galilee’.

‘Shadow of death’,

And cessation of breath,

Await the passengers on the ship of fools:

The vessel of the descendents of Seth.

Trying to hide his fear, Seth

Used his breath

To whistle a happy tune while he walked through the valley of the

‘Shadow of death’.
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‘For’

Biblical lore

Avers that all people are descended from Seth.

And all are sailing toward the farthest shore.

Standing on the shore

Between the land of Nod and the sea of forever, Eve created the lore

Of a primaeval world: An eon when everything was before what people are

‘For’.

‘Walking by the sea of Galilee’,

And hoping to be free

Of future sorrows, the emperor of Byzantium

Sees the calm sea mirror the joys, and woes, of his years yet to be.

To be or not to be

An emperor or a pauper? Better an emperor. But is either man free

To rule the realm of his own soul? The emperor asks that question of the prophet

‘Walking by the sea of Galilee’.

‘And he’

Plunges into that sea --

As everyone, who will live, does --

Into the sea of yet to be.

To be

Warm on the shore or cold in the water? Better warm on the shore. But the sea

Of the future, always lapping at his feet, would flood the strand. The empress knows that.

‘And he’.
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‘Straightway’,

He feels the cold shock of the water. May

An emperor order the lake to warm up? Yes. Will that make any difference? No.

So he gasps in the cold, where the diving gannets plunge and the flying fish play.

In his play,

King Lear strides then stumbles from the warmth of May

To the cold of January. And taking no detours, he travels from hidden love to open hatred

‘Straightway’.

‘Zebedee’

Sails blithely upon that sea

Where the emperor shivers and treads water:

A poor fisherman looking down at an emperor immersed in the sea of to-be.

“To Bobby Bee or not to Bobby Bee?”

Buzzes Betty Bee as she flies above a fragrant sea

Of pomegranate blossoms: An orchard, of trees of knowledge, planted by Zachary and

‘Zebedee’.

‘The ship’

Of fools sails by at a speedy clip,

Heading toward the rocks

Where the rip-tides rip.

From the highest peak in the Catskill mountains, Rip

Van Winkle could see the ship of fools on the Atlantic. And see Atropos snip and clip

The life-threads of the passengers and crew: People terrified by the storm that dooms

‘The ship’.
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‘All’

Fall

In Genesis: All the descendents of Seth.

And on the ship of fools, all are listening to the Sirens’ call.

Call

Homeward, Falstaff. Call Doll. Before the fall

Brings November’s melancholy: Birds leaving, leaves dying, and clouds casting a pall on

‘All’.

‘Lunatick’?

Yes. But the song of the Sirens reaches the core and quick

Of fallen humanity. And the emperor of Byzantium, as surely as Jack Falstaff,

Is fallen as the crimson leaves the hands of Jack Frost pick.

Pick

And shovel your words carefully, Falstaff. Though Nell Quickly is quick,

Doll Tearsheet is slow, as you know. Is that important under the harvest moon, “Jack the

‘Lunatick’”?

‘Decapolis’

Is a town where bliss

Is just to be alive: A town

Where life and Felicity kiss.

‘So here’s hoping that you and Doll kiss

In domestic bliss

That brightens those November skies from Stratford to

‘Decapolis’.
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‘Seeing’

Everything agreeing

With human desires,

The Decapolisians pursue good times that are always fleeing.

Fleeing

From Narcissus in The Willows of the Brook, Jack Falstaff finds himself agreeing

With the perspective a circling vulture is

‘Seeing’.

‘And’

They catch all the grand

Joys they were pursuing

In their happy, carefree land.

Casting his shadow on the parkland,

The vulture expects a grand

Feast of Falstaffian flesh: No more conjunctions for Jack. Never another

‘And’.

‘Theirs’

Is a land of beatitude, where cares

Are not known. And there are eight beatitudes.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’: A kingdom free of tears.

A person poor in spirit sheds no tears

For the lack of luxuries: “Who cares?”

Those who care are resting their self-worth on things: On endlessly getting and getting

‘Theirs’.
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‘Blessed are they that mourn’,

For they shall be comforted. Though a page be torn

From the book of life,

Acceptance shall, in time, comfort the forlorn.

Jack Falstaff’s dog, Jack Russell, has died. And Falstaff feels forlorn

As a character on a page torn

From a four-hankie movie script.

‘Blessed are they that mourn’.

‘Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth’.

“They shall inherit the dirt,” mocks the inherent worth

Of every gentle soul

Who treads the planet’s rounding girth.

The revolving, evolving, sometimes sorrowing Earth, rounding as Falstaff’s girth,

Was equally the home of man and dog. And was the dog of less worth

Than some men? No dog has ever been a torturer. No dog is arrogant and contemptuous.

‘Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.’

‘Blessed are they’

Which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. “Stay,

Illusion!” But Hamlet’s vision vanishes. And righteousness

Is stomped into the boards in the Danish play.

The shadow play

Of human consciousness, always slipping away like water through a net, will never stay

Still. And people who accept that limitation on understanding the heart of life?

‘Blessed are they.’

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‘Blessed are the merciful: for’

They shall obtain mercy. The door

Of clemency shall open to the peace of the spirit:

The peace that soothes a soul who harkens to forgiveness whispering in the heart’s core.

Jack Russell was in the canine corps

Until post-traumatic stress left him disabled. Then the military showed him the door.

Falstaff and his on-again, off-again friends, the three Fates, adopted that damaged dog.

‘Blessed are the merciful four.’

‘Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.’

It’s odd

That God will let Jack Falstaff into Heaven? Not really. Because, blessed are the merciful.

And so, the seraphim will welcome the harmlessly flawed.

Though he’s very flawed,

There is never any cruelty in Falstaff’s lechery. So is it truly odd

To describe Jack Falstaff as pure in heart?

‘Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.’

‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.’

In the Scottish play, the raven flying over the castle has cawed

Out his disapproval of the war-wagers.

And his compassion for the victims whom human talons killed and clawed.

It’s all in the spelling: Clawed and clod.

Cawed and cod.

The weapons of piece-makers tear human bodies apart.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.’
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Of the twelve books Michael Shea has written:

How many pages are in each book?

And how many pages are on this website?

The Allegro Quartet

The Judgement of Solomon -- 403 pages -- Forty pages

Eden Lost -- 338 pages -- Thirty-three pages

The Silver Apples of the Moon -- 334 pages -- Thirty-three pages

The Blue Star of Twilight -- 361 pages -- Thirty-six pages

The Adagio Quartet

The Sable Swans -- 366 pages – Thirty-seven pages

The Willows of the Brook -- 350 pages – Thirty-five pages

The Field of the Lilies -- 364 pages – Thirty-six pages

The Noontide Sun -- 326 pages – Thirty-two pages

The Andante Quartet

The Pine and Cedar -- 299 pages – Thirty pages

This Rough Magic -- 377 pages – Thirty-seven pages

The Mountain Nymph -- 394 pages – Thirty-eight pages

The Seeds of Time -- 333 pages – Thirty-four pages

The excerpts can be read, free of any fee, on the author’s website:

MichaelShea12books.com

Thank you for reading excerpts from the books.

If you wish to read the books in their entirety, each is, or will be, available.

They are published by ( ).

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The twelve books are dedicated to my daughter, Marie-Laure,

and to my brothers, Philip and Gerald.

I completed the books in the following years:

The Judgement of Solomon - 2010

Eden Lost - 2011

The Silver Apples of the Moon - 2012

The Blue Star of Twilight - 2012

The Sable Swans - 2013

The Willows of the Brook - 2013

The Field of the Lilies - 2014

The Noontide Sun - 2015

The Pine and Cedar - 2015

This Rough Magic - 2016

The Mountain Nymph - 2016

The Seeds of Time - 2017

Thank you for reading this selection from The Field of the Lilies.

To read the remaining pages of The Field of the Lilies, please buy the book.

From my office, looking through the window at my apple tree and the cedars and maples,

best wishes from Michael Shea.

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