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The Adagio Quartet

Book One

The Sable Swans

Michael Shea

Copyrighted in 2013 by the sole author, Michael J. D. Shea

©
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Though man and God created Nod, a life is not in vain

If suffering has meaning; and, if love surpasses pain.

Adam, Eden Lost

The lines within ‘ ’ are from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, by Edward Fitzgerald.
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She has a way, has Hathaway, to cool the lust of Will.

Then kick her husband out of bed. For Will has done well ill.

Will thinks his will’s been straightened out, to get the best of crooks:

The bank, consumed by ravening greed to jab serrated hooks

Into the farm. If mediaeval goons from Shakespeare’s plays

Decide to crucify the guy the Board’s accountant pays

A pittance to create them. Such a show within the Globe

Will bring in suckers who will pay to see a wench disrobe:

A character who lowers veils that were hiding truth

Concealed from observant eyes of Shakespeare’s only sleuth.

Then Shylock Holmes will see those facts a monarch tried to hide:

Concealing from the populace the truth that Henry lied.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “So here we are, within a book

Those bankers and those goons forsook

When they discovered that our quest is worthy of Jehovah’s jest:

(S)He created the species current-tossed on time’s swift brook.”

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King Henry Fifth had told the plebes that they must conquer France,

And put defenders to the sword, and women to the lance,

Because it is the will of God that force should rule the world:

Especially that verdant land where Henry’s words unfurled

A banner that decreed its gold must lodge in Henry’s banks,

Or he will roast the sausages of all those conquered franks.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Mackers’ Knackers;

Big Mac’s slaughterhouse where animal crackers

Are made out of animals; sold our stumbling steeds, Quixote and Sancho, to a pair of pals

Wandering through this book. That’s life, so it’s all rather whackers.”

Anne is angry about a clause in Will’s will. But we already knew that: It’s in The Silver

Apples of the Moon. And just as there, so also here: Anne rolls to the far side of their

second-best bed. Will owns the bed. But the woman always owns the bedroom. He

leaves.

Will’s latest script is resting beside the bed. Anne opens the script at the page marked by

her Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada bookmark. Then she gets her Shakespeare

between the covers.

Anne glares at King Henry the Fifth.

“In Henry’s banks! How very rank that Hank should get the wealth

He took by force from foreign folk. And I just get the health

That comes of running from the wolf that’s howling at the door.

The bankers told my hapless guy that they would give us more:

More time to pay the mortgage off, and in exchange the bank

Would give a break to that dumb guy whose verse, and mind, were blank.”
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“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Will Shakespeare isn’t getting any.

And Henny Penny

Reports that the sky is falling down: Double trouble in Stratford town.

And, just below, the few are ripping off the many.”

“The bank will get the farm some way. And they will get the bed:

The best of beds, that scoundrels conned from Will. Although they said

The bank, a patron of the arts, would let us keep the farm,

And stop fierce Cuddles, at the door, from doing any harm.

So now I get the second best: The bed no banker wants

Unless I’m in it when he comes, on his nocturnal jaunts.”

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “What is a quest, anyway?

Is it like your wanderings in your play,

When you seem to be searching for death? Or is it a quest like the zephyr’s breath

That roams in search of a breeze-blessed azure day?”

Will Shakespeare is reaching for one of his workaday shirts. In its wrinkles and creases,

he sees an image of King Lear’s face, lined by the cares of creation and the toll of time:

Time that tolls the bell and knell of Lear’s parting life in the final scene.

Will dons his rumpled clothes. “So Anne is ruffled.” But at least Shakespeare isn’t a tragic

character in one of his own plays: A fact that leads him to agree with the unofficial mottos

of his vast country. “Not too bad. Pas pire. Could be worse.”

So Anne is ruffled, having lost the chance to lie abed

Til noon arrives, and read the lines the living and the dead

Are speaking when they’re on the stage in William Shakespeare’s plays:

The dead because Prince Hamlet’s dad had wandered down the ways
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That led to Purgatory’s flames. That fire roasts his ass

Until the days of clemency and mercy come to pass.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Our quest is a search for the stage directions the gods write:

The directions, so final and fickle, that flick on, and off, the light

Of each life reflected in the stream of time: A life the gods’ prose and rhyme

Portray, creating a tragic king or an amusing knight.”

Far from the heat of Purgatory, and cold as enforced chastity, Will’s feet feel the hallway

flagstones: Stone flags in his bone-and-rags shop of thought. Outlined against the last

light of the lost night, the stones are engraved with morning thoughts about the spring of

time and humanity’s first sundawn, before the eve of Eve and the autumn of Adam, and

the losing of Eden, and the pain in Nod: The Earthly purgatory of the first people suffering.

Does God enjoy the suffering inflicted on the weak

Who fell? And now, are waiting for the hearing that they seek,

When Righteousness releases them to fly to Heaven’s gate.

Saint Peter will engage each soul in scandalous debate:

Each soul who argues Heaven’s will is very much like Will’s

Because the maker’s grinding folks in hot, satanic mills --

They’re hot because the flames of Hell are only slightly worse

Than Earthly tribulations limned in William Shakespeare’s verse --

Will earn the approbation of the guardian of the gate,

Where frightened sinners wait to know about their endless fate.

Will Shakespeare swings open the heavy oak door. The hinges creak. Cuddles snarls.

Still on guard, Will snarls back at the resident wolf. Cuddles backs off: For the moment.
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“Hey Lear,” So our quest is to find the script resting on Yahweh’s right hand.

With the left hand, softened by the brook water flowing out of the land

Of Eden, (S)He can destroy or create a world of words: The words that limn the great,

As you were once. Or deal with guys, like me, who just march in history’s band.”

Will Shakespeare admires the silver equestrienne riding on cantering cumulus clouds:

Mustangs in his mind. While lunar light-lances quiver in the trees, the man on the Earth

gazes at the pale woman in the moon.

The woman in the bed is setting aside King Henry the Fifth. Anne Hathaway picks up her

copy of this book, and turns to page five.

Saint Peter knows that Fate’s not just, and God is often harsh,

And living in this world can be like waltzing in a marsh.

“Like waltzing in a marsh.” Anne puts her morning reading by.

“That’s metaphor’s all wet. It isn’t true that one can die

When quicksand opens up. And who on Earth would dance

In bogs where frogs on rotting logs croak puns concerning France?”

In the Shakespeares’ pond, beyond the house and the garden and the meadow, leopard

frogs are croaking out their greeting to the morning.

In the lane, beneath the moon and the maples, a pale horse and a pale rider are gazing

at the home of Anne and Will: A modern composer and a neo-Elizabethan playwright.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “The pale horse and pale rider are in my bailiwick.

And Sancho and Quixote, ancient nags, know that the quick

Brown fox is slower than the pale horse that runs along the stony course

Of a life until that pallid steed performs his favourite trick.”

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“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “The pale horse comes to a sudden stop.

The pale rider goes flying over the top

Of the nag’s nape. Then a horse laugh, jest, and jape

Celebrate the fact that even Death can take the fall and drop.”

“An authentic Tudor house in Ontario?” Death is not certain.

Anne Hathaway, also, is not certain. Anne picks her reading up again. “So is it true that

Saint Peter has little love for bosses, or the Boss’s judgement seat?”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Sometimes Death has to wait

To get the best of the not-yet-late.

So let’s continue our travels, while the sleeve of time unravels.

And ‘the raveled sleeve of care’ unravels lives mocked by the grinning teeth of Fate.”

Death is certain. He has decided to knock on King Lear’s door. His fist will pound on

the heartwood of the old oak: The ashen fist in a silken glove, for pain ceases when the

hand of Death signals a stop to the breath of life.

Anne Hathaway is reading about the undiscovered country before death.

And Anne then reads theology: These lines of rhyming verse

That imps in Hell are reading, and the angels want to curse.

But angels are too virtuous to damn a wicked line.

Instead, they read of destinies Saint Peter’s words assign.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “I think that I shall never see

A confirmable theology.

That is not the role of profound myths about the human soul

Trying to remain balanced on a catwalk above the ocean of eternity.”

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Saint Peter listens to each soul who says that God’s not just

Because He lets the innocent be ground into the dust.

And Peter listens to each soul who says that God’s not fair.

(S)He could prevent much suffering, if only (S)He would care.

Then Peter says, “You’re honest souls! And so, you may come in

To tell the Boss the ways of God are sometimes ways of sin.”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “I think that I shall never view

The harm that some of religion’s big-brass do

Without a rising of my gorge: Without the heat of anger that can forge

A steely resolve: A sword, of words, to cut those lines of bull-manure in two.”

“Sin be damned!” The fleshless face is grinning and grinning. But the pale rider is not

amused.

His eyeless eyes are staring and staring at the old farmhouse where Will Shakespeare

wrote the keening word-music of the storm that tears apart the heart of King Lear. And

wrote also the notes for another tempest: The laughter-gales of Jack Falstaff. Present girth

has present laughter, when Jack chortles. And his wit whistles in winter, in the teeth of the

white bear. And the silken glove of his waggery brushes snow from the soul.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “I think that you meant ‘into two’.

A monarch like you

Should try to get the language right: To impress plebes like me, who deplore the sight

Of language-litter the language-illiterate scatter and strew.”

The ways of sin are ways of Jack, who someday will be saved,

Despite those scandalizing ways Jack Falstaff’s misbehaved.

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For sometimes God has given breaks, unlike Will Shakespeare’s bank,

To those who fall into the cup the god called Bacchus drank.

Yet Jack is giving up the booze: He’s giving up the sack,

Because he’s witnessed evil done by parents who attack

Their children when the adults are consumed by alcohol:

Is it the other way around? An easy one to call.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Now I’m sober as an honest judge

Who listens to the lies that nudge

The facts, so they will step aside: A judge who’s vowed to woo the bride;

Justicia, wed to our glimmers of truth the Fates concede but begrudge.”

Ezekiel saw the wheel, way in the middle of the sky: The wheel that turned and turned the

other way around. In his eyes’ mind, Ezekiel saw chariots of fire, and phaetons of photons.

The fire of desire, leading Jack Falstaff to the burning in his pestle. And the light of reason

and the night of unreason, leading Lear to leer like a lecher as he stares past the stars, and

lusts for the one-way pathway to the endless emptiness of the darkness and the deathless

ceasing of his suffering.

Then Ezekiel the prophet took up his falcon plume, and wrote about the turnings of the

Playwright’s plot when the protagonist is broken on the revolving wheel of fear and despair.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Some judges are as drunk as lords

Who stagger and stumble across the boards

When Shakespeare populates the stage with aristocrats who threaten and rage.

Then seize the plunder war affords.”

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Will Shakespeare is a prophetic playwright in his own vast country, from Cape Spear to

Haida Guai and from Avon to Arctic. Sometimes an Ezekiel, bound to the wheel of fire in

Lear’s tragedy. And sometimes a Jonah, tumbling into the rumbling belly of Jack Falstaff’s

comedy.

Another easy one to call: Who wrote what Shakespeare wrote?

Who wrote those lines that characters so frequently misquote?

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “The Brits

Are reduced to apoplectic fits;

Rancourous and enraged; because Justicia is engaged

To the truth: The author of those plays is Canadian as Coyote the Trickster’s wits.”

Will Shakespeare writes Will Shakespeare’s plays. He does it every day,

Creating people with his ink, as God made folks with clay.

Those people populate the stage within the circling Globe.

And populate the plays of Will, where language-lances probe

The ways of war and warriors. And ways of women too,

When they weep tears upon the boards: Tears trampled with the dew,

Upon the grassless, dewless stage within the minds of fans

Who see within their inward eyes the grass and dew. And clans

Who hack each other into meat: To feed, at Dunsinane,

The maw, of Death, that ravens for their fear and blood and pain.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “When Will Shakespeare writes

The scenes that dim, and put out, theatre lights

For characters who lose all hope, then swing from oaken limb and hempen rope,
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He entertains the fans in Stratford’s silken summer nights.”

Talking of fear and blood and pain, Jack Falstaff on-stage takes his potion for his pestle

and fakes his motion, limping from war wounds as fraudulent as his war bonds.

And Falstaff’s war stories are as carefully forged as the bond that binds a Venetian banker.

“Hey Jack” says Lear, “The fans are entertained to see

Bardolph swing from here to eternity.

And then they yowl and shout and howl

For Shakespeare to shape and forge another steel key.”

Will Shakespeare wrote the play of Mac, and Missus Mackers too.

And writes the plays of all those folks the mind of Shakespeare knew

At deepest depths, before the words arose, and came to light.

Will Shakespeare knows the words before he knows what he will write:

He knows them in non-conscious depths of thinking’s silent night.

Those concentrated rays of thought and language then ignite

Into the flames of fury that are burning on the stage.

The flames of all those words of war inexorably cage

The people who were speaking them, by burning through life’s thread,

Imprisoning those captives in the silence of the dead.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “The steel key will open the door

To the halls of Satan’s evermore.

And there, Shakespeare’s scum-bags roast and rot. While imps and implettes stir a pot

Filled with the villains’ groans and gore.”

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Imprisoned in the silence of the living who may not speak, a character is yoked to

counterfeit currency and bound to grief: To the phony mercy of Portia and to the genuine

tragedy of Shylock.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Will Shakespeare tries to imitate

The noise of Satan’s closing gate.

Will uses words like clang and clank: The sounds reverberating in the rank

And pestilential air trapped in Hell’s halls: In Satan’s sovereign and sulphuric state.”

Will Shakespeare emulates nature’s God, and tries to imitate the nature of God, following

in ancient sandal-steps made by the Maker. The creator of Shylock and the coiner of

Portia yokes himself to the work of a mere man of words who tries, in thought and silence,

to echo the great God.

The Creator spoke in Genesis, and in the silence of the primal void.

Jehovah spoke. And did (S)He weep? And did (S)He laugh?

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Where the azure angels play,

Jehovah has the final say.

In Hades, it’s Beelzebub. Who rules the crux and crucial nub:

The unquiet heart of Earthly night and day?”

Though sometimes walking ways of woe, Will writes his comedies,

And forges ores of language into glinting golden keys:

The jestings of the jesters who have opened golden locks.

They open up the doors of thought to pleasant verdant walks

Where audiences stroll, at ease, along the paths of fun

Where villains, schemes, ignoble dreams, and buttons are undone.

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“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Perhaps there isn’t anyone

Who rules the nights and days that run

From the eventide to the day-dawn’s side,

From the falling moon to the rising sun.”

Will’s tragedies and comedies are not the only ways

He strives to write the stuff of life into the lives of plays:

He writes misleading “histories” of mediaeval times.

King Henry uses “history” to “justify” his crimes.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “It’s a mystery

Why ‘history’

Always justifies the brutal acts, and excuses the conniving pacts,

Of bullies until Satan locks them up in his infernal desistory.”

One distant time, King Hank the Fifth declared in solemn tones

It was the will of God that he should throw the Froggies’ bones

To snarling, ravening dogs of war that prowled the land of France:

Hank led the Brits to backward ways the ways of war advance.

And Will Shakespeare leads his character killers, and his character-killers, to the ways of

oblivion. When Will is giving form to a void, and purpose to a spirit that moves upon the

face of the deep.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “The bullies desist and cease

When the Fates have canceled their Earthly lease.

Displeased about the flames of Hell, they try to con their boss: They tell

Beelzebub that the squeaking wheels should get the grease.”

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Among those killer characters, a villain called Big Mac

Has worked behind, and in, the scenes to stage a Mac attack

Upon the life of Duncan. Dunc’s a king who stops to sleep

Where martlets and a nightingale sing to him of sheep

That, jumping over fences, lead a man to fear-filled dreams.

And jumping over corpses, nightmares fill the night with screams

Of people who are slaughtered by the thugs that Mac employs.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Those damned bullies want some grease or oil

To lubricate their bodies while those broilers toil

To squeeze their way up Hell’s smoke-filled vent. But that narrow stack is twisted and bent,

And will trap them deep beneath the volcanic soil.”

In Mackers’ realm, no person sings of freedom and of joys

The martlets and the nightingale, in their liberty,

Possess, in contrast to those Scots whose lives are not to be.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “I know that I shall never see

A perfect person, nation, or family.

Let’s pin it on poor Adam’s fall. Let’s bad-mouth the guy, put down for all

The crimes and failings of humanity.”

The granite throne of Scotland has been stolen by a thane.

He wages war on Scotland, and he lards the blood-soaked plain

With bodies of his victims, who are fertilizing earth

That Mac has also stolen. Then those pastures will give birth

To calves of Highland cattle. They are rendered into meat

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So Mac can sell the burgers William Shakespeare’s fans will eat

At intermission, when the Scottish play is on the boards.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “You’ve stepped off-base.

Humanity fell from grace

Because we always take the snake with us into the garden. And may Jehovah pardon

Me for referring to such a blatant sexual symbol in this unholy place.”

The boards are reddened by a reign of blood that falls on lords

Assaulted by the puns of Will and by the sword of Mac.

Those lords have died at Dunsinane. They never will come back

From Presbyterian damnations of the Scottish thanes

Tormented by the bagpipes skirling endless mournful strains.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Stratford is this unholy place

Where ‘four or five most vile and ragged foils’ disgrace

The name of Agincourt: Very different from Judge Solomon’s court:

Sol is taking a judicial interest in the unholy trinity of Stratford, arsenic, and old lace.”

King Duncan tries to waken from the nightmare of his land

Subjected to the horrors of the fate that Will has scanned

From heights of Mac’s creator, looking down upon the lay

Of countryside that’s poisoned by the venom in his play.

But Duncan never wakens, for the regicidal blades

Of daggers bring eternity in Heaven’s Highland glades.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “I’ve noticed that ‘court’ and ‘Agincourt’ don’t rhyme.

And one comes from les rosbifs: The eaters of a lime.

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Your daughter, Cordelia, married a French guy. And the English, when they try

To pronounce ‘Agincourt’ and ‘Jacques’, screw it up every time.”

The hands that held the daggers held the fate of Mister Mac,

Because he damned himself when he decided he would hack

The rood in Duncan’s chapel into bits of firewood

To burn the thanes denouncing names that Duncan never could:

The names of Mac and Missus Mac, who killed the kindly king.

And doomed the land of Scotland to the evils tyrants bring.

But Mac and Missus Mac will meet their own remorseless doom:

It’s worse than bagpipes wailing in the murk of Hades’ gloom.

For Mister Mac and Missus Mac will not escape, alive,

From fates that Will prepared for them when scribbling down Act Five.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Let us roam

Where les rosbifs are relaxing at home

In room temperatures cold as a story Will’s told:

The Winter’s Tale, as chill as the loam.”

And Mister Mac and Missus Mac will spend their play’s Act Six

In morrows when the daggers called tomorrows will transfix

Their souls to all eternity: It never brings surcease

From endlessly repeating days that never bring them peace.

Then after endless morrows, endless sorrow’s just begun,

For Mackers and the Missus never reach oblivion.

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“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “As cold as the loam

That’s piled on Macker’s new home:

For after the play, the place Mac will stay

Is chill as the Arctic ocean-foam.”

Waves, waves, waves wash, in vain, over eternal sandal prints imprinted in the sand by the

Author: Prints left on the sea shore; the lea shore of the sea of eternity. Where wayward

gusts blow souls toward the sea of seeming surcease.

Light waves dance upon water waves. The wave lights glimmer by the lea shore, and

launch upon a journey. The light waves travel forever across the silent sea of space,

eternally approaching the dark that no light can attain, like souls of the dead seeking the

darkness of the far shore.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Let’s bang a drum, drum, drum

In the hope that ghoulish goblins come

To see what the excitement’s all about. Then we will catch each ghoulish lout.

And glue them together, claw to claw, with chewing gum.”

Two soul-arrows are forever closer to Zeno’s target in the sands. Forever and forever and

forever, they approach nearer and nearer and nearer to the sands and seeds of eternal

oblivion. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, they creep closer to the peace of

surcease. More and more and more slowly, they move forward less and less and less

toward the eternal silence by the dead sea of dead souls. But both those souls of sorrows

find a Sheol of endless tomorrows.

Lord and Lady Macbeth: Souls afflicted by the eternity of eternity, and begging for, “Time.

Time, please!” Pleading for any time. Your time. Our time. Their time upon a once.
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Begging even for the birth of time: The Big Bang was time’s first fool, banging on the

eardrums of its Maker.

Jack Falstaff is a fool of fun, and leads a fools’ brigade.

He bangs his drum and toots his horn, directing Jack’s parade

Away from all the sorrows that afflict the soul of Lear.

But also from the dreams the goblins sometimes pierce and tear.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “So you want to enslave the goblins: You must be out of your mind.

It’s the goblins who will bind

You and me with steel chains. And then those spooks will eat our brains:

That happens in Stratford. The goblins will feed on the pulp, and throw away the rind.”

King Lear’s a different kind of fool, partitioning his land.

Jack builds his castles in the air. Lear built his home on sand.

For Jack ignores realities when life is not so great.

And Lear creates realities that doom him to his fate.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “I own a little lot of land.

It’s six feet long and three feet wide. Though you may think it’s grand

To lie in such a plot, I know that I’ve got

No wish to cease my marching in the fools’ and jesters’ band.”

Old Jack has often had the hots, and Doll has played his fife.

It’s worth the candle, for that flame casts heat upon his life:

The flame of lust, that burns until the fuel has been consumed.

And in the garden of delights, the balmy air’s perfumed

With pheromones that tickle Falstaff’s nostrils, til the need

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To scratch again brings back again the sowing of the seed.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Sometimes I want to end the pain

Descending, like incessant rain,

Upon my body and my heart. But I will go on marching too, behind the creaking cart:

It carries my muffled hopes across a parched soul-searing plain.”

Will’s raunchy puns, that play on sex, aren’t barely understood

By those who think that “nothing” is a Tudor term that could

Be fathomed by those guys who think that Doll’s anatomy

Can bring no bearing to the play that they have come to see.

And ‘bearing’ is a naughty word in lines that speak, like these,

Of goings-on, and comings-off, and carnal knowledge-trees.”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Let us go

Where the ice-worms hide under the snow.

They’re hiding from some of my relatives. In Lear, my family gives a gift that gives

Eternal rest, where grieving daisies and a mourning yew-tree grow.”

King Lear has come to see that he has played the royal fool

By giving total power to his relatives who drool

For domination. So that they can crush beneath their feet

The king, before the Playwright rules it’s time to tap ‘delete’.

Before the final lines, they’re all deleted from their play.

But not before the vicious villains prey on those who pray

That God will change the script, if (S)He can hear their fear-filled cry.

And Lear says, “Nothing! Nothing!” as he gazes at the sky.

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“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Cordelia’s an honest girl.

When both her sisters fold and furl

The banner of truth, she opens it. But, as the English say, on stage you’re a foolish git:

You’re an English king who polishes the clamshell and chucks away the pearl.”

So who’s the greater king of fools? Old Jack, betrayed by lust?

Or Lear, who wanders through the mud when journeying to dust?

Regardless, Jack is good for fun. Although he’s seldom good.

He plays the drum that leads the dance in pleasure’s neighbourhood.

And toots the horn that sounds the tune we hear in Shakespeare’s plays

When audiences listen to the rhythmic Tudor lays.

And ‘lays’? Another naughty word: Will Shakespeare’s fond of puns,

And buys them from the joggers near where April’s Avon runs.

King Lear attempts to learn the truth. Although we fear the true

When it becomes the essence of a bubbling witches’ brew

That’s bitter to the living. Though it can’t affect the dead

Who walked the boards with Lear within the play of molten lead.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “I don’t enjoy

Being a battered and buffeted toy

Of Fate, and the script, within my play. I’d much rather spend a pleasant day

Being what I never was: A happy and carefree boy.”

Within the inn of moldy bread, old Jack is cadging dough

So he can pay the piper’s price, to play a tune of woe.

Then Jack can have the fun that comes from singing songs of pain
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And owning an umbrella that protects him from the rain.

The rain’s the pain of other folks. It’s kept away from Jack:

Those hurtin’ songs are water off that duck’s enormous back.

For Jack’s a comic character in scenes that Shakespeare wrote

So we can laugh at pratfalls that befall that Billy goat.

And Shakespeare’s not a William goat. It’s Jack the Bill who butts

His way through scenes that make us grin at Shakespeare’s “bag of guts”.

Jack Falstaff’s often horny as a big-horn Billy goat

That Noah, being scandalized, pushed off his crowded boat.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “That’s because, when you were created,

You were already an old man: Sometimes checked; and long since mated

To a queen I’ve never seen.

She’s never on the board in your losing chess-game that Shakespeare’s script created.”

Jack Falstaff comes to sorrow, for he stays around too long.

His life’s a lark in Henry Fourth. Then Henry does him wrong.

That’s Hank the Fifth, a killer, who has murdered Falstaff’s heart.

It’s comedy to tragedy, when Jack and fun depart.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Off-stage, I have fun.

But not in my play, where Death’s begun

To grab my collar with his skeletal hand. And Death is hanging on to beat the band

That plays the symphony of life bestowed by the blessèd sun.”

And is Jack Falstaff really such a fool as some have thought?

He’s done no real harm. And Nell says Jack’s old jokes have bought
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That vintage joker entrance to the court of God the One.

That jokester is the jester in that court of wit and fun.

And other fools also amuse the Maker. The Creator of the planet of the primates is

chuckling at the antics of the living: Grinning at the clothed but naked apes, so seldom

sapiens: The primates scratching a pair of lice, or hatching dreams of Paradise.

But sometimes swinging in trees of truth, and groves of learning and reading: ‘A man is but

a reed.’ A vapour can kill him. ‘But he is a thinking reed.’

Though most unlike a reed in girth, Jack Falstaff’s human worth

Is rooted in the thoughts and deeds to which his life gives birth.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “The sun’s the source of energy

That warms the waves upon the sea:

The ocean of thought, where truths are caught

In nets ethereal as gossamer yet strong as the bonds of mortality.”

And thriving in the summer sun, Will Shakespeare sees the red

Of pomegranates, like the globes his search for knowledge bled.

For every time he looked for truth, he cut into the hearts

Of pomegranates, seeking seeds of truth. And truth imparts

The knowledge there are seeds of truths that no one, so far, sees

That fill the pomegranates on ten thousand other trees.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “I think that I shall never see

The realm of immortality.

Although my name may long be caught in nets word-woven by Shakespeare’s thought,

I still am fated not to be.”

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Crimson against green, the pomegranates of the tree of knowledge and of the tree of life

pleased the eyes of Yahweh, when (S)He walked in the clearing in Eden.

Seeking seeds of symbolism, the Author unrolled the scroll of an author. Then Yahweh

read the creation myth of Eve: Read as (S)He walked in the Garden of Delight in the cool

of the evening, strolling among the primroses and through Eve’s profound myth.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “When the roses bud on a warm June day,

Gather rosebuds while you may.

And if rosebuds are not the thing that cause your mind-made chimes to ring,

Then picnic beneath the tree of life, where dappling shadows play.”

In Paradise, the Boss decreed a verdant canopy

Of trees of knowledge, trees of life, and other trees that (S)He

Bestowed upon the verdant land where Adam played with Eve

Like children in a nursery. Where fun and laughter weave

A tapestry of innocence and evil isn’t known.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “I’m speaking only three lines, here at the top

Of the page. Because a bit below, the great Jehovah lets us know

What (S)He is thinking in a sentence that seems as if it will never stop.”

The snake, though very cynical, decided to postpone

His venomous disclosures. They revealed ways of God

Who fashioned heat and dust and stones into the land of Nod,

Prepared for Eve and Adam, if they ever left the path

Of ignorance. And wandered into brambles Heaven’s wrath

Would sow for them, to tear and scratch the bleeding, hurting feet
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Of Eve and Adam, “culpable” before God’s judgement seat.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Jehovah talked on and on

About the serpentine logic of the snake at the dawn

Of the pristine world. When the words of God unfurled

A sentence of sixteen lines emblazoned in a script graceful as Stratford’s ebony swan.”

And God said to the serpent, “If you run off at the mouth,

And tell those adult toddlers Nod’s located to the south

Of Eden, though the truth is that it lies directly east,

Because,” Jehovah glared, “You can’t resist the wondrous feast

Of language, and of telling lies in service of the words

You speak to scandalize the doves and all those other birds

That carried seeds of knowledge when they flew from here to Nod,

Distributing to all the world the knowledge I, great God,

Still hope to hog, so only I, and seed-disturbing birds

Will know, for instance, where Nod lies, and know about those herds:

Realities seen playing on the upland downs of truth,

Cavorting in the morning of a planet in its youth;

Then I shall be most righteous wrath, when you have spilled the beans

To both those adult toddlers, who are playing in their scenes

That I, the Playwright, scribbled out, so they’d remain my pets

In Eden, living lives of ease, spared sorrows and regrets.

So do not tell your lies or truths to Adam or to Eve,

Or I shall take my vengeance with a meat axe. I shall cleave

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The sockets of your legs, and you will slither on the ground.

And retribution will be crowned the moment you are bound

To speechlessness. For I shall split your darting tongue in two.

And you will hiss and hiss and hiss, but nothing false or true,

And nothing that is genuine, and nothing that is fake,

Will ever cross your lips and fangs, you damned, confounded snake!”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Quixote

Is a dévoté

Of the clover growing over

There: The pasture where the deer and the antelope play.”

The serpent said, “Okay. Okay! I’ll never say a thing

About the trees of knowledge and the future they will bring

If Eve and Adam spit out seeds, and eat the crimson fruit.

For every seed would make a tree that wriggles down, to root

In wonders and in sorrows that will mark the centuries

Of people who both bless and curse this Garden’s knowledge trees.”

Then God returned to Heaven, where revolting seraphim

Were trying to set up a state where every her and him

Could have a say. And God would have to listen to the plea

Of angels asking ‘her and him’ be changed to ‘she and he’.

“For everything that’s right is right. And everything that’s wrong?

That’s how the Boss has run this place,” was now the angel-song.

And Angela and Angelo said they could run the joint
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With help from rump-fed ronyons who told Mackers to, “Aroint!”

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “I think that I shall never see

A ronyon aroint. Or a snickerer’s snickersnee

Snick and nick when he’s quick to pick

A fight that sends my soul to eternity.”

“All Heaven is revolting! That’s the truth,” the serpent said.

“Who really wants to spend forever, after he is dead,

Declaiming Hallelujahs!, and Hosannas!, and the like,

When he would rather roam the hills upon his silent bike.

Or maybe he would rather loaf before a drivel-box

And smell the entertainment just beyond his fetid socks.

But who the Hell would want to spend forever and a day

In endlessly repeating every Heavenly cliché.”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Quixote’s equine soul

Will go to where the seraphim toll

The chimes of eternity unless he is free

To join the deer and the antelope dining on clover and alfalfa and timothy.”

The serpent was subtle. And he said unto the woman, “Has God said, ‘You shall not eat

of every tree of the garden?’”

And the woman said unto the serpent, “Of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the

garden, God has said, “‘You shall not eat of it, lest you die.’”

And the serpent said unto the woman, “God does know that in the day you eat thereof,

then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
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And when the woman saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of

the fruit thereof, and did eat. And gave also unto her husband, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened. And they knew good and evil.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Like Adam and Eve, Sancho’s hungry too.

I offered him a pot of Buck Mulligan stew.

But finding his voice, Sancho said that James Joyce

Cooked a lousy stew. That’s strange, because horses still can’t talk. What else is new?”

“When time began, Jehovah made the night and made the day

And made the many wonders that these words of praise portray.

And God saw all that He had made, and everything was good.”

Eve penned those opening lines because it would be understood

That she would write a book of verses celebrating God

If only (S)He would let them off the hook that God named ‘Nod’.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “What’s new? This quatrain is five lines long.

But that’s impossible The seraphim’s song

Defines

The lines

Of a quatrain as: No more than four. What’s wrong is wrong. What’s brought is brong.”

And God was in a vile mood, deciding Eve would stay,

With Adam, in that sorry land, where Cain would one day slay

The second son of Eve. So she then wrote a different book

About the God of flowing time, who made the burbling brook

That mirrors on its coursing face reflections of the good

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And evil that have been released to roam the neighbourhood:

The place where people hang around. It’s called the planet Earth,

Where God set free much bad, much good, much sorrow, and much mirth.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “What’s brong is brought.

Jehovah sought

To lay the rap for all that wrong on Eve and Adam, claiming that they brong

Suffering into the world by their primaeval failing and fault.”

And God was most disgruntled that the hand of Eve had penned

That often human suffering that life and living send

To those who have not merited that they should suffer so

Occurs because the will of God allows the painful blow:

That people cause much suffering, but all too often God

Allows a life to seem to be a counterpart of Nod.

So God decreed that Eve’s first book be turned to ash and smoke.

A sword of fire slashed that book: A blade and blaze that broke

The will of Eve to write the truth about the ways of God.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Why should Adam and Eve take the blame?

They were like toddlers in Eden, playing a game

With rules they couldn’t comprehend. Another rule: No quatrain should ever send

A line to limbo: Alone at the top of a page, unable to join its friends or to rhyme with them.”

Then God decreed that Eve must write, beneath the sun of Nod,

A sanctioned book, that claimed that all the evil in the world

Was caused by Eve and Adam, and the wily snake that curled
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His coils round the limbs of trees of knowledge and of life:

It’s they who caused humanity to live in times of strife.

Although Eve knew that wasn’t true, “I know what’s good for us.

So I shall write what God commands. And I shall write it thus:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was

good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness (S)He called Night. And the evening and

the morning were the first day.

And on the sixth day, God made the beasts of the earth, and everything that creeps upon

the earth: That includes the hissing serpent of sibilant speech. And Eve realized it had

been a set-up, when she and Adam knew good and evil, and the ethically wishy-washy.

And lest people put forth their hands, and take also of the tree of life, and live forever, God

placed at the east of the Garden of Eden a seraphim, with a flaming sword which turned

every way.

And the angel Angelo is that forbidding guardian of the gateway to the forbidden Garden.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “In Paradise

Three mighty mice

Say, nightly, thrice,

‘Four is never five.’ But one and one often make three. So four plus one; five; can be

The number of lines in a quatrain. Now I’ve mentioned this subject twice.”
 31

And Angelo was most displeased when he was made the cop

Who holds the sword, and holds the sign that orders all to ‘Stop!’

When they approach the Garden God retains for private use.

No people enter Paradise unless they can produce

Their permits stating they can walk, like Darwin, through the gate:

The gateway to the Deity’s own pastoral estate.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Was that two times too often?

Pondering such subjects would further soften

A Conservative’s brain. And fatally strain

A Republican’s highest intellectual capacities, taking him to his coffin.”

Chuck Darwin was the only one who found a way around

The regulations keeping us outside the wall God wound

About the blessed ground on which the morning of the world

Remains untouched. Like galaxies the will of God once hurled

Across the universe when (S)He ordained that there be light.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “The Conservatives and Republicans;

Unable to grasp intellectually the number two; can grasp, but can’t count, their own buns.

And the Republicans and Conservatives feed a ravening political-beast that lives

To the right of Attila the Hun’s.”

Chuck Darwin forged a permit that deceived the piercing sight

Of Angelo: The seraphim whose frightening, flaming sword

Was pointed as the questions angel agents of the Lord

Address to anyone who tries to enter through the gate

Of Heaven or of Eden, as the Testaments both state.

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“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “While you and I talk politics,

And discuss the Tories’ squalid and sordid tricks,

Each of our horses, perforce, is

Growing hungrier than the crocodiles in the river Styx.”

Chuck Darwin had rehearsed his lines. And acted on the stage

Of Eden-Gate as ably as Will’s characters. They gauge

Exactly all the nuances contained within each line

The lordly will of William has elected to assign

To people who enjoy the Edens of his comedies,

Or find themselves condemned to Nods in Shakespeare’s tragedies.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “The damned Republicans and Conservatives

Are ferried, to Hades, in a sturdy boat that gives

No culinary opportunities to the crocodiles. Then Cerberus, the three-headed dog, smiles

Three times, at once, to welcome the new inhabitants to where the Devil lives.”

And Chuck gave Angelo Angelica; a bottled bribe

So he could see the wonders that the words of Eve describe:

The words within her book that God decided would be burned

Because she wrote of mutiny God’s harshest dictates earned.

And Angelo was very pleased that he could let Chuck walk

Into the bliss of Paradise, the way that Pete the Rock

Let Falstaff enter Heaven. When that sinner forged the forms

That let him leave behind the cold of winter’s icy storms

And enter into blissful May, and enter into June,

And play the instruments that match that reprobate’s blithe tune.
 33

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “The Govs are in their counting house, counting out their money.

The bees are in the clover, making ambrosial honey.

Ambrosia is the food of the gods. And every time a clover flower nods,

The Governors stuff more cash into their piggy bank and into their financial bunny.”

And Angelo, the angel, is a scary looking guy.

He holds on high a flaming sword that burns against the sky.

Its burning blade could send one’s soul, ascending to Saint Pete

Without the forms that Jack completed, with deceit, to cheat

His way into the Paradise described by Will the Bard.

But Jack will merit Heaven. Though the theatre’s joker card;

Libidinous, but kind at heart; he’s trying hard to aid

Afflicted characters like Lear, whom Shakespeare’s thinking made.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “The bunny was a healthy soul

Until the Governors chimed the toll:

The knell that signaled they had killed that rabbit. Now the Govs indulge their piggy habit

Of stuffing in cash, pushed through the eviscerated bunny’s loonie-hole.”

Though Shakespeare’s called “creator”, he is not at all the same

As God, who made the universe. (S)He gets both praise and blame

For making Will, who made old Jack a sinner on the page:

Sir John, the knight of appetite and wit upon the stage.

The guy the great Creator now has dubbed not ‘Sir’ but ‘Saint’.

This leads Anne Hathaway to lodge an erudite complaint.

Though Anne is very modern, she has lived so long with Will

She draws on language-liquor that the plays of Will distill.

She taps her husband’s newest script. And using Tudor words,
 34

Exclaims the author’s intellect is strictly for the birds.

“And what betides this narrative? For verily, forsooth,

So many lines before, he had begun to write the truth

About the seraphim who stands before the Eden-Gate

And turns away the mighty and the moneyed and the great.”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “One truth I know

Is that Stratford’s sunlit snow

Is dazzling as Angelo’s fiery sword. And when the Chairman of the Board

Is loonie-looting, Angelo swoops like a falcon. And he liberates the gleaming dough.”

The truth, forsooth, is Angelo is really very kind

And wants to let in all the people pain and illness grind

Into the dust of suffering. It rises like a cloud,

Obscuring all the daffodils that dance in Wordsworth’s crowd.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Then Angelo writes in the snow,

‘If you don’t want to rot and roast in Hell, where the sulphur and the critics smell, go

To confess to Friar Lawrence. And feeling abhorrence

For your grubby greed and your crimes, mumble penitential Hail Marys a thousand times

To escape the lake of fire down below.’”

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “But the Chairman would rather have the cash

And go to Hell. Where bankers gnash

Their teeth as they feed upon the marrow of a Stratford swan

They nabbed when they were in town to see Andronicus make pies and stew and hash.”

And Angelo is most displeased that he was made the cop

Who holds the sign. Like Falstaff, who is holding up his prop:

Jack’s sign, of course, upon the stage, presenting to the world

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A message that Will Shakespeare’s script dramatically unfurled.

The sign is notifying Jack that he has reached his ‘Stop!’.

He’s garnered all his days and years, and gathered all the crop

Assigned to Jack by Shakespeare’s script. Or by the will of God,

As absolute as on the day (S)He banished us to Nod.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Titus Andronicus took an axe

And gave the bad guys forty whacks.

When he had heard their final cry, he baked them in a juicy pie

Much healthier than the burgers at Big Mac’s.”

Jack soon will meet a gentleman who walked through Heaven’s gate.

Though Adam lost one Paradise, he now enjoys the state

Of blessedness in Paradise, bestowed on him and Eve

By God. (S)He rues the harshness that had caused them once to grieve

Their loss of Eden, loss of Abel, and of bliss and joys:

Their loss redeemed by so much love they’d given little boys.

When Adam delved and Eve span, God was not the gentleman.

Adam was, digging into Nod: Land hard as the harsh hand of God.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “Those roses are red. Those violets are blue.

Queen Tamora eats her offspring. Quixote and Sancho eat roses, and violets too.

Let’s ride thorough that gate, where the turkey vultures wait,

So our nags can eat the flowers that the gods of summer strew.”

And in the cool of the evening, Eve spun stories for their little boys.

When Adam delved, he struck the stones that hid in earth of Nod.

He never struck his little boys. And never played the god

Who looks upon the children, and declares in righteous wrath

 36

That they have wandered from the pebbles on the narrow path:

The pebbles that were hurting them, upon the only way

That they’re allowed to journey. If they ever dare to stray,

Their dad and mom will punish them. And God will hurt them too.

And throw them to the jackals roaming God’s infernal zoo.

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “Those vultures are waiting

With patience. That is a virtue. And thus they’re ingratiating

Themselves with the Boss. So the vultures won’t suffer the loss

Of their immortal souls when they die in the ways that the Fates will be fating.”

And Adam knew he had no right to hit another soul

Except to stop a violent thug. And knew he must control

The impulse to harangue his kids, and pour his anger out

Upon the heads of children. So, reserving every shout

Of anger for the heavens that refused to send him rain,

The father of humanity went back to sweat again.

And later he sat down and talked quite calmly with his boys.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “A saber-toothed tiger named Wilbur

Pulled the plow in the fields Adam had to till. Sir,

Wilbur helped out because he was nice: A friend to Cain and Abel and the meadow mice,

He liked, like Ferdinand, to sniff each jonquil, narcissus, and daffodil, sir.”

And Wilbur used to listen in, to find out what annoys

Those human folks: What is it rubs their paltry fur awry?

What makes them fight like cats and dogs beneath the azure sky

That beams its golden eye upon each snarling dog and cat

And people who would like to think that they’re above all that.
 37

“Hey Lear,” says Jack, “I avow

That Sancho and Quixote, like the purple cow,

Would rather eat the daffodils. And the narcissus is a flower that fills

The needs of the inner horse. In your play, you stumble through brambles and gorse.

But here, we’ll stroll where the heads of the jonquils gently bow.”

And Adam was a gentleman. And Eve, a gentle mom.

They climbed a tree of knowledge to see what would become.

They searched the far horizon, where their children would reside.

Those days of joys and sorrows were beyond the farther side

Of trees of life that hid those times, and hills adorned with dew

That showed no footprints of the years that life and time pursue.

“Hey Jack,” says Lear, “In my play, the lightening

And thunder attempt to be frightening.

But I refuse to submit to their threats, so they quit.

Then they sleep it off, where the day-dawn is brightening.”

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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 Sable Swans.

To read the remaining pages of The Sable Swans, 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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