It's Not Necessarily a Duck

It's Not Necessarily a Duck
I.
Beauty's Beast has played the fool on many a comic stage;
         his benign ranting,  easy mark,
                   cheaply satisfies the most moderne college crowd's appetite
                             for  levity and ridicule.
Held in cool estimation is Beastie's rave, and all the reviewers doubt
         in truth his  claim to towering passions, heart of fool's gold,
                   the lofty molehills of perspiring rhetoric.

But tell me, dear one, tell me true
         whose voice it was that spoke in muted strains,
                   out on the rocks of Redondo Jetty,
                             of love eternal, destiny revealed, and
                                       all time focussed in a single kiss,
                                                 if not the Beast who came from a distance
                                                           to give you all he had
                                                                     and ever would have?

You listened, then, to his songs, his graveled muZZle mane in wild array,
         as if his soul, caged and bleeding in a barbed bastille,
                   did whisper sighs of roses,
                             a tender gentle music.

You, in all the world, knew  his dythrambic soliloquies for what they were--
         plays of pain for an audience of philistines and bureaucrats,
                   cops in groundling garb echoing  his father's abuse,
                             his mother's guilt, his brother's derision,
                                       his friend's betrayal;

You, of all others, watched him roar his rage,
         spend his frenZy on the footlights,
                   so he could come home--
                             home to you and that caress of sympathy
                                       that changed his froth to honey,
                                                 invective to lullaby,
                                                           rasp to release.

In all time was there ever a better reason to love?
Is it any wonder that you were all to him,
         him whose heatless fire warmed only the gossip's tongue,
                   him whose witless wisdom piloted only a ship of fools?
Is it any wonder that, forgetful of whatever else he knew, he came to think
         the text of your understanding was written in stone of astral halls,
                   just as his grateful love was fixed in the stars?          
Is it any wonder that, in oneness with you, he assumed that
         what you gave him was his forever, NO MATTER WHAT,
                   even as what he gave you, his best self,
                             was non-returnable, non-transferable,
                                       non-negotiable, one time only?
Is it any wonder that in his darkest hour,
         when every face was turned against him
                   and his every assault on the hall of fame had come to nothing,
                             and speeches in the square were like buckets of salt
                                       poured on old fester's harsh hurrah,
                                                 that he was sure that you,
                                                           surely you,
                                                                     would remember?


II.
Beauty's Beast is better now, his collar trimmed, his claws filed down;
         his roar is tamed by Avian.
The gods of once-deaf heaven have rained their praise,
         and lent some kindness to the marketplace.
Something fair has sprung its shower, dissolving the salt,
          balming the torments with gift of grace.

No longer wild with brutish gape, his visage sags in sleepy dreaming.
Shattered desire has given rise to Ash-Bird AriZona flying through
         light clouds and wind, dropping tunes like snowflakes
                   on every upturned smiling face.
Is it any wonder that the once-stony-froZen riverbed 
         now flows again, a torrent of melody, toward the ocean of Redondo?
                   That all his wrongs have flown like geese to northern frosts,
                             arctic wastes of remembering?

The ruin of his disaster clutters his yard, but time is on his side;
         even now old swords scratch the stubborn earth
                   into furrows of hope for the seeds of summer's bounty.
The Beast is aged and toothless now, and yet his songs are like the                    springtime of his love that has never grown old;
                   the soul that found you and completed you
                             has never lost sight of you even though the
                                       wars cost him his sight and his mind
                                                 for longer than you can ever forgive.
Under the sway of shell-shock his roar of agony was a terrible thing,
         but never once did his heart turn cold--
                   how could his soul turn against itself?
                             How can the soul become SOMETHING ELSE?
It just goes to show an old adage false:
         that just because something looks like a duck,
                   and acts like a duck,
                             and quacks like a duck,
                                       it's not necessarily a duck;
                                                 it might be a swan.

III.
Speaking of quacks, it has been suggested by eminent experts
         (in the field of psychology and other forlorn and useless disciplines)
                   that the passionate soul behind Mr. Beast's veneer
                             is a neurotic emanation, a false construct;
         it has been suggested that his heart is a bag of old bones
                   rattling polonaises in an archaic ballroom--
                             that the rotting silk enfelades are hung with bats,
                                       and the ring you gave him is made of plaster.

"But Ho!" he cries, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Academy,
         If you would but turn your microscopes on the silver cord
                   that binds my heart to her heart,
                             you would see photons waving their wash of quantums
                                       round a nucleus of  living, dancing identity
                                                 that, ill-suited as it is for mundanities,
                                                           is as real as the phone line
                                                                     at whose end he languishes,
                                                                               for all the unreality of
                                                                                         his shattered mane."

Perhaps "neurotic" is the word for every great and perfect thing,
         such as John the Baptist's Compleynt,
                   or the Gettysburg Address.

He loved you in the high old way;
         his affection was born in the remote outlands of poetry and song;
                   "And, yes, no therapist has ever endorsed the scroll on which
                             the alchemy of my tale weaves strands of ether
                                       round its timeless lines;
         but neither has any patriot ever died for more than such a thing
                   as the sonnet I hold in my fist,
                             or the hush of her hand on my throat.
These are things that proclaim their own reality,
         as loud and stentorian as the brave row of planets
                   sing their names around the central sun;
         better to call "neurotic" the orbit of earth around the source of all light
                   than insult my love with street names, country matters."

And so sits the Beast on is throne of dung,
         a complex pattern of pictures--some
                   ugly, some magnificent, but all of him, and all of her.
His outer form is illumined from within by magnetic fields
         radiating outward from the electron shaft;
                   all manner of faces shift from one to the other,
                             as a river flowing over a rock makes many faces,
                                       yet it is the same river,
                                                 the same rock. 
Thus is the pleasant country logic of an old adage proved  false:
         that just because you are blind enough to see something that
                   looks like a duck,
                             and acts like a duck,
                                       and quacks like a duck,
                                                 any fool can see
                                                           it's not necessarily a duck;
                                                                     it might be a fucking swan.