The travails of the Lady of the Lake in Créteil-Paris: who will come to her aid -Omar Khayyam?

The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Five

All day she toiled to keep her knees and busts in position
The Mairie’s* serrated metal-hearted spool of derision
And the glinting fly-eye cutaways of the Prefecture
She who must mind her own onions during dutiful mission:

Let school-children slap her lolling belly with oars’ un-silence
Let schools of swan swipe and furrow her concupiscence
Let darting coots and grebes play hide and seek in eddying depths
And let cyclists and dogged runners trample her dire patience

And when the day’s work at last done prepares the earned shower
Lo! a canopy as dark and dense as the Afro bowler
Pulls the shroud down on her: dismal soot round the white of eye
Resplendent sings the gilded orange band: sunsets in clover

Restless parent coots cleave the face on the dream-lidded Lady’s
Surge with rage to ward off stray swans from their young amidst reeds
During some purdah couples’ chance of enlacement in the dark
And the long breathless night returns to her adenoids

She dreams the dreams of precious princesses warding off demons
Her dreams fester in her clasp and spiral up to heavens
In musk infused melodious gestures buoyed on lotuses
Release streams of ruby wines from lutes strum by virgin maidens!

*La Mairie: The Town Hall, all to itself, in a glass spindle-tower

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013