The gaunt gray-bearded lean Khayyam, "His glazed eyes as in a mystic Sufi opium swirl"...

The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Ten

Of late dying yellowing orange rays glint through the turret
Where neither muezzin nor mullah bids the sun to set
Lycéen lassies in threes swear by a ghostly figure
A gaunt gray-bearded lean man with hollows for the eye-socket

Amble past their school his eyes fixed past the lake’s horizon
Not one amidst the believers chanting on Fridays the orison
Decked in white djellabas, black gilets and leather sandals
Vollschlang women in wobbling overalls shuffling by their men

Some say there he stood the Bard lone long at the swimming pool
Others, nay, he passed oblivious the Boating Club’s rowing school
His glazed eyes as in a mystic Sufi opium swirl
The mad red poison coursing his veins for a long-pined girl

He wafted through trodden paths of dark red cranberry bushes
Passing as though through the unsuspecting strollers in bunches
Sometimes he’d tarry to gaze at the waters along her supine spine
And just as duty-bound waft towards where dipped her eye-lashes

Alas! Not for Khayyam the chant of the murmuring masses
Nor the bouncy cadences of West Indian steel band noises
Nor the drunk-driven drumming of the marathon stompings
Only the eerie wailing the Maiden of the Main voices!

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013