Pilgrimage
Graham Greene b. Berkhamsted, 2nd October 1904
To make a pilgrimage to Berkhamstead
may seem eccentric. A shrine to facile grace -
oppressively polite - his bland birthplace
explains, perhaps, why all his his life he fled
from bourgeois smugness. Saigon’s opium dens,
his antidote to prep school tedium;
he feared, like death, the happy medium
and sought secret revenge in Port au Prince’s
tawdry brothels. God remained unprovoked,
and Greene, who sensed his faith only through guilt
dispassionately observed his fading hope.
More Don Quixote than Don Juan, ‘ to tilt
at windmills is my chosen fate’ he joked.
'Towards my guttering faith I still must grope.'
The Comedians
Amongst
us, who is ever what they seem?
The priest caught pilfering lingerie will take
a whore's confession all the same; both fake:
his murmured blessing, her orgasmic scream.
The great and good pursue utopian schemes;
the rest of us, consigned to minor roles -
mere apparatchiks, might well sell our souls,
but cherish still our sadly tarnished dreams.
What lies beneath the P.A.'s polished poise,
the surly waiter's supercilious glance,
the barmaid's flirty quip 'just for the boys'?
For others, not themselves, they play their part.
Suppressed: a kid who never got the chance,
a secret life, the lover's broken heart.
The End of the Affair
Uncertain
now quite how your lover feels,
console yourself that when you sense she fakes
that 'petite frisson', her sweet feline squeals
are put on poignantly for both your sakes.
Dishonesty may be true love's soul-mate,
insidious truth its secret enemy;
but as you drift towards a savage fate,
bereft in love's twilit Gethsemane,
all through these final scenes you still pretend
denial always was your saving grace.
One final lie - 'I'll always be a friend'
so plausible, your sweet, angelic face.
But
truthfully, what is it you most dread,
this empty promise, or that empty bed?
A Journey without Maps.
A Spanish
Countess trounced him at canasta;
he fled on deck in quiet consternation.
Forseeing an obtuse social disaster,
he stared astern at unknown constellations.
Burnt-out, alone, in some malarial port
he sheltered in the seedy P.Z. store,
then wired his report: 'News bad. Cash short.
"ancestral voices prophesying war" '
Marooned upstream, his maps show empty space.
Unhinged by fever, spiraling in dreams,
he watched a shaman dance - 'such bestial grace'.
The drums incant "Beware, Beware." He screams
'who's there?' His pistol pressed against his head,
he wonders, 'will she miss me when I'm dead?'
Heart of the Matter
Now
middle-aged and prey to sentiment,
he took a lover and discovered God.
Both sin and faith, he joked, were heaven-sent;
the words proved fatal to the path he trod.
A priest intones, 'the blood of Christ'. The wafer
dries on his tongue, in fear, he feigns belief.
Yet in his lover's arms he feels no safer,
profane or sacred love brings scant relief.
His wife and mistress, both prove hard to please,
to safeguard one he must deceive the other.
Before a gaudy statue, on his knees
he prays, 'deliver me, O Holy Mother
from sin' her smile is flat, like hollow laughter,
a hall of mirrors, mocking the hereafter.
The Man Within
The
man within is co-conspirator,
ghost writing his existence’s novella.
The mind’s metropolis or heart’s favela -
there is no choice, it’s never either or.
His inner voice, the tribal story-teller,
can see beyond the unconvincing cover
and whispers as he kisses his new lover,
'This cannot last'. Now nothing seems to quell her
burgeoning jealousy; 'There is no other'
he lies. How she detests his secret life;
they cannot talk it through, he calls it tact.
She senses his sang-froid and says, 'Why bother
the thing is doomed' and frets like his ex-wife -
'the fiction always did outweigh the fact.'
The Human Factor
Control,
in Whitehall, pours himself a tea,
‘Do pass the plate.’ (he takes an arrowroot,
Big Ben strikes three); then chats about Beirut
and weighing risk with opportunity.
A dapper figure in a linen suit
relaxes in a café by the sea;
which face, he wonders, is my enemy
remembering what they tell the raw recruit:
‘Heroics should be left to Mr. Bond.
It’s solitude that is your greatest danger,
there is no rule that bombshells must be blonde.
Who can resist an artful, sultry stranger?'
Not even he, our most accomplished actor
was quite immune to the human factor
The Third Man
Whose shadows shift across the wall -
the writer in his shuttered room,
the reader who believes it all,
the hero sentenced to his doom?
Dreaming of reflected glory
the writer makes a dangerous tryst;
the reader, captured by the story,
must vie with the protagonist
to plot against the winning
villain.
The girl, of course, still loves the crook
and treats the hero with disdain.
Each, by ‘The
End’
is brought to book:
The Third Man’s lost identity
is what each one needs him to be