Tiresias[remembering T.S.Eliot] Poem by ENOCH JOHN

No thunder here in this our wasteland,
No blinding rainstorm but only dry land,
And dry people, who think little
Of the things which learned people think.
No talk of Michelangelo,
And the High Renaissance,
Or even the laws of quantum physics.
The juvescence of youth is gone,
In the wasteland like a whirlwind,
Youth is gone with the day,
Fading fast as the evening shadows,
Into a yellowed sunset of clouded memories.
Each day this world dies again,
When night's dark umbrella
Shields evening sol's timorous rays,
And wild animals to their hidden lair,
In hasted steps, scurry away.
Time becomes timeless,
When daily the same steps we retrace,
In life's never-ending trudge.
I have no place of abode,
No deed of permanence, I wear
Restlessness as my golden crown.
Son of Everes and nymph Chariclo,
Wandering in a modern wasteland,
In crowded cities of steel and glass, of multitudes
Who in daylight walk the dark road,
Calling light darkness and dark light,
Who possess eyes but see not.
O great woe unto this people,
And again, a thousand woes,
For speedily, their folly has overtaken them,
And as the swift, regal eagle
Wisdom to the mountains has flown.
In their counsels supremely reigns confusion
And in the dusty streets, a madding crowd
Knows not from whence to seek deliverance.
On Frederick Street walks a woman,
In splendid caparisons attired,
And in her handbag, one slim brown hand
Clutches a talisman, a gift from her ''holyman''
To keep away the evil he'd said,
[In this land, anyone could be a ''holyman'']
J, the rastaman at Queen Street corner,
Wears his long styled locks as his talisman,
''No evil could touch me, Jah Rastafari'', he says
As smilingly he dismisses a customer.

J pauses, then turns and asks;
''Why then does this blind descendant
Of Cadmus and Udaeus,
Walk the streets of Port of Spain
in this modern day, so far from Thebes? ''
''So you can see me, '' the seer pauses,
''I have my stories to tell,
Of my blindness and odyssey,
Over many lands and the blue deep.
Many yarns I have to tell,
Of many ages and heroes,
Of man's adventurous quest
And his over-reaching ambitions;
Of wars, kingdoms and their heraldry,
Fair maidens, goddesses, gods and their fury,
And all my infinite wanderings.
I who have held the counsel of kings
Balanced in my hands, the welfare of cities,
But oh! Where shall I begin?
For I am bound in timelessness,
Which itself can be a hellish device.
If only you knew my circumstance,
And the curse which yokes me.
I am only a blighted shadow and
Marcescent, my humanity
Long stripped and ravaged
By the winds of endless time,
Ravaged and dismembered,
As when a lion, in ravenous hunger,
Tears its catch to pieces.But I
still possess my remembrance,
My prophetic gift and the sagacity,
by which I have become famed,
And by which kingdoms held me in awe.
To ancient Greece then, aeons ago
I need journey to begin my tale.
But in my tale jou'll find,
No joyful sound as in Avon,
For much sadness has since gripped
My perennial pilgrimage.

'Twas before beautiful Helen's flight,
And the hot pursuit of swift-footed Achilles,
But after Zeus had overthrown the Titans.

After Athena had shooed away her attending nymphs,
Out of the blue deep of a silvery morn, when Aurora
Of the rosy-fingered fame was awakening,
The goddess with her scintillating good looks,
Whom through the mists of the ocean I perceived,
Not Poisedon and his attendant train,
Nor nymphs riding the watery crests,
But Athena emerging clothed in only her lovliness.
And I Tiresias, at this vista froze enthralled,
My captivation knowing no bounds,
For her skin was like a tender babe's
Washed in the mountain ewe's milk. She was
As sweet as the honeycomb can be,
A physiognomy as the undulating plains of Ilium,
With its gentle voluptousness vividly unveiled,
Many daughters of Greece had I before seen,
But none as sublime an encounter as this,
So I became as a dumb dog on Thebes' dusty street.
After I had come out of my trance,
I felt gentle hands touch my eyes,
As the perpetual nighted dark appeared.
Then went Chariclo to the oracle at Delphi
To plead for the restoration of my sight,
But a'las Athena couldn't recant
For so it had been afore decreed,
A pronouncement of a god irreversible.
But the goddess, from her lovely bowels
Showed some pity and did compensate,
Thus granting me the gift of prophecy.

It was I, Tiresias, who when summoned
At Thebes, told Oedipus Rex the saying,
For he looked for an infidel
Not knowing that he was the man. I also
Predicted that the sacrifice of Menoeceus
Would empower the forces of Eteocles,
Thus discomfiting the army of the Seven against Thebes.
At this juncture the seer grows ever
Weary and his speech fails him.

J says, ''I can feel your sadness
For it is indeed great and weighty.
But then, this world is of such,
For it is always the multitudes
Who feel the teeth of disaster
Or disease. There is now among us
One so dread, that he mows down millions
In his wake like a ponderous scythe.'' As if
On cue, Tiresias takes up again the mantle
Of speech.''In my vast wanderings
I have seen first hand what you mean,
But if the world governments and Industry
To the aid of people don't speedily come,
Then this monstrous AIDS I'm sure
To a pile of rubble will reduce Earth,
With the stench of the acred carrion
Mounting to the stars of the Firmament
And burying cadavers surely would become
The most prosperous industry here.
Then entire Earth, into a modern
Wasteland transformed, with the brown dead
Scattered as dry leaves on a shore,
With no Promethean sprite in sight, and
Brave men will lobby propitious death.
This then is a lamentation of lamentations,
But I have spoken too much.I must leave now.''
So Tiresias the seer, after conversing
On Queen Street corner with J the rastafarian,
Disappears from view, the crowd unaware,
To continue in another far-off land,
His perennial wanderings.

.