Day 25 - 25th Jan
PACK
Plat du jour
Merriment above all
I chose that
Pack animal at last
Packed lunch sandwich
Mattin and evensong
Will bookend my days
A retriever
Cares about peanut butter
In the Kong
You can grab his snout
And shout
“No”
And tell yourself so
That he loves you
As you
And only you
He does not.
Would leave you in your cot
For some half-smelt felt wet stone
Smattered by babbling brook
Unseen off the kings road
But he will not go.
Will trot amongst the horses
The smell of the tavern up ahead
And fresh-baked bread
Is good no doubt.
I have stories
And would tell.
But for now, fuck upon the self-decreed
Governor
As I slink alone, the same road in the same merry caravan.
I smell berries and dirt and hurt and death and life.
In old forest made anew
Off the Kings Road.
Scatterbrained and alive
Something unseen thrives
And dives headfirst through the undergrowth and off the kings road
The retriever will be retrieved by hounds at first
But if his thirst is great for the wet stone
He will not be brought back
He leaves the pack.
Half lame
And mangey
Will find brook
And find it does not babble
And scrabbles and scratches around
Accepts wet moss from off the static ground
Takes shelter in bracken, laden with unseen blackberries
And he gorges, and will forget the taste of peanut butter
And forges
A new constitution
Leaner,
Meaner,
Dirtier and cleaner,
He cannot spare the retribution.
Will come upon the smell of bread
At the same tavern
Up ahead
Along the Kings road
And will not want it.
Niall Campbell
Today I randomly opened Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to page 41. This is part of the prologue - The Prologue introduces the pilgrims who are traveling together to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury. The Host, a lively and persuasive character, suggests that the group tell stories along the way to make the journey more enjoyable. He proposes a competition: each pilgrim must tell a tale, and the best one, judged by him, will earn a free supper paid by the others;
He shall be given a supper, paid by all,
Here in this tavern, in this very hall,
When we come back again from Canterbury.
And in the hope to keep you bright and merry
I’ll go along with you myself and ride
All at my own expense and serve as guide.
I’ll be the judge, and those who won’t obey
Shall pay for what we spend upon the way.
Now if you all agree to what you’ve heard
Tell me at once without another word,
And I will make arrangements early for it.’ Of course, we all agreed, in fact, we swore it
Delightedly, and made entreaty too
That he should act as he proposed to do,
Become our Governor in short, and be
Judge of our tales and general referee,
And set the supper at a certain price.
We promised to be ruled by his advice
Come high, come low; unanimously thus
We set him up in judgment over us.
More wine was fetched, the business being done;
We drank it off and up went everyone
To bed without a moment of delay.Early next morning at the spring of day
Up rose our Host and roused us like a cock,
Gathering us together in a flock,
And off we rode at slightly faster pace
Than walking to St Thomas’ watering-place;
And there our Host drew up, began to ease
His horse, and said, ‘Now, listen if you please,
My lords! Remember what you promised me.
If evensong and mattins will agree
Let’s see who shall be first to tell a tale.
And as I hope to drink good wine and ale
I’ll be your judge. The rebel who disobeys,
However much the journey costs, he pays.
Now draw for cut and then we can depart;
The man who draws the shortest cut shall start.
The central conflict I face and this random page of text I read bring back - is how much I yearn for this kind of structure and circumscribed camaraderie, very clear direction, to be a pack animal. Conflicted with the desire, of course, to break away from the King’s road.
Any great works of literature will mirror back your central conflicts to you - how could they not?