A Failed Coup
Now, I predict, that not-so-secret citizen will reflect
On a catalogue of failure, ending a history of outrage
Against the state. Papers you have passed me
Reveal his alarmingly low scores in all
But the most rudimentary civil service
Tests – perhaps the true explanation of his exile.
It’s as well he’s confessed – under torture
As that may be – though the transcript
I am now scrutinising does not agree in much detail
With the testaments of those he proselytised.
They describe a man maddened by the moon,
And lost to the wild pursuit of feral heroes.
A last gleam of sunshine touched the city’s pinnacles,
He striking out across expatriate turf, a man
Bound to the solemn truths of muted tongues,
And minded to confide his tarnished revelation
In the brigandage he gathered to him – a band
Of delinquents, girding up in the glow of a hillside fire.
Comic, I know, but here are his sayings, for endless
Repetition and a call to our youth. ‘All lies
Are a giftwrap round the truth.’ ‘Time is just a pulse
Embodied by the flesh.’ ‘Friendships are as fallen leaves
Floating in a stream.’ And this. ‘Pale are the days
Of empire, lingering on in sentimental minds.’
I found him at last. That, surprisingly,
Wasn’t in that bivouac discovered by my men,
The place betrayed by its distant bloom of smoke, a pall
Bluish and pendent over rain-wet foliage. Nor was he
A-crest the cold floodwaters of autumn, where the dusk
Of the old country is yellow and pervasive,
And cries of animal desire resound in endless echoes.
The sordid truth was simpler than that, when two
Of my smart officers entered a peasant tavern,
And there saw him – slightly withered – propped
Against a dampish wall, an orange moon ascendant
Through the upper panes of its small window or quadrature.
More wisdom did he spout, in a kind of drunken
Zeal, but offered himself peaceably. ‘True camaraderie,’
He said, ‘has its roots a long way down, all over
The underground,’ a sentiment supposed to make me
Quake. Well – a welcome, my rebel friend.
Tomorrow the firing squad, at dawn.
Peter Cowlam is a writer and critic. Publications include the novella Marisa, available at Amazon and poems in various litmags, most recently The Liberal, Turbulence and Epicentre Magazine. He is a founder member of the writers’ collective CentreHouse Press , publishing memoirs, plays and novels.