Jesse Ball - The Village on Horseback - Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

And yes, I’m sorry, but that hardly matters now.

Leopold and his benefactor pause beside a hill on the benefactor’s estate. In the hill

there is a door. The day is cold, and bright.

IT WAS this door, years ago, you understand,

that prompted me to begin a wayward life.

Behind it I imagined a tidy room, a hearth,

some bespectacled, bewhiskered creature, conversant

with the courtesies of our times. Strange, but with

things to tell me. You understand.

Later I thought it to be a long and lamplit hall.

And lately I’ve imagined my portrait hanging there,

quietly, as the lamps are covered,

one by one. The angriest man I ever saw

broke his own teeth with a hammer. For as he said,

It’s dark as night inside the sun,

and that is where we’re told to wait. But this

was years ago. I imagine things are different now.

Yet still no answer from the Captain,

not yet, young Leopold. We awkwards

must go wandering, and tend in our lives

most happily to

doorways set in hillsides upon which we made

human departures and human trade.

In this book birds are taught their flying

by that which would make them fall

were they not to fly as had been taught.

The book is roughly bound, and left

open on a couch. The page is illustrated

and, lifted to the light displays

a moralizing scene: two children have tied

a third to the wheel of an enormous carriage.

A group of elderly women look on with pride.

It is a scent of such astonishing strength,

why, Leopold, there are flowers hidden

throughout the room. There must be for I

cannot sleep without the noise of a bouquet,

and gently, gently, sir, you know

I sleep most gently in this small room.

A sheaf of worthy papers, set in a wheel and made to spin

may be enough to give

shape to a hundred ill-set lives.

I declined the first, as it was not freely given.

I declined the second, as it was scarcely a ribbon

bound about a child’s throat.

And that I do not care to lead.

The third was charity.

The fourth came with my fame.

Yet sadly I relate, I could not deny the fifth.

For she spoke so clearly of things I have desired.

And so she sits, even now in the rooms above

plotting when she weeps and weeping when she plots.

A thought came yesterday that pleased me, my young friend.

When I die I shall send her a note, inviting her to join me

where I’ve gone. I’m told the dead can leave notes,

on the backs of leaves, in the brims of hats, on the inside of a lady’s glove.

Oh Leopold, the notes this shade will send. .

For the sightless, shapeless hope is vision,

cast back by the long thrower like a discus,

heavy like a discus, ridged, impacted.

No vision is given once, nor given

only to one man, one woman, though legends

would have it so. Most dreams come

a hundred times in a given city before

waking the one who will raise it like some new

roof that men may live beneath.

Picture it, dawn in this far place.

The populace beginning to rise. Heads poking

out windows. Doors opening. Horses

standing in their stalls, their heavy breath

expectant. In the street, women with baskets

pass by house after house. In one

I myself wake. To me it seems

that what was true in the night

is far truer at daybreak. And bearing

this ribbon, I go out with a heavy coat,

with burned eyes, trembling hands.

There is a meeting on the riverbed

conducted with the utmost grace.

— these circumstances like a holstered gun,

that surprises by turn gunman and fool.

Through such waters others go

in boots sewn for the purpose.

Such boots, have I longed for anything more?

I will wear them in the open air

while elsewhere I am buried. And you

will read from Tuolti, who says,

The greatest hunter can hunt his prey and nothing else.

Others decide later

what was his prey, what was not.

One does not feel throughout one’s life that one is always the particular age that one is. Rather, there are various stations in which one settles one’s identity. As that station becomes unfit, or as one becomes unfit for that station, a new station must be reached. I, for instance, believed myself in many ways to be a child up until two or three weeks ago. Now I feel that I have lost something. But what I have lost is not childhood. It is not the freedom of childhood; that, I preserve. No — instead I have lost the time in which I was free to imagine myself a child. But what of it? I can still wrap a blanket around my shoulders and hide under rocks and bushes. I can still run through the house as fast as I can, run up and down the stairs as fast as I can. Why is it that we all have a tender spot in our hearts for bank robbers? Is it not because banks should be burned, because money itself is a vile creation? The disrespect of property is a religious propensity, and should be regarded as such.

it is best to think of myself as an animal, as a bird with a coat of feathers crouched in the space beneath a bush. A place to live, a way to eat; nothing more. My own entertainments I can provide, and too my own teachings.

Without knowing, therefore, what I am after, I head once more into the hills. Up a path, up a road, along a wall. I pride myself on the variety of my foolish physical expression. One moment I am sulking, the next capering and taunting storm clouds. I believe that, were it possible, you might one day meet with me and be thus then affrighted by my terrible aspect. That is to say — at this moment, I am a robber set foot in the public sphere. Do you like my pistol? my dagger? Whatever you answer, you must admit, I carry them boldly. Boldly, yes boldly, I go into town any time I please. Not for me to fear the wag of tongues. Oh, sir, do you recognize me from two nights’ past when I erupted from the road to steal your carriage? Well, then, a duel. Let us to it. So you see I am not afraid of CIRCUMSTANCE, and court it with my every gesture. OF COURSE there are those times, those times when tired and empty of myself, I walk past some brightly lit cottage where a supper of some sort happily is being conducted. It’s then that the long years of rascalry sit heavily on my shoulders. OF COURSE it is of no account, for should I choose, there’s many a winsome maid who’d have me in her house and household, setting up and settling up the days and hours. Yes, the peculiar quality of my life is that I allow myself to think that nothing yet has been excluded. Everything is still possible, and in the meantime I take to the hills and prey upon lone carriages and go with my hands gloved in the finest cloth.

Why are people so concerned with closets? I, of course, have had many but never put anything into them. I save the closet strategically. Often I refer to the closets in passing, sometimes going so far as to offer their dubious services to the person in question, as I myself can make no use of them. WHY YOU ASK DO YOU NOT use your closets? WHERE DO YOU PUT your things? And the truth is, I delight in seeing my few belongings. I hang them in place of paintings on the wall. I lay them out on shelves. My clothing, my writing supplies, my books, my maps, my tools. On what else would my eyes find such satisfaction as upon these gathered items — that which I find most suiting to myself in the world. And you say, put them away sir? Hide them away in a closet? I shall not. I shall never.