London Bridges

"All that is solid melts into air."
--Karl Marx

What to do this last glorious day?

Don't trust me to know Bach from Chopin.
Despite music illiteracy
I am in ecstasy all morning
During charismatic Ben Zander's
Inspired conductors master class
At London's Royal Academy.

Pebble in noon water, spiraling
Outward, meteoric like a child,
Topping up the Oyster Card, minding
The gap, I find myself in the Tube
Where transparent trash bags defy terror
Which'd closed two and a half centuries --
1250 to 1500 -- at The National Gallery yesterday.

But the Annely Juda Fine Art
Private studio hangs Maleviches,
Pollacks, Mondrians, and Picassos  --
Firstclass pieces displayed perfectly --
Better than the public collections.

For unexplained reasons, African
Poems sponsored by London Lord Mayors
Adorn subway sideboards; "Daughter, take
This amulet, tie it with cord, care ..."
-- Mwan Kupona Banti Msham,
1790-1860.

Sad Saudi women, concealed head to
Toe, tend kids while hypocrite husbands
Kill hungover mornings, play cards in
Neighborhood brothels, iconoclasts
Of sorts, rejecting their Wahabi
Calvinist upbringing for games
Reminiscent of off-color brilliant
Illumined past Ottoman chutzpah.

Yet in a half hour, I attend
An ecumenical tear-jerker
At the British Library: twenty
Or so Jewish, Christian, and Muslim
Youth sing songs together in all three
Languages, part of a Sacred Texts
Exhibit on monotheism.

Flitting by Chalk Farm/Charring Cross, on
To Pimlico, getting off, I walk
Straight into Tate Britain Museum's
Bacon bits, Francis' triptychs,
Lurid and riveting, death seeping
Incontinent, homoerotic,
Penises incinerated like
Overcooked sausage, no crucifix
Or Jesus shown here amidst lovers
Suicide done in, their cremated
Ooze dribbling, drooling from
Genderbent wrestlers' rouged baboon lips.

For a change of pace I cool off in
pre-Raphaelite precision then
Hockney-curated Turner watercolors
That might have been painted yesterday.

Lost between Gainsboroughs and Reynolds,
Desperately looking for an exit,
I'm surprised when the gallery's cream
Rises to the top --  well perhaps not
Precisely cream, maybe more bad dream
From times past: "The Saltonstall Family,
1636-7" really
Hits me right in the gut, not so much
Its bizarre dynamic -- intermingling
Living with dead (Sir Richard's first wife
Portrayed nursing his present spouse's
Baby) -- as bad flashbacks to college,
Harvard to be exact, when scions
Of that same given name helped ruin
My freshman year, treating me as if
I didn't exist, all diffident,
Dainty, repelled by yet one more crude
Unnamed, untamed public school Jew boy...

(We Jews who now own Regent Park mews,
Once holding lackeys in Saltonstall
Stables, too dear for has-been nobles,
Now housing Russian kleptogarchs in
The running for Lord Mayor, Chinese
Shanghai tycoon emigrees calling
In mercantilist Washington loans,
Indian high-tech entrepreneurs,
Arabian princes, and US
Financiers -- all GMT settled
Right in the middle between East/West
In a country with stable laws but
Without tedious Sarbanes-Oxley
Hoops to jump through/Patriot Act fears, 
Displacing New York from the center,
Bentleys, Lotuses in each garage.)

... Soon enough I learned it was nothing
Personal as we went our separate
Ways -- that is, until (fast forward) the night
Before graduation when the rules
Of their exclusive "final clubs" (no
Catholics or blacks allowed either)
By weird tradition were suspended
To allow us riffraff entrance (by
Invitation only) 'til turning
Back into Cinderelli pumpkins
In the morning, never seen again.

Thus I better grasp why these WASPs seemed
So completely bored out of their minds,
St. Paul's/Groton prep school lads with no
Choice but Fair Harvard ever since born
Silverspoon mouths force-fed, Senator
Or Wall St. banker lives preordained.

Out the side door (my god, there's St. Paul's
Cathedral!), I imagine my great
greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat
Grandfather as a horse thief back in
Poland about when the Saltonstalls'
Pastor John Harvard donated his
Library to found the colony's
First college in 1636).

Drifting through the Tour de France timetrials
(The French must be in bigtime trouble --
Land prices so much less than England's --
To give away the race's start) in
Big Ben's shadow, I seek solace in
Westminster Abbey, fleeing Henry,
Elizabeth, the Marys' graves for
More modest Poets Corner comforts  -- 
Chaucer, TS, the rest of the best.  

Eager to grab a UK snackie,
I wait for a stool at The Pret Shop
Whose manager, one Mr. Neo
Paphitis, comes over to offer
A free organic whole wheat pretzel.

As this derelict tourist bids Blitzkrieg
Detritus and transfatty blintzes goodbye, 
I hear Brits cheer George Bush's compadre
In crime's downfall -- "Bliar" as now scoffed --
Before heading to Heathrow to fly
Home to wife, children, grandson Simon.

British Air twenty-two oversold,
Mysteriously upgraded from
Cattle to business class, one Johnnie
Walker Red Label Old Scotch later
(Plus half carafe of Chateau Tour de
Mirambeau); Mendelsohn's Symphony
No. 4 A Major in my ear;
Before totally shifting gears back
To work, I tip my glass once more to
Toast my gracious, most hospitable
Charming Glaswegian hostess and host.

7.8.07
Pre 8.7.06 at http://sarnatscat.blogspot.com/


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