In the midst of this New Atlantis35 I propose to settle
Norwegians of the finest mental and physical fettle
(the pure blood of our valleys equals that of royalty,
almost); then to cross-breed them with the best Arab stock.
Also I shall require expert practitioners in realty
since, on a sloping shore that gently enfolds,
on three sides, a bay, imagination unfolds
the plan of my new city, Peeropolis, capital
of Gyntiana, unveiled before the earth’s astonished people.
[Leaping up with intense excitement]
Capital investment, then, is all that will be needed
and the thing is done: gateway to a grand Mare Nostrum;
vision versus sterility, the powers of death ceded
without a struggle; the miser throws open his sack!
To those who in every land pursue their dream of freedom,
as did the ass in the Ark,
I shall send forth a call, bringing to the benighted
hope of liberation; and, to this lovely littoral,
liberation also from its present sterile thrall.
En avant! From wheresoe’er thou mayst come, O venture-capital!
‘My kingdom,’ let’s say half a kingdom, ‘for a horse’!
[The emperor’s stolen horse whinnies from the cleft.]
Great heavens! A charger, and jewels, and a set of robes
an emperor would be proud to wear!
[Moves closer.]
It’s not possible, surely? I’ve heard that willpower
will move mountains. But a horse? Yet a horse it is,
ab esse ad posse36 notwithstanding, philosophical niceties.
[Puts on the robes over his European clothes and inspects the result.]
Let’s see how you look, Sir Peter. Quite splendid of course,
befitting the emperor of golden tribes,
with Grane the dragon-slayer to ride upon,
[Climbs into the saddle.]
gracing the silver stirrups with my golden shoon.
It is by their appearance that you know the noblest of men!
He gallops off into the desert.
SCENE 6
The tent of an Arab chieftain standing solitary in an oasis. PEER, dressed as an Arab, reclines on long, low cushions. He drinks coffee and smokes a long pipe. ANITRA and a CHOIR OF GIRLS are dancing and singing in his presence.
CHOIR OF GIRLS: The prophet has come,
the prophet, the lord, the all-knowing,
across the barren region once our home,
like a clean wind over the sands blowing,
the prophet, the lord, he who is without sin,
has come to us, and we have welcomed him in.
Sound! Sound! O you flutes and you drums!
Cry ‘It is the prophet, oh it is the prophet who comes!’
ANITRA: His steed is milk white
like the river that flows
through paradise-gate;
his eyes are the stars:
they are mild, they are fierce;
and none of earth’s children
can keep from their gaze.
We are smitten, beholden,
to Him with No Name.
His breast gleams with golden
adornment close-pearled.
Where he rode it grew light
and old darkness refurled.
Behind, the simoom37
fell back into its dust
and the ghosts of our thirst.
Before him, bowed heads
and bent knees fresh-proclaim
the joy that has come
on the palest of steeds.
And Kaba38 stands void
as he said it should.
CHOIR OF GIRLS: Sound! Sound! Oh, you flutes and you drums!
Cry ‘It is the prophet, oh, it is the prophet who comes!’
The GIRLS dance to a quiet music.
PEER: The saying is true – I have read it in print even –
‘Save in his own land no man is without honour.’
Well, this life I now lead appeals to me far more
than life back in Charleston as a shipowner.
There was something hollow about my life there,
alien; one might almost say unproven.
I was never truly at home in their company;
never truly paid my professional dues; so why
did I think to find myself by acting the galley slave,
feeding on scraps grabbed from the garbage of business?
When I think about it, it just doesn’t seem right;
dealing with approximations rather than true closeness.
‘It just happened to happen’ can’t be the final truth of it,
you tell yourself, finding in the end it is all you have.
Establishing yourself on a foundation of gold,
you are shocked when you find it is on sand that you build.
For a retirement-presentation, gold watches, rings and suchlike,
folk wag their behinds and contrive to abase themselves sillier,
to royal insignia doff their equally silly hats,
carry no hint of the inward self that does not need suits.
But speak the word ‘prophet’: about that there is something torchlike!
If people applaud you it is you the people applaud,
not what you may have in bank-vaults at home and abroad.
You are what you are, there are no two ways about it;
you are indebted neither to chance nor luck;
patents and royalties don’t enter the account.
‘Prophet’! Now there’s a grand name with which to be stuck!
Even though in my case the acquiring was inadvertent,
by chance acquisition of gifts – who would have thought it? –
because I came riding out of the desert one day,
meeting these children of nature along the way.
The prophet had come; for them the coming was revelation,
and they brought out for me the singers and dancers.
I was not acting to deceive; it just happened.
There is a difference between lies and prophetic answers,
and I can always surrender my stipend,
so to speak, and ease myself from the situation.
The entire business can be regarded as private
arrangements between consenting partners to date;
and when it is dissolved, why, Grane stands ready
to bear me away. No ill feelings from, or to, anybody.
ANITRA [approaching him from the tent-entrance]:
Prophetic majesty!
PEER: What does my slave crave?
ANITRA: She bears supplication from the Sons of the Plain
for admittance to thy presence –
PEER: Say to such men,
‘Keep your distance, you who do not truly believe.
We will overhear your pleas distantly. Men are not welcome here.’
Best to add that. All men, Anitra, my child,
are the weaker vessels; uncaring even when they have to care.
In your innocence you cannot begin to conceive
how cruelly womenfolk are eternally beguiled
by such trickst … sinners is the more appropriate term.
Well, I have spoken. Dance me your dances, come!
The prophet desires to be disencumbered of shame.
GIRLS [singing and dancing]:
The prophet is a holy man, wholly without sin.
He is grieved by the evils of the sons of dust.
The prophet is without wrath; his mildness be praised!
He opens paradise so that sinners may enter in.
PEER [watching ANITRA as she dances]:
Her legs twiddle as fast as drumsticks,
I’ve
got a taste for her, the little hussy.
She nicely overfills that dress – I
really admire the way her bum twerks.
A bit too ripe, judged by our norms of beauty.
But beauty itself is merely convention,
a coin performing a standard duty.
Overripeness focuses the attention
when you have drained temperance to the dregs.
The hygienic body cheats you of your thrills.
Skin-and-bone or blubber I need my girls,
tempting child-virgin or old maid who begs,
flesh that is supple or the flesh that sags.
With what the norm serves up I’ve been cold-sated.
Anitra, here, contrives to be smelly-footed
while waving a dirty paw. Yet we are suited.
Her value to me is not reduced by her filth.
I would call it a precondition of sensual wealth.
Listen to me, Anitra!
ANITRA: Master, I hear! I …
PEER: You are a seductive child. Your prophet is much moved.
Do you doubt me? I would rather you believed.
To the keepers of paradise I shall commend you as an houri.
ANITRA: Master, that cannot be!
PEER: My child, I am entirely serious!
ANITRA: But, Master, I do not possess a soul.
PEER: Then get one!
ANITRA: How, Master?
PEER: No problem at all.
It’s true that you’re up to the gills in stupidity
but in this particular that’s not deleterious.
We can squeeze one in. Come, let me measure your skull.
There’s plenty of room; I knew there would be.
As I’ve said, things will never go very deep
where you’re concerned; but even so a soul
you shall have, my child; though one that’s small.
Good enough to get by with I should hope.
ANITRA: The prophet is generous, but …
PEER: What, child? Speak up!
ANITRA: Not having a soul …
PEER: Yes, yes, go on.
ANITRA: Instead of a soul may I have that precious stone?
She gestures towards a large opal in his turban.
PEER [delightedly extracts the jewel and hands it to her]:
Anitra, to me you are Eve’s natural daughter!
As you are the magnet, so I am the man.
For, as was written by some distinguished author,
‘Das Ewig-Weibliche ziehet uns an.’39
SCENE 7
A moonlit night. A grove of palm trees outside ANITRA’s tent. PEER, with an Arab lute, is sitting under a tree. His beard and his hair are trimmed; he looks considerably younger.
PEER [playing and singing]:
I turned the lock on paradise
and bore away the key.
Towards the south I set my course;
and lovely women mourned their loss:
the loss they mourned was me.
Oh, ever southward did my prow
divide the ocean stream;
till, where the stately palm trees grow,
wreathing a bay in tranquil show,
I fed it to the flame.
I rode instead, across the sands,
a ship that journeyed well,
obedient to my guiding hands,
four legs responding, as responds
to wind and wave a gull.
Anitra, sweet fermenting juice
of palm wine, love me, do!
Angora goat’s cheese has its place
in my desires, but not so choice
a place, my dear, as you!
[Hangs the lute from his shoulder by its strap and approaches her.]
Silence? Does the fair one hear me?
Has she heard my modest warbling?
Who’s to say she isn’t near me,
veils and suchlike swift-discarding?
Hist! I heard a pop-and-burble,
something fresh out of a bottle?
There again, a little louder;
sighs of love? A murmuration,
whispers like a fizz of soda?
Slow decoction of a potion?
No, it is my sweet girl snoring.
Nightingale, so self-adoring,
you have now a rival near you;
cease your challenge, I can’t hear you.
Wait a moment, Peer! ’Tis written
nightingale is truly smitten.
I myself am such a singer
praising all things tweeting-tender.
Nightingale, I am your fellow-
warbler of th’enchanted hollow.
Cool of night is our twin bower,
songs of love our double power,
I am you as you are me,
single in twinned harmony:
thus resolved, my girl’s a snorer
grants me licence to adore her.
No higher joy exists in love
than stooping with chaste lips above
the chalice you decline to taste.
But there she is, the dove, at last!
My cup runneth when she appears.
ANITRA [still within the tent]:
Master, you call? Your servant hears!
PEER: Your master calls and has been calling.
He was awakened by a cat
making a nocturne of its prowling.
ANITRA: Dear master, it was worse than that.
PEER: Worse?
ANITRA: Spare my blushes at the thought.
PEER [moving closer]:
Was it something like the feeling
I had when I, soul-revealing,
to your care gave up my opal?
ANITRA [scandalized]:
Master, it was nothing like that!
Sounds you make are nothing like cat
on cat makes when they couple,
sacred being!
PEER: Ah, my clever
dancer with some limitations,
never does true love dissever
cat’s cries from our fleshed commotions
or prophetic comminations.
ANITRA: Master, with how sweet a cadence
do you chastise me.
PEER: Dearest child,
like others of your sex you cling
to outward forms, by them beguiled.
Inwardly I am rich in humour,
most at my ease in private chamber,
with winning grace remove the mask
of public office, cry good riddance
to daily round and common task –
they do not furnish all I ask.
Prophetic wrath is fresh-applied
each morning ere I step outside;
it’s such a superficial thing,
all nonsense! In a tête-à-tête
I’m simple Peer to you, my sweet.
You have me to yourself. Tonight
we keep the prophet waiting, right?
[Sits down under a tree and pulls her towards him.]
Come, Anitra, let us rest,
with palm tree fans our brows caressed.
I shall whisper, you will smile;
later we’ll switch roles a while.
You with your honeyed lips will move
the balmy air to acts of love.
ANITRA [now reclining at his feet]:
Your every word is like a song
of which I understand but little.
Might your daughter, ere too long,
learn a soul from such recital?
PEER: A soul, a spirit, knowledge, diction,
you may acquire from my instruction,
as, in the east, first rosy streaks
announce ‘It is the sun who speaks’;
gold letters, next, in typed display
confirm his hold upon the day:
thus we’ll commence your education.
But, in the all-embracing darkness,
wisdom must sleep while passion hearkens.
Pedagogy spurns emotion.
In any case it’s not the soul
that I would grant the leading role
in these affairs. It is the heart
that judges wisely, is it not?
ANITRA: Master, when you caress this theme
the opals, that I love so, gleam.
PEER: To be too clever’s to be stupid.
And cruelty’s the opened bud
of cowardice. I’ve seen it happen.
And truth, each time that it’s pursued
past reason, turns itself around,
goes widdershins and all misshapen.
My child, I cannot tell a lie:
there’s folk with over-active souls
who handle their affairs like fools
and cannot see for clarity.
I knew a fellow, once, like that,
the best, I’d say, of the whole band,
who failed his promise and misread his fate.
The teeming sands round this oasis
would be transformed at my command,
the waters of the neighbouring seas
pour in to flash and fertilize.
But I would be an ignoramus
if I did that but to be famous.
Anitra, child, can you conceive
the meaning of the verb ‘to live’?
ANITRA: I long to hear!
PEER: It means to glide
along time’s river still dryshod;
to be oneself at each extreme
of agency in space and time.
The very core, the I am I,
of selfhood’s self, such potency!
With lapse of years the eagle moults
his final moult, the old man halts,
the widow loses her last teeth,
miserdom parts one wizened soul
among the pack of them. Ah, Youth!
It is with you I seek to rule
just like a sultan, hot and whole!
Not on the shores of Gyntiana
with palms and vines and wreathed liana,
but in that virgin wilderness
a woman’s heart and mind are, solely.
Now do you see why, with such grace,
I charmed you to possess you wholly?
’Tis in your heart I mean to set
foundations for the caliphate
of my grand Selfhood. So, your passions
become imperial possessions
in which I govern as dictator –
you, mine, alone, we two, alone!
Can you conceive what must be done?
I’ll see that you become enthralled
as though with opals or with gold;
and if, at any time, we sever,
life and love – for you – are over.
It is your self that I create here,