AUDIBLE CITIES
by Puran Lucas Perez
Copyright © 2012 by Puran Lucas Perez
Smashwords Edition
Year One – Audible Postcards
Year Two – Erotic Diaries
Year Three – Wonders of the World
As Italo Calvino told us, the great marvels of the world are invisible. The deeper human planet is imagination and his Marco Polo one of its chief illuminators. It is to Calvino that this collection is dedicated. And it was with Invisible Cities by my side that it was created. ~PLP
Year One – Audible Postcards
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agaron
Dear One,
Who could blame you if you choose
to set aside these
words unread.
The world has claimed me all these years,
her roads and rivers
pulling me through city after city,
worlds in worlds, in a
trackless dance that keeps me moving,
arriving, departing,
arriving essentially nowhere.
But you came to me so vividly
in those quiet days I spent in
Agaron
that I had to try to reach
out into this silence spread
between us
like an uncrossable sea.
Let me tell you of this grand city, and of its mystery.
Broad
straight boulevards, shining in the sun,
lined with towering
trees, and heroines high on marble palfreys,
always go flat out
to the horizon, without the slightest curve.
Yet they all bring
you back to the place where you began…
like a round dreaming.
In this city of circles, you began to haunt me.
First I thought I
heard your voice behind me in the market.
Through the clamor of
the street merchants’ selling songs,
and the rattling wagons
with their crates of whicker and seashell,
and the tribal banners
flapping proudly in the morning breezes
your delicately
penetrating call was in my ear, in my chest.
I spun to find you…
but was it you or the fruit sellers’ music
meant to draw and
hold you there fondling a lenomine?
I kept walking, hoping
that as I came back around –
carousel-like, as I passed the
market a second, a third time –
I would feel your voice again
calling my name.
That evening I’m sure you called me as I walked
the pearl
limestone shore, teaming with seabirds.
Your petulant voice –
like when, on the verge of tears,
you would insist that I did not
understand.
So sure I was that you were there that I
waited,
Knowing you would step through the pale mist.
And
waited.
That night the murmur of your breathing, like the faintest hum
wafted
from the crooning silence on just this side of sleep.
It was
exactly the sound you made when we lay there
after making love,
resisting the deepening tide of sleep
…lingering even if just a
few more breaths
in the devastating bliss that had befallen us.
Next morning the rainbow birds sang your name
over and over in the
towering trees
beyond the veranda where I stood so still.
I fled from Agaron,
like a man suddenly haunted
by
night-riddled memories of old desires,
and the ever-present
absence of you,
of your loving touch
upon my soul.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lauristan
Lauristan was more a mud hole than a city in the old books.
But in
time it blossomed into a proud, honeyed oasis, where
the men are
all soft-eyed, silent makers,
the world rises from their
industriart.
and the women all have wide welcoming hips –
the
world comes through their birthing hips.
They wear peculiar adornments – these strong gracious women.
One
will have a saffron smudge across her pearlescent brow;
another
has the feathers of silver swallows encircling her ears;
on
another, gold nails flash from scarlet fingers on indigo hands.
But
these are not merely decorative – they are charms:
Carefully
wrought and blessed, they cast potent spells.
It works like this:
When she comes of age, a woman sets her
sights
on one of the soft silent ones; her breath leads her to
him
and her heart rhythms confirm: he is the holder of my
future.
She prays to Hakianun for guidance and
eventually
she is granted a vision – a dream in which the color,
form,
and even the sound of her special adornment are revealed.
It may take months, or longer, for her to find
the particular
materials, and realize her dreamed vision.
When it’s done, she
dons it and goes out to find him.
Typically, at first, he does not
see her or her charm.
But suddenly the magic grabs and his eyes,
his mind are caught.
Innocently, he is mesmerized by the sight of
these small feathers,
or the glittering stones dangling from her
everywhere,
or the bright pink snake writhing round her neck.
While he is in this trance she “mounts” him
(which in
Lauristan involves only touching eyes).
As his state deepens there
rises up from deep inside
one of the only words he will ever
speak.
It bubbles up to his lips and is uttered into the air
like
a rare bird freed, or a spirit loosed.
In that instant she becomes
incandescent with life
and the sound seed in her begins to
grow,
for he has spoken the name of their first child.
In Lauristan, the old mud hole that over
eons blossomed into a
honeyed oasis,
the men are all soft-eyed and silent,
the women
all draw magic
through their birthing hips.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Qatarayn
Because it only rains a time or two in a month or two,
in
Qatarayn, the populace is ever poised to listen.
You see, the
patter of precipitation is called Aurata.
It is their
Oracle, their Way Maker.
As soon as it begins – like the summer rain
falling from slate
green clouds when I was there –
everyone stops, goes to the open
windows,
or darts outside under the canopies, or trees.
Most
stand quite still, listening to the arrhythmic
semaphore of
droplets striking leaves, pavement.
Some put on oracowls –
stiff brimmed hats
that amplify the drumming of the drops
right
into their ears, and walk entranced
for blocks deliriously
communing with Aurata.
She speaks to them this way, of
destinies, and
histories; of what’s to come, and what has been
and how the world is constantly created and
destroyed in the
verdant pools of their loving.
Some will put their ears flush against a downspout
or on a table
top in the outdoor cafes, or close
to the curb channels that turn
into talking rivulets,
listening with such intensity that all else
ceases.
I saw a naked couple run out from their love bed,
money
counters with their snakes skin gloves still on,
butchers with
their bloody cleavers still in hand,
running to an optimum spot
from which they could
hear, with maximum clarity, what this
Aurata
would have them do, and how they should go on.
But when I listened all that I could hear was you.
As though
speaking from a past not past,
and a future never to be… you
once again,
like litany, like lecture, like a broken
song,
protesting that I and it would not change. And love
sometimes takes root where it cannot thrive.
Thus the Aurata,
of Qatarayn came to me
as your poignantly astute rebukes leaving
me
in a dream-infested world, collecting cites.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Santo Deeahn
I know that wasn’t you, reading the Telenet “Life Report”
from
the big screen at Santo Deeahn’s Arc of Light.
But the woman’s
eyes had so much the same burning coolness,
the same sweet half
smile of one who’s personal mystery is fathomless,
that before I
was certain she wasn’t you
I became convinced that she was.
I stepped off the motowalk and stood in befuddlement
before
the enormous lozenge filling my view.
Her, your elegant face and
shoulders rising like a world.
It was you. It is
you. My mind snaps into searching.
For the rest of the time you are on the screen,
I stop passersby
begging that they tell me
who this woman is, and where I might
find her.
No one knows.
Days later I find myself still lost in Santo Deeahn,
searching,
searching – convinced that you are near.
Wandering her
convoluting unnamed streets
(a town grid more like spaghetti than
graph paper).
Stepping into every public building that I
find,
riding the motostairs to the top and slowly
descending,
peering into offices and shops, scrutinizing
everyone.
Countless faces become my meditation – steadily
observed.
Although only 1 in 10,000 awakens recognition
makes
me stop and follow – so rare is your beauty.
I know that wasn’t you in Santo Deeahn
so needless to say when I
awoke in the biorepair
(they told me I had been found
exhausted and delirious
under the dieing grenovia trees in
Bardless Park)
I had not found you.
Once sanity of body and mind had been restored
(I’ll have to
tell you sometime about their magic:
the Deeahn’s heal with
melodic pulses of sound)
they brought a soulspeaker in to
see me.
“What has happened to you?”
“Disillusionment, despair, and
regret, deep regret.”
“Ah, so then there’s hope!”
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Darin-e-Falay
The twilight pink rises, merging with the blue of night high
above
the stone-jagged horizon at the end of the barren dream
in which
the crumbling city – Darin-e-Falay – lies;
its layered
drifting dust now scintillating, glowing
from the rays of the
dwindling rust-red sun.
It is at this time each evening that the children and the aged
(the
adults seem to have either forgotten how, or lost interest)
“play”
meríror-meríror, an ancient pastime; as much a part of Darin
life
as the clay, stone, and crystal artifacts they’ve produced
for centuries.
The “game” is played in twos and threes, friends usually,
who
have often played before. They take turns at being the loukeen –
the one who stands with eyes closed facing the falling
sun,
chanting largely incomprehensible somethings.
His/her
playmates dance around the loukeen waving
their arms and
hands, blowing brave gusts of swirling the light
refracting
particles in the air around them into new streams.
Finally the
loukeen opens her/his eyes and either bursts into laughter
or
collapses sobbing on the mat of ageless dust covering the ground.
The evening before I left Darin-e-Falay I managed to convince
the
curling olive tree of an old man who sat always on the verandah
to
step out and “play” with me, to instruct me on how to be
loukeen.
I was especially mystified by what it was that the
loukeen chanted –
he told me to simply take five or six
words of special meaning to me,
jumble and repeat them as though I
were posing a burning question.
And so I did, I chose these words: your name, your name for me,
the
word you flung at my back as I left our room that night.
(Remember?
“Infidel!” you shouted. I’ve always wondered why.)
The first
word I said to you – remember? I stepped up to you
at that
gathering and guessed, “St Loius”.
And more or less randomly:
waterfall, prayer, highway.
These were my words and I proceeded to
mumble
and jumble them with my eyes shut facing the sunset.
The olive tree lurched around me grumpily on his walking stick,
perfunctorily waving his hand in the air, making little whorls of
dust.
Four or five times, with quite some effort he
circumambulated me
until he started coughing and took himself back
up to his porch seat
grumbling something about how foolish for a
man my age, etc.
When I opened my eyes, the slanting blood gold
sun assaulted me
so fiercely that I had to clench my eyes shut
again or go blind.
And in that darting moment, as that light burst
inside me
I saw a dream, or a vision, like a movie projected on
my eyelids.
You were lifting me out of the water, onto a marble
ledge,
how remarkable your strength, but then, I seemed small as a
babe.
I had drowned, but my eyes were open, alert and a smile of
such peace
and delight played across my features, animating them,
so that
I was both dead and more alive than I had ever been.
It startled me so that I ran and got my things from the hotel,
rejoined this endless road, this march of cities swallowing
me.
Now these letters you will never read are all that’s left
for us
as I make a prison of perpetually escaping.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Elawee
The joy you feel in Elawee
begins the moment that you pass through
Jasmine Gate,
which is, oddly, the only way into the city.
I
would say that it’s the only way out as well
but so few people
ever leave.
For once you come to Elawee
you’re drawn into a buoyant
sweetness;
you’re lifted like birdsong rising on the morning
mists;
enraptured by sights and sounds whose grace
bathes
clean your soul.
The merchants, the scholars, the artists, the workers –
everyone
goes about their business as though this joy were nothing
special.
When the sun is always shining why remark about a sunny
day?
When all are so cordial and caring, why point to a happy
man?
The teachers, the shop girls, the drivers, the dancers –
all
carry on their daily lives as though this happiness,
were simply
the way things are, as though this ring of peace
like a celestial
Ferris wheel is everywhere and always turning.
And so it seems completely sane that in the midst of work or play,
without reason, a few good folk will suddenly start singing.
An
itinerant melody will come and grab their hearts
and then their
chorused voices become the center of all goodness
their
magnificent harmonies become the unlimited truth of things.
Ah how joyously they sing out in Elawee
as the Spirit moves them,
and it moves them constantly.
For they dwell in the vibrancy of
each other’s voices
raised like the spires on an ancient temple
whose
God is gladness, and who’s glory resounds everywhere.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Fravila
The people of Fravila have remarkable stamina.
From the moment
they awake until their lights wink out at night,
they engage in an
unbroken stream of happy talking.
When they encounter one another
on the street
or in the marble towers of their work
they often
overlap each other’s words,
so avidly they talk and talk and
talk.
Even as they walk away from conversations
they continue
talking to themselves,
as though reviewing what they have just
spoken of.
Perhaps it is the fact they all speak softly
that enables them to
speak all day without collapsing.
No one ever raises his voice, it
is all a soft omnipresent babble.
I imagine that if you stood atop
the Golden Cathedra’s spire
it would sound below like a river’s
incessant rhurh.
For all the sound this permanent hubbub
makes,
there’s never any noise – no arguments,
no fevered
debates with voices clanging like swords,
no rasping dissonances
of accusation and denial.
Disagreements are treated like stones in
the brook,
an occasion for more perfectly sonorous burbling.
Oh, but wait.
In that same Golden Cathedra on the morning I
departed
I witnessed something wondrous – The Holy Service.
The
Dhun – like all else in Fravila, is dense with speech.
The
Priestesses intone their prayers, the congregants in rhythmic
echo.
The throb of incantations so constantly fills the huge
vaulted space
that one is tempted to call it the din of Dhun.
But then…
the high point of the ritual: the Raminora –
in jewel encrusted robes –
ascends the pulpit. She raises a hand
and like the rolling away of thunder,
all sound subsides. From
that hand there radiates a silence which spreads
like a cloak made
of midnight over everything and everyone.
For twenty, thirty minutes or more,
the Raminora stands
there in utter silence,
a silence whose fathomless sonorous
emptiness
is radiated back by the congregants, eagerly
attentive.
They seem to respond – subtle nods, small gestures,
tiny smiles, and glittering eyes everywhere.
And now I
understand: She is preaching!
I was astonished by the palpable reverence that arose,
the general
nimbus that started to somehow suffuse
and brighten the flesh and
stone as if from within…
and I longed to “understand” what
she was “saying”.
Later, as I crossed the vast lake in which this city sails,
I
remembered how you and I had sometimes entered
into just such a
stillness – after making love, or
walking in the snow, or simply
sitting at dimming of the day
– felt together a stir of silence
deeper than I had ever known…
and how in that silence there
came a sweet wakefulness
in which the world seemed to resurrect
before our eyes,
newly made, fresh as Spring, glowing in
unqualified perfection.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Exton
Hunger is the pervasive experience in Exton.
Although you might
never know it.
You could come and stay in one of its circus-like resorts
where
meals are served in an avalanche of colors and flavors
and nights
are filled with dancers singing, singers dancing
and ferocious
beasts behaving like lascivious kittens.
You could go out to the surrounding countryside for a few days
at
a “health” farm replete with steaming mud and fresh picked
fare:
golden, tart, snappy, sweet, crunchy, leafy, nutty, juicy
food
served with crystals and channeling.
You could visit the city’s grand institutes of art and music
and
there partake of a sumptuous banquet of light, and texture, and
sound,
making the mind drunk with pleasure, the body shiver with
delight
and the heart race with the anticipation of
...more.
But listen closely and you’ll hear it:
the pervasive hunger of
Exton.
It’s a subtle speech thing they do which could easily go
unnoticed.
But gradually you hear this sort of whimper – this
little, hardly audible
whine like a dog in pain or a cat in heat,
but softer, much much softer –
in a tiny pause between “I’d”
and “love to!”, or “Isn’t that” and “wonderful!”
Or under the small throat clearing, or in the lead up to a
sneeze;
Listen closely and you’ll hear it in the “hmm” as
she looks for next word,
in the “ahh” as he ponders the last.
This small plaintive cry,
so soft you might think it’s coming
from inside your own ear.
It’s so imbedded in their speech, so much a part of them
that
for the longest time I thought it just a mannerism,
like an
accent whose origins were lost
and whose presence was never
acknowledged.
But then I realized that this tiny vocalized rasp
of breath
was something like an escape valve – a constant
venting
little by little of the anguish rising from incalculable
hunger.
Once I even felt what happens when this longing ruptures.
Without
warning, the matron who had graciously invited me to tea
threw
herself across my body pressing me down hard
against the flowers
of the sofa’s old brocade.
She sucked at my lips with a frenzied gaping mouth, as though
drowning,
as though she could pull the very breathing soul of me
out and into her
and that vague whimpering swelled into a throaty
wounded moan.
I was so frightened that I could not respond. And
when her storm subsided
she went back to serving tea as though
nothing, nothing at all…
Hidden, but to the attentive ear, is the pervasive hunger of
Exton.
Its opulence, it’s grand display of abundance, it’s
fervent consuming
mask a hopeless thirst, an unceasing longing,
whose plead
is uttered so covertly that no one seems to hear
and even if they could
how would they name,
much less find
the ineffable
nourishment they crave.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Kaindar
In Kaindar a lucky visitor may find his or her way to the
naureen.
Although... whether this actually feels like good
or ill fortune depends
on what happens when you’ve gone for
your ride on the retrovane.
How these shy (and sort of dour, brown-robed)
people accomplished
time travel I have not they faintest.
But I suppose having
reorganized the properties of space itself,
how difficult could
it then be to freeze and liquefy time?
Back you are taken to any
particular moment in your life
and given the opportunity not so
much to undo or redo
what has been done, but more to inspect, to
reconnoiter.
To linger more deliberately at the “scene of the
crime”,
having a now futurized context in which to map its
meaning.
I chose the moment you drove away – your little blue beetle
getting
smaller beneath the trees, that summer morning.
My first impulse
was to dash hopelessly after you,
but this class of retrovanage
did not allow spatial exploration
beyond the immediate vicinity,
there among the glorious poplars.
And it was such a beautiful day!
Remember?
The mist had burned off the mountains by 8 AM.
I
watched it happen as I packed the Volkswagon
New roses fingering
up the side of the barn.
And you were gone.
Now, brought back by the naureen into that greening world
I
look around at life emptying of you with the same bewilderment
I
felt that morning: “How can this be? How can a perfect love so
subside?”