Museum as Muse: Arion on the Dolphin
ARION ON THE DOLPHIN
I
A rock-god waiting in the wings
to set himself before the king,
this eye-linered and lip-glossed Arion fouters
with his lyre's five strings
across the span
of twenty-five centuries. His big hair's bigger than ever
from the fan
of a wind-machine. The sky's pinks and pewters
resound in the brain-pan
of a bloodied Triton still grasping his horn
through a brine-flurry
while the doo-wop chorus
of Nereids or such sea-born
nymphs seem content to hold their hurry
till those twenty-five centuries have taken their course.
II
A course that was laid long before the keel of oak
was laid to soak
in Piraeus, got to be, long before murrey
would infiltrate his cloak,
the mulberry over which Arion will mull
long after a Triton's skull
explodes. Not to worry, he'll muse, not to worry
if the top-heavy hull
is shortly a hulk through which they'll pick
as they'll pick through the rubble
of an elevator-shaft. What's not to love about the Teflon,
its non-stick
complete with the dead giveaway of a three-day stubble
on the cheek of a dolphin?
III
Less dolphin this than dog, dog-paddling through drifts
of brine,
bearing a keg of brandy-wine
for lost sea-mountaineers. Less dolphin than double
of the figurehead of the ship in sharp decline
behind him, this sudden displacement of teak
suggesting the outlook's bleak
for both dolphin and Dauphin, spelling trouble
for another figurehead who'll soon barely squeak
through the ranks of sans-culottes
and the tumbrils' rough and tumble
to die in a shitty kennel
at the age of ten, a boy king going down at a rate of knots
through the scumble
of pewter and pink on a distant grassy knoll.
IV
On a grassy knoll two Tritons dressed as tramps
are doing the Versailles vamp
while, high above the rumble,
another is aiming to put his stamp
on something. The Nereid as a flitch
of halibut, caught without a stitch
on this holiest of days. Not to worry if we fumble
as we bait and switch
in a storm-sewer that might turn a mill
never mind a rumor-mill. In a bit of a pickle,
that Nereid, who shows such pluck
before the likelihood of everything going downhill
like the trickle
of blood from a, got to be, butcher-block.
V
Not to worry if the butcher massaging the rump
of a Nereid is le boucher, plumping and plumping the
very clump
at which he'll prickle.
The Triton in a slump
across the raft has taken a hit
to the throat. The Nereid who's lost her kit
and might once have been up for a little slap and tickle
may now never know just how interknit
are herself and the lymph
in which her hair streams like a, got to be, streamer.
What's not to love about this vestige
of the tail of a water-nymph
who might learn within the week it's not the blue-green of a
scaly femur
but gangrene kicking into its second stage?
VI
The second stage where the rock-god needs to
simultaneously touch
and turn away from those who need to clutch
at him while kissing him off. What 's not to love about a steamer
going down and, insomuch
as we may deduce if night will bring release
from his tribulations and his safe return to Greece,
about a Triton torn between nuzzling the calf of his redeemer
and gnawing it, this raft now being of a piece
with the raft of the Medusa and the raft
of the sunk PT-109, though neither he nor his fellow
trumpet-tooters
may ever begin to drag out
the connection between the elevator-shaft
and the storm-sewer where the third of the shooters
waits in the wings for the motorcade?
--Paul Muldoon
