Floris V van Holland
Early in January 1296, Floris V leaves his court in The Hague for Paris, where – against his better wishes – he switches Holland’s ancient alliance with England to one with France. This sparks off treachery among some of Floris’ nobles, leading to his murder in June.
*
in his hall of knights –
mental topers, tumblers, ravers
– mad din of needy bingeing gluttons
*
smoke-shrouds cling to blackened beams
minstrels mock those braying, belching goblet-brandishers
ranting voices drunk
*
alone in that crowd
and at its centre, he sits
a silent moment.
***
*
thoughts like words unborn
in a womb of forgetting
flit through his spirit
*
scared of too much thought
(which drinking puts a stop to
– as if thoughts could drown):
***
*
sacred hopes, our wished-for dreams
float off like swans when we awake
they glide off on the glossy glassy lake
*
worn out by living
(which dying puts an end on
– as if our lives first wear, then strip us bare).
*
as if as if as
if, in drinking, sleep and dreams
and thoughts and words all drowned like shipwrecked memories
*
and yet and yet and
yet we live and breathe and feed our fates,
our lives float free of us.
***
*
he sits with his knights,
his ladies, fools, his dogs and serfs and clowns
one sated, bloated, slumbering moment
*
comes as if to himself
in the din of that great hall
on his island in the lake –
*
sees in that moment
the ghosts of future feasting,
woken when he wakes.
Omm
twelfth night, 2018
Binnenhof The Hague in about 1290
Hall of Knights (Ridderzaal), Binnenhof, The Hague in the eighteenth century
A sharp and sensitive poem about a man who comes to himself in the middle of a wild and raucous party, a feast full of knights and fools and minstrels.
Past and future come together in a moment of presence.
A very Twelfth Night kind of sentiment indeed.
The medieval setting distances us, although the fact that this poem describes an historical figure makes it realer, too.
And the other aspect that makes it real and close to us is the timelessness or the emotions he feels, the alienation from his own society.
The poem is beautiful in the intimacy and rapport it achieves with the subject. And it is ambitious in its scope – this is unlike any other poetry being written today.