“Why don’t you ask him who’s the latest on his throne?”

Having spent years watching Washingtonians pass beneath him, the elephant on the west facade of the National Cathedral has lost all patience for us. While the old line about elephants never forgetting is generally true, it’s just as true that elephants don’t remember what they’ve read in ways that we smaller-brained creatures would consider logical. As such, this discontented bibliophile sees the city through his own singleminded filter. You know how elephants are.

UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS CONCULCAVERUNT?

Send for some plaid piper; let him march the mice away:
Staffers squeak and scatter into fifty shades of gray.
No heroes hold the hilltop hall, nearby presides a fool;
Let Shanthi and Kandula and Ambika romp and rule!
Come, my trunk-faced children! Stomp from Carthage to the Alps.
Make the Romans quaver from their sandals to their scalps!
Send for Ethiopians, with war-mounts wont to kneel
By the walls of war-torn Mecca, and watch Abrahama reel.
Send for Greeks where tesserae wash up along the strand;
Find tuskers in the market tracing crosses in the sand.
Send riders out to Roncesvalles; let Roland raise his horn!
Bring Isaac and Abul Abaz from Baghdad’s bangled bourn.
Send for steeds from Siam, where we didn’t yield an inch!
Send for Blair in Burma (though he’ll shoot you in a pinch),
And Wallinger and Buckingham and one who hears a (who?)
And Jumbo (how?) and Jim Crow (what?) and Samwise Gamgee too.
Send for (ah!) Ganesha on a ten- or twelve-arm day!
Let trunks transform to trumpets, blow bureaucracy away,
And laugh as legends leap and lunge and light up dull D.C.!
(And if, at last, nobody comes, then maybe send for me.)

(The blogger apologizes to Langston Hughes. The elephant, of course, apologizes to no one.)

(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tag.)

“…twisting in the water, you’re just like a dream…”

Just above the wild boar on the south nave of Washington National Cathedral are several smaller gargoyles and grotesques. Without binoculars or a zoomable camera, you might easily stroll by without ever noticing them, but it’s worth stopping in front of the garden and looking up. The most interesting critters aren’t about to clamber down to you, however much some of them may in fact desire to do so.

AN OCTOPUS REAPPRAISES HER LOBSTER

I hear the hot breath of the lobster I love;
The trees wilt below us; there’s nothing above.
You snore and I shudder, for sleepless I know
The oath of adventure we swore long ago:

“Between us, our limbs number eighteen in all;
Let’s creep from this tank and slip over the wall
And forever be free! Let’s aspire to perch
On a spire of our own on the loftiest church.”

You clawed at my tentacle, tender and green,
Like the first awkward kiss of a king and his queen.
You scuttled, I swam; through the garden we went.
Where grass gripped the stones, we began our ascent.

A lobster lives long, as no octopus can,
But a lobster has in him but one perfect plan.
I longed for longevity; no girl expects
To ask of her lobster, “So what happens next?”

You curl up contentedly, dreaming of me;
I cling to my cornice and scarcely feel free.
“I won’t let you down,” you once vowed, and I sighed.
I love that you’re honest; I wish you had lied.

(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tag.)

“So I don’t feel alone, or the weight of the stone…”

Washington National Cathedral is known for its quirky gargoyles, but recently my friends’ five-year-old spotted a relatively mundane beastie around 35 feet up, wedged among the dragons and monsters that overlook the Bishop’s Garden. I imagine this creature must think rather highly of himself. And so I give you…

A SONNET FROM THE BOARTUGUESE

I ask: Did He who made the squirrel make me?
He shaped the petty weevil, slug, and fly:
For as thou art to them, am I to thee,
When ’round the garden durst thou slouch and sigh.
I grin, and father pestilence on high;
I bristle, and beshrivel every leaf;
I twitch an ear, the goldfish gasp and die;
I blink, and roses beg for sweet relief.
Yet tourist, when thou turnst to tend thy grief,
My holy tusks and tail thou shan’t recall,
Though still I mince thy mind with unbelief;
Between these buttressed groves I govern all.
Let dragons thus proclaim in wyrmish lore:
“Among our roosts there ruled a humble boar.”

(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tag.)

“There’s talk in the houses, and people dancing in rings…”

So I guess when a neighborhood’s most obvious medieval-ish draw is a gigantic new Gothic cathedral, it’s understandable that one might tromp up and down the street, possibly for years, and not notice, just two blocks away, the house with a gargoyle on the roof and a dragon in the front yard.

I don’t know who lives here, but they’re my new favorite neighbors. I hope they have trolls ’round the back.

“I never talk to my neighbours, I’d rather not get involved…”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is perched on the gable,
It searches and lurches, befickled by fable.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten the cat!”
“And what shall we do about that, my child,
What shall we do about that?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is stalking our roof,
Its claw-pricks primeval, primordial proof.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten dear brother!”
“And why can’t we get us another, my child,
Why can’t we get us another?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, alights in the hall,
Its grindings and growlings begrizzled by gall.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten poor father!”
“And why must you be such a bother, my child,
Why must you be such a bother?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is greedy for gore,
Befouled and bedeviled, beframed by the door.
The gargoyle, Mother, is coming for you!”
“And what do you dream I can do, my child,
What do you dream I can do?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, has eaten you whole,
Its hellmaw begobbling you, body and soul.
The gargoyle, Mother, is spitting you out!”
“And why did you have any doubt, my child,
Why did you have any doubt?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, bespews its hot breath,
Its burning and burbling betoken my death.
The gargoyle, Mother, has torn me in two!”
“And why must you mourn only you, my child,
Why must you mourn only you?”

(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tag.)