Habits urbane, even
debonair,
old-fashioned, certainly,
and proudly,
Bertram found it needful
to inquire
of any neighbour, when he
walked out,
if all her family were in
health,
and especially if a child
ailed.
He lived alone, books and
memories
constant cheer, and kept
his Latin up
to interpret the
hermetics most
and things obscure about
alchemy,
Knights Templar, Masons,
Rosicrucians,
Paracelsus’ heirs, old
almanacs,
not because he thought
they’d found a way
to transmute the Hegelian
twos
into an elect and perfect
Grail,
but because they so
clearly had not.
Failure fascinated him,
and thus
he searched out mostly
the most obscure.
His walks took him
through a cobbled town
where he’d visit the
shabby places,
antique chemist,
greengrocer, butcher,
baker; and buried deep in
a wall
that must have been
medieval, best
of curiosities, a
bookshop.
Specialist in deluded
lives,
he finds today a text
which Migne
had included in his set
of texts
by medieval monks. It is
one
Bertram has heard of, a
Rabelais
ere his time,
sesquipedalian.
Another, he smiles, and
rubs his hands.
