Another Clerihew

This was inspired by the recent scare about large numbers of immigrants from Romania coming to Britain:-

"Count Dracula (whose real name was Vlad)
Was justly considered quite mad
For taking the decision to remain here
When he might have gone home to Transylvania"

(Index under:   Immigrants; unwelcome)

An ongoing collection of my clerihews can be found on an earlier entry

A Letter

The letter had fallen on the mat address side down. He didn’t bother to turn it over before ripping it open with his finger. Inside was a single sheet of paper. There was no sender‘s address at the top, and the writing was in careful block capitals. “Mister Williams”, he read. But this wasn’t him: Mr Williams was the previous occupant of the house. Really the man should have informed the Post Office of his change of address, not to mention telling his correspondents!

“Mister Williams: you still haven’t paid us the ten thousand. We will be sending people round to collect it”

He read the message three times, by which time he was shaking. What had this man Williams been involved in? He knew nothing about him at all. He hadn’t even met him. The property had been vacant when he moved in; the agent had shown him round an empty house. Now Williams’s misdeeds, whatever they might have been, were catching up. That must have been why he’d left, without a forwarding address. And here HE was, trapped and helpless, having to answer for someone else! Cold crawled up his spine. He could envisage what would happen. A couple of thugs would come knocking on the door: he’d try to explain to them that he wasn’t Williams, but they wouldn’t believe him, and ……….. No; he couldn’t bear even to imagine it.

For the first time, he turned over the envelope. On the front was just the single word “Williams”, again in capitals. There was no address, and no stamp. Suddenly, the implications of this dawned upon him. It had been delivered by hand! One of THEM had pushed it through his letterbox! This meant that, almost certainly, they were watching his house even now! There wasn’t a moment to be lost! He must escape! Without even bothering to pick up his coat, he ran to the kitchen door and outside to the rear garden, with some thought of getting away through the back hedge. But already he was too late! There was a figure, dark under the shadow of the trees, coming round the corner of the house and advancing towards him.

He stood there, trembling and quite incapable of movement, as time froze, and then the figure spoke.
“Morning, Nigel! How are you?”
“Michael! Oh, thank goodness! You can’t imagine how relieved I am that it’s you! Come on in! But it was a rotten trick to play on me, with that letter! You know how nervous I am!”
“What trick? What letter?”
The cold panicky feeling started to crawl up him again, but at least he wasn’t isolated and on his own any more. “I got a letter just now, threatening me. Or, not exactly me, but …… Wait; I’ll get it and show you”.

But the letter wasn’t there. He scrabbled around ineffectually, with increasing confusion, then finally said, lamely, “I don’t seem to be able to find it. But it was here”.
“That’s all right, Nigel”, said Michael. “I am your doctor, and I quite understand”. Yes indeed: it was becoming more complex and fascinating by the day, the case of Nigel Williams.

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres: School Visits

How can they understand a war poem? How can we?
Wars were far away and long ago
And nothing seen on television ever really happened.
Now the woods are full of children
Running through the muddy trenches
Dodging round the water-filled craters
Gawping at, or completely failing to notice
The occasional unexploded shell
And squeaking when their nice new jeans
(Fashionably ragged and torn at the knee)
Are stained with filth in the communications tunnel.

Below the woods the fields are grey with mist
Shrouding the view to the sinister places
The Menin road, and up to Passchendaele,
Behind us, Messines Ridge and Plugstreet. The children
Have been told, but already they’ve forgotten
And soon they’ll be off for hamburger and chips
(They’re looking forward to their succulent Belgian chips)
And leave the trenches and the shattered stumps
The rusty barbed wire and all the iron harvest of war
And arching over all, the chestnut trees
- None more than seventy years old
But sprouting strongly, because well fertilised
By someone who in happier circumstances
Might have married my grandmother
Or yours

A SOLDIER
OF THE GREAT WAR
KNOWN UNTO GOD

The Wizard is worried

When Udlotwin called on me the other day he looked so distraught and haggard that I barely recognized him. I'd never seen him like that before.

I should explain that Udlotwin (that's not the name most people know him by, of course) is a wizard. We'd been friends for years. I've often wondered why he took to me, since he told me very early on that I had no gift for magic whatsoever. Perhaps that might be why he liked me: other people might have pestered him to teach them some magic, or at least demonstrate some; by I accepted what he said and never bothered him further on the subject.
   He slumped into a chair and begged for a glass of water. When he'd drunk this, and was looking a little better, I obviously asked him what the trouble was.
   "Did you ever meet Geoffrey Dakin?" he asked me.
   "No,but I seem to remember your telling me about him. He wanted to become a magician, you said".
   "Yes, he did. And he had some of the necessary ability; just a little. That was the trouble: he'd have done better to keep well away. That's what I advised him, but he didn't listen. When I heard he'd died suddenly, with no obvious physical symptoms, I immediately suspected the worst. I managed to get into his flat,and my worst fears were confirmed".
   "Why, what did you find?"
   "Enough to show me that he'd being trying out some very risky ideas; fortunately without any success. But then I found something really important. To a layman it might have seemed no more than a simple wooden fruit-bowl; but I knew what it was: a Horn of Plenty. I wondered where on earth he could have got it".
   "What's a Horn of Plenty?"
   "A famous magical device! Things that are placed inside it multiply, and go on multiplying".
   "You mean if I put some money in, more and more money would come out?"
   "That's just what a layman would think, and probably what poor Geoffrey did think. But there's much more to it than that. A Horn of Plenty is basically a machine, and it works just like any other machine. It won't function without an input of energy; but it's a special kind of energy, which it takes from the magician. Even I would find it exhausting. You, as it happens, don't possess any of this energy. Geoffrey had some, but not nearly enough for this task. I guessed that was what killed him - though of course it might have been something different; something much more sinister. I won't go into that".
   "So what did you do?"
   "I took the Horn away. I couldn't leave it lying about: you never know who might get their hands on it. But just carrying it for any length of time would tire me out. I needed somewhere safe to hide it. So I cast around until I located a Doorway".
   "A Doorway? What's that?"
   "It's an entrance to a different world: a different universe. It'd be easiest for you to understand if you think in terms of multiple dimensions. This particular Doorway appeared to be just a hollow tree. I thought it might be safe to hide the Horn there. So I opened the Doorway".
   "And what did you find there?"
   "Initially, nothing much. A great heap of stones was completely blocking the other side. But I sensed that something, or someone, was there. And at that same moment it sensed me. A picture formed in my brain of a monstrous being, something like an enormous gorilla, but with a face like no creature of this world, ferociously shaking the bars of a cage. And its voice was yelling at me. "Let me out!" it shouted, "Let me out!" And it knew I had the power to release it, and I knew that was what must be prevented at all costs.
   "It was so overwhelming that I utterly lost control of my mind. I collapsed. I've no idea what happened next. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself lying on the grass in a strange park I'd never seem before. A well-meaning passer-by asked me if I was all right, and helped me to my feet. I was so weak I could hardly stand. And the Horn of Plenty was gone.
   "What had happened? Had I dropped it somewhere? Worst of all, had I perhaps left it beyond the Doorway, where that ..... that THING ...... could get hold of it?

"What am I going to do now?"

Puzzles

I came away from the auction with a small box of Chinese bric-a-brac, which I had bid for because I liked the look of a piece of jade which formed one of the items. When I got it home, however, the jade turned out on closer inspection to be obviously modern, and not even very good quality at that; and I was relieved I hadn’t bid more. 
   Most of the other items in the box were frankly rubbish, but one or two attracted a second glance, if only to try to convince myself that my money hadn‘t been completely wasted. There was a carving in dark wood, beneath a glass dome smaller than a child’s fist, consisting of a man in a robe seated at a table. There was a teapot and a cup detached from the main carving and lying loose: probably the carving had been broken, but somehow it reminded me of those cheap little toys where you have to manoeuvre ball-bearings through a maze, or into slots in a picture. I even attempted to shake the dome to get these objects back onto the table, but failed miserably and gave up after a few goes. 
   At the bottom of the box was a medallion the size of a coin, on a chain. There were characters I couldn’t read on one side of it, and it surprised me, because I didn’t think it was the sort of thing the Chinese went in for. I suspected it wasn’t really Chinese at all, and I certainly didn’t find it at all attractive, but in an idle moment I hung it round my neck.
   For some reason, I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to return to the game, or whatever it was, under the glass dome. I shook it, and it took very little time or effort to get the cup and teapot into their right places on the table; but somehow they weren’t tiny any more: the whole carving had expanded until it was life-size, and I was right there beside it, watching. And the man in the robe was alive and moving. I watched as he poured himself a cup of tea, and then picked it up to drink it. And I realised that he mustn’t drink it, because the tea was poisoned; and I tried to shout at him not to, but no sound came out.The poison must have been very potent, because he collapsed almost immediately. And he realised what had happened to him, because he was able to lift his head from the table to look directly up at me, and his look said,
“YOU DID IT!”

Fear

I found myself on the outskirts of a large burial-ground. The light was murky. Some distance away, with her back to me, a young girl in a red dress was laying flowers on a grave. Closer to me, but somehow much less distinct, was another figure, who seemed to be a woman in beige, who was watching the girl. I was seized with a terrible fear that they would notice me and turn round, and I would find they had the faces of werewolves; or even worse, they would have no faces at all. I decided to tiptoe quietly away. The figures did not move, and I realised the scene was only a picture. But then I discovered I could not move either, and that I was part of the picture too.

The Grail

When I heard a rumour that one of the knights who undertook the quest for the Holy Grail was still living, I felt I could not rest until I had spoken with him. Many had heard the story, but few had any notion of where he lived, and even his name seemed to be in dispute. It was only after many tedious journeyings I discovered him. His name was Bors, and he lived a solitary hermit in a desolate forest. He was now an extremely old man, and it was immediately clear that for many years he had cared nothing for his appearance or the condition of his clothes. For a long time he met my queries with immovable silence, but at length, either out of pity or wearied by my endless importunities, he began to talk, like one who had almost forgotten the use of his mother-tongue or the sound of his own voice.

He began to tell the long story of how the company of knights set forth to find the Grail, through dark and trackless forests and over perilous mountains, how they battled monsters and giants, how they endured endless traps and temptations laid before them by devils, how the faint-hearted abandoned the quest as one year followed another, though the valiant few pressed onwards, sustained by the vision ……  But all these stories I had already heard, so I cut short his account with impatient questions.

What did your companions propose to do with the Grail when they found it? This question for the first time appeared to animate him.

- You do not DO anything with the Grail. It is not for USE. The Grail IS, and always will be: that is all. It exists, beyond all time and all space. Nothing more is required. He who has seen the Grail has beheld all the secrets of the universe: of life, of death, and of the life to come.

And these secrets are?

- They cannot be expressed in words.

I felt that little was being learnt, so I moved to a new line of questioning.

How did you find it?

- Not through any effort or merit of ours. The Grail is not to be ferreted out or dug for, like some sack of buried gold. It may permit itself to be found. Only one who is wholly without sin can find the Grail. He must not only be pure and undefiled in his actions, but in his words too, and even in his thoughts. As a sinful man, I could not come near it, but as an act of grace far beyond my deserts, I was permitted to glimpse it, from a distance, for an instant. That momentary vision I have held in my mind ever since, and I desire nothing but to continue to meditate upon it.

What did the Grail look like?

- It is beyond any description.

But it must have had a shape: a colour?

- It has all colours, many of which human eyes cannot perceive, and at the same time it has no colour. It is not confined in a single fixed shape, as mortal objects are: it embodies in itself all the shapes that ever are, or were, or could be.

By this time, I was beginning to wonder whether my journey had been wasted. Either he was simply a fraud, or he was a deluded old man lost in a dense fog of impenetrable mysticism, and unable to convey any useful information. In anger I said, I do not believe you found the Grail at all: in fact, I begin to doubt whether the Grail even exists.

- No matter, he said, for I know I saw the Grail. That is sufficient. I am at peace.