The road to Tintagel and the birth of Arthur

03-06-10

These are Merlin cliffs
As old as the leaves of grass
Towering high and raven-clawed perched
Above a sea of glass;
These are Merlin trod causeways
The right-of-way to weavers of dreams,
For somewhere in our legendary time
Merlin walked to Tintagel
To deliver Arthur to his fate.
And you have never known a dream so sweet
As on this thick hair of grass so green
On all a grey-winter’s eve.

These are Merlin tracks,
Bounding high through my mind with revenue;
These are Merlin tracks
Leaving their residue in my memory
Perhaps
         Even
               In
                 Now.

What is time,
-Even though it were to be stretched a lifetime wide across the bones of the dead-
To the walker of dreams and mystery
Who crowns kings through the fate that he brings
What is time?
Like leaves of grass upon an hour glass of seas
And so
Unbounding seas.



He didn’t know how he had come unclothed. It seemed as though they had been talking for eternity. Neither did he know how she had come unclothed. He only knew that there had been no talk of sex, even as she rubbed his man and pet it with her soft finger tips.

They had talked of all things, of things they’d been, of things they’d never be, of things they would be. They’d talked of places that only they could have ever seen, they’d talked of events that only they could have known. They’d talked of people they’d only ever met in dreams.

“How would it be if I sat on you?” she asked, stroking him gently and nodding her chin in her hand. She looked casually up into his eyes as he lay against the pillows, the music far away but everywhere, the candles embracing the silk of the bed curtains.

“What? As if to penetrate?” he asked, as if the idea had never occurred to him.

“Yes, would you like that?”

“Very much,” he answered without thinking.

She spit in her hand and his eyes slid back in his head as she slid it down his shaft, as she straddled him, as he entered her and her tongue met his all the talk they had ever known or ever would know became one ultimate language.

Was this a dream or a vision, was this a reality or a mystery, was this a truth or an enlightenment? Was this an Arthur, a Lancelot, a Guinevere? Was there ever any way to know, or if in knowing ever any way to make it undone?

Merlin walked with the child over the causeway of the ancients, elder even then Merlin, or, for that matter, Arthur.

“I’m going to a special school?” Arthur was asking.

“Yes, just as I said.” Merlin’s reply was not short, but matter of fact.

“You mean, like…”

“Harry what’s-his-face?” Merlin answered before the question could be asked.

“Yes, like him?”

“Oh, you are, dear boy. You are.”

“I am what?”

Merlin turned toward the lad.

“That’s just the point,” he said.

Time spins on, in fractals and in algorithms, in dance and in sex, upon sea-cliffs and leaves of grass, and the distance is not so far or near, is not so small or so clear as all the yesterdays in the memory of everyman. It is walked upon like dirt and lived under like rain, but Merlin knows
                                               the great shades of goodness that reflect in the fountain of wisdom.
                                               Merlin knows.



The yacht was off the windward side, pulling in from the channel to the bay. And not even Arthur’s great unknowing could undo the return of he whose fate it was to carry the old wound, the wound before time became what it is to us today. Lancelot approached and all the lovers in all the world were eunuchs underneath his magic spell, even his own magic; no chaos could intrude for the wound was too great, and the wound was his strength, and the wound was strength.



“You lied to me!” the boy looked up, bitterness and hurt in his eyes.
“Yes I did.” Merlin did not smile, nor did he frown.
“But you said truth is the doorway!”
"So it is. But even so, it is still only a door. Dear boy, do not confuse the path with the destination. The door looks one way from this side but from the other it is very different indeed. Truth is not enlightenment, my boy. No, not at all.”
“But how will I ever trust you again?” Arthur cried, almost in despair.
“Arthur!” Merlin’s voice was a demand. “The question is will you. And the answer to that question, dear boy, is the destination, and your fate.”
“Unless you’re lying.” Arthur put his hands in his pockets and pulled away when the wizard put his hand to the back of his head. “And stop calling me ‘dear boy’. I am Arthur!”
I think you could hear the ground quake when he spoke these last words.
Merlin gazed after him as Arthur walked upwards toward the school yard, his chin on his breast.

“So you are,” Merlin whispered. “So you are.”



It was later, much later, when Arthur needed Merlin, and did not have him. It was the time of Arthur’s greatest trials. “Merlin!” Arthur cried, the rocks sounding with the force of the name. “Merlin! Where are you? I need you!”
“Why do you need me?” A voice answered back.
“I need you! I need someone I can trust!”
“Trust?” The voice laughed. “How can you trust me now, after all of this?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur cried. “I just do. How do I know I still love her, after all this? How do I know I still am King, after all this? Because it is so!”

“The destination,” the voice told him, “is always the beginning.”
And somewhere, sometime, a boy woke up from his dream and knew that he would be king.

I started out from Newquay today at 1:05 pm and walked 4 or 5 miles in an hour. That pace is too fast but it was invigorating! It is especially keen starting off into the first roll-the-pant-legs-up traverse, cold water cooling the feet, shoes made just for this, and Handel’s “Fireworks” playing away on the ipod. Climb up a rocky face and peak on top of the cliffs just as Wolfmother starts in, Jonathan Livingston Seagull soaring at the rocks below, God’s own kite. Walking on pretending I’m a WWII British Commando in training in love, in love, in love with you, the Long Winding Road, the boats upon the wind, the smiles of walkers passing by.

The hotel bar is like a kingly domain, a vision from a slick child-hood soap opera, all yachts and surfers in the bay, and I-I am the king of France, well not THE king of France but A king of France visiting these blissful shores, all Daphne du Maurier and bay window beauties in the jukebox by the cigarette machine, all lazy holidays pushing the body and the spirit to new limits of living because life is all there is until nothingness and nothingness will take care of itself, like a constant itching in inescapable places.