Curtains for You

CURTAINS FOR YOU 

It’s never an easy or pleasant position
to be fated to alternate fusion with fission
and I failed to foresee the historical drama
that waits for drapes in a wide panorama.

That’s right, I’m a curtain…

Many things in this world are mysterious
but of this simple fact I’m certain.
Humans are humans, and satin is satin,
and curtains speak in a kind of Latin.

Don’t ask me why, I don’t know,
but of my life I can give you an account
blow by blow. Ready, steady? Go!

Most curtains are torn from their rings
once every decade: discarded, forgotten,
terribly decayed, unless you are owned
by a family insane, who might keep you
hanging for centuries and rotting in vain.

What a dreadful pain! Rotting in vain! 
Until you are mostly a collection of holes
with very small bodies and very big souls.

I never possessed a formal name,
because naming a curtain is a silly game.
When we flap in the breeze
with a regular snap, it is strictly the wind,
not a psychological slap.
Yet do not believe we are totally numb,
for into my life did a grand passion come! 

What do I mean? Well, I fell in love!
What? The absolute real thing!
And the object of my devoted affection
hung right on my rail
in the very same section as myself.
She was a curtain too.
Let’s say she was my other half!

An eccentric might hang a mismatched pair
but ours was a symmetry wondrous and rare.
It was her swish
and her flutter that caused me to mutter:
“Such a delicate rustle,
free from aggressive human bustle!”

She rippled because she was morally pure,
a curtain of virtue, of that I’m quite sure,
but alas! during the day we were pulled
clean apart, a fact that brought a great ache
to my drapery heart.

My love wasn’t lust (though a physical urge
is natural enough when fabrics converge).
I wanted her happy, I wanted her free,
I wanted her sweet, I’m sure you’ll agree
that nicer than misery is unfettered glee.

The room that we guarded was gloomy and grand
until one fateful afternoon the roughest hands
in the land came knocking and pounding
and making a din
and several rude bailiffs came marching right in.
They carried off tables,
they carried off chairs,
while the lady of the house wept on the stairs.

The master had expired some weeks before
(he used to play the piano there on the floor,
generally ragtime and jazz or even Debussy).
His sudden cessation of living, you see,
had triggered a legal and awful decree. 

The furniture went, the room grew so wide,
I felt agoraphobia swelling inside!
Yet a wild sort of joy made my fabric feel proud:
with no clutter to block us our echoes were loud!
But human rapacity knows no horizon:
the bailiffs stood like men brimming with poison.

“Shall we take the lightbulbs?” one of them cried.
“And don’t forget the curtains,” his partner replied.
“What about the wallpaper?” “Don’t be a dunce,
nobody steals that,” he responded at once.
 
These words alarmed me, to danger alerted,
I rippled ineffectually, hurting and cursing,
on the verge of going beserk,
but the hands pulled me down with a vicious jerk
and into a cylinder tightly I was inserted.
Rolled up in the dark, my sensations grew dim,
bundled curtains, alas, make romance quite grim.

We were taken away to an auctioneer’s hall
where furniture sat in a heap by the wall.
And there was my love! But a mountain of chairs
kept us totally parted and trapped in despair.
The auctioneer hammered and yelled with a shout,
selling the piano, paintings, and a stuffed trout.

At last he reached us with a fake little cheer:
“A fine pair of curtains!” (As the crowd sneered).
I blushed quite invisibly, just a slight change
in the way my pattern absorbed the light range.
“Come now,” said the man with a mask of a smile,
“these drapes are tenacious and have a great style!
You don’t have to use them as curtains, you know!”

A grizzled old sea captain called from below:
“I’ll take just the one! I don’t need a blasted pair!”
And he bought my sweet love for a twopenny fare.
With a seaweedy hand, which was horribly wrong,
he stuffed my poor girl in his coat deep and long!

Oh, what would that ruffian do to her now?
I was quite helpless to kick up a row.
The auctioneer shrugged and he gave me away
to a middle-aged woman at the end of the day.

Now, hear of my shame! For this lady of vice
cut me up with her shears without thinking twice
and turned me into a dress! A summer dress too!
For a male piece of curtain, it’s painful and blue
and I still wish it had never been true. The dress
was low-cut and short, and she wore me to bars
while drinking her cocktails or watching the stars
with disreputable men who would throw me aside
on the floor of cheap hotels where I would abide.

If only she’d made me into some trousers or shirts,
I’d be slightly less bitter about how deep it hurts!
Yet through inductive reasoning, I knew in my soul
that my darling was also experiencing a difficult role.

And indeed she was! For that terrible pirate of old
had turned her into a jib sail, or so I’ve been told!
She flapped in the winds of the Seven Great Seas
while the crew made their victims walk planks
down on their knees! Ouch and splash and glug!

Then my fortunes grew worse: my owner’s bad cat
savaged my fabric while on a wardrobe I sat.
I was ripped into ribbons and thrown into the street,
flapping in pieces at everyone’s feet.
My consciousness stayed in the largest of shreds
and I became a sad sequence
of ignominious threads.

First a bow in the hair of a little young tot,
then a string for a parcel (a miserable lot),
then a bird used my fabric to line her spring nest
until a storm blew me out and I had no more rest.
A tramp found me next, and I say with a groan,
he used me to wipe his big nose to the bone!

I feared I’d be worn to molecule size
and drift through the atmosphere under the skies.
He rolled me up tight and he threw me, for fun,
at a passing policeman who started to run.
I bounced off his uniform, hit a big truck,
and landed in iron ore, cursing my luck!

Meanwhile, my poor love had been blasted by shot
sent from a ship that had resisted the pirate-crew lot.
Turned into a bandage, a sling, then a piece of waste
thrown into the ocean to float with the grease.

A fisherman used her to patch up his net
but a vengeful crab snipped her and left her upset.
Yet miracles happen! The foundry’s wise chief
found me in the ore and provided relief:
he let the wind take me, and high did I soar,
and I fell by a fence on a beachcomber’s shore.

The woman who lived there collected old rags
and stuffed my poor self in the largest of bags.
She emptied the sack on her living room table
and there sat a sight that was purely a fable!

My beloved was there! In that beautiful heap
of velvet and sarsenet, waking from sleep!
She’d been used as a fanbelt, and sunk in a boat,
then tied round a message in a bottle afloat
which smashed on another one out at sea,
finally washing up on the beach
to be gathered with me!

The beachcomber took us and with needle
and thread stitched us together,
just as I’ve said. No longer two curtains
but merged into one, our painful adventures
finally done. We hang in her bedroom
in sickness and health, possessing each other,
the ultimate wealth.

A lone single curtain can never be parted,
so we are secure, completely light-hearted.
United forever, in fabric and mind,
the happiest drape you ever will find!