Cinderella's Palace

"Ah make we most of what we yet may spend
Before we too in the dust descend" -Omar Khayyam

The castle rises above the super lush meadows
To stand silhouetted against the forever summer sky
A realer than real Warwick or Windsor
Its turreted roofscape
Fortified with galleries of battlement
That have never seen loosed arrows or boiling oil
Memories hark back to days
When this gothic fantasy grew up
Still survives unchanged
By the nerest thread of chance
In the delicate stairs & corridors
With its pallid watercolours
And its wrinkled old runner & early electric lights
In their opal glass shades
Makes a little corner of Cheltenham
In a very foreign field
The Maharajah is never expected back
So the palace servants squat in the shade
Of formal creeper clad doorways
The staircase to the ballroom
Will never see again the sweep of ballgowns
And the strange tripods that stand
With one foot extended to balance
On the steep steps that will never again
Be draped with potted ferns
The ballroom itself is sounded asleep
Like a palace in a fairytale
Or does the crystal sofa
Wait in gloom for Cinderella's prince?

SIGNED-ALAN "GADZOOK" PANGBORN
Cinderella's palace is a real structure;seat of the Maharajah of Mysore; modern day Bangalore. Decaying Splendour.

BACKWATERS

The rain scourged the timbers of the skiff incessantly
And its soft patter induced melancholy thoughts
And the wind whistled as it flew down
Into the boat’s battered bottom through a rift
Where some loose splinters of wood were rattling together
A disquieting & depressing sound
The waves of the river were splashing on the shore
And sounded so monotonous & hopeless
Just as if they were something unbearably dull & heavy
Which was boring them into utter disgust
Something from which they wanted to run away
And yet were obliged to talk about all the same;
The sound of the rain blended with their splashing
And the long-drawn sigh seemed to be floating above,
The overturned skiff;- the endless laboring sigh of the earth
Injured & exhausted by the external changes
From the bright & warm summer to the cold; misty; damp autumn
The wind blew continually over the desolate shore & foaming river
Blew & sang it’s melancholy songs .
SIGNED - ALAN “GADZOOK” PANGBORN