The Weighty World of Baroque Sarcophagus

  

“The noise of one’s memories and thoughts can become quite unbearable.” So said Baroque Sarcophagus whose Adam’s Apple pulsed like a jellyfish in his throat so anxious was he that even his own words were too weighty to bear.

“My remembrances, like the dead, are always with me. Did you know that Brochan is the God of porridge?”

‘Deflection’ was the word the counsellor man thought of. This man deflects away from the truth of his disposition. These were further words the counsellor man thought of as he gazed unprepossessingly at Baroque Sarcophagus.

The counsellor thought of an old story he’d read, Bartleby the Scrivener who only ever answered ‘I would prefer not to’ when asked to perform a task. He was blank and dark and mirthless just like this Mr Sarcophagus.

“No, I didn’t know that Baroque. Tell me about your past if you’d like to”

“I’d prefer not to. Yes, and Sowens is the name of a very impoverished form of porridge. Little more than porridge water or vapour, really!”

What was this obsession with porridge, the counsellor wondered? Health-giving, warming, comfort. The stuff of life.

“Were you fed well as a child?”

“Have you considered the fishes of the dark zone?”

“Did you have a happy childhood?”

“The Opalescent Squid? The Hooded Sea-slug?”

“Is your name really Baroque Sarcophagus?”

Baroque looked at the counsellor man with hooded eyes that a sea-slug would be proud of. There was a million miles of experience and pain behind those dark, black eyes, accretions of aeons of neglect, misery and ordeal and yet the counsellor man could only question his title. Baroque viewed the man with utter disdain as if he was almost planktonic in his dimness. Finally, he spoke…

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

The counsellor man who was a good man and had fathered three children and loved his pretty wife looked out of his office window. A murmuration of starlings emerged suddenly out of the trees as if a bomb had gone off. They swooped and swirled and reminded him of images on his spyrograph toy as a child.

Finally, he turned back to the lanky frame of Baroque Sarcophagus who called himself Ozymandias, king of kings and softly said…

“Be not afraid and troubled, my son, for I am the Lord thy God, and I will not forsake you!”

At this Baroque shed a tear, rose from his chair and left without a word.

The counsellor man looked again at the trees and smiled.

“Ozymandias, my arse!!”