CIRCE
Molly appears like a Saharan mirage
Gold veining her dress and wrists
On her camel she rides off to a blazing sultan
Known as Boylan. Bloom gives birth to eight children.
King Bloom, all the women of the world at his feet
And he walks on this carpet of breasts and bottoms
Back at the court, accused Bloom, pervert supreme
Bears the whips of insults. He gave them wings.
And also clipped them. These poor fallen women.
He pleads guilty to being the messiah of smut.
On the horizon approaches Bella, holding scanty lingerie
She wants a gender trade. Bloom is familiar with garters.
And Bello with trousers. And Boylan with Molly.
But though the perfumed fingers of the who*es
Dipped in the waters of Lethe dab his thirsty tongue
He does not stay. He remembers Ithaca.
Stephen's mother specters into the brothel,
She ghouls her son to pray and the heat melts
The reason of the gathered. Stephen's mind soups
And oozes out of his ears. Madman, he sprints out to the street.
(The crystal ball of fantasy and fancy rolls to the table's edge.)
Angered at Stephen, Dublin packs its rage
In the fist of a sailor (the crystal ball falls)
Whose punch (shatters) the dreamscape.
But Stephen and his jaw survive.
Footing away the gla** pieces, Bloom spots the reflection
Of a little boy in an Eton suit silently reading.
He shouts “Rudy” in wonder, but the boy doesn't hear
He reaches for him, but hits gla** like a window. He puts his face to it. The rows of black letters are like blinds you can only peek through.
The limits of a page are meant to stop fiction's escape.
Rudy closes the book, and Bloom's self is folded sideways
Again 2D, again Dublin's night, again the beginning of Eumaeus.
But already he thinks of the next time the boy opens this book
To this chapter, to this end, to his face.