Fitzgerald’s Dream - A Poem of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby by Greg Patrick

 

Fitzgerald’s Dream

A Poem of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby

by Greg Patrick

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

Though his noir-like persona was fashionably attired in finely tailored suit and in bowler hat, he strode the pier with the air of a solitary knight-errant on pilgrimage as if his step was echoing upon the flagstones of a causeway at quest’s threshold, across the sigh of undulating waves ethereally- lit by the swathe of moonlight in interplay with the crimson houselights, like newly-disembodied ghosts and fallen angels chasing each other across the surface. Red and silvered lights lit his expressive gaze cast like a ghostship’s wake to the horizon, not lulling his heart to any repose but as stirring in its soundless tones as a battle cry uttered by eyes alone, but he seemed to feel the waves forming and then smiting the shore. The beacon-like light across the dark sea unlike the stars led one astray, a wrecker’s light to believing mariners.

He lingered by the dusk overlooking the undulating cascade of waves lit briefly by the last smoulder of twilight making the sea seem a mirror cast to a fire goddess’ vanity. Yet he remained oblivious to the elements with faraway eyes. A returned soldier from the Great War cried out in nightmare-haunted sleep, a derelict called for alms under a marquee. As still in his vigil as Odysseus of myth bound to hear the siren’s beckoning…so was the light afar to his eyes...

Even as the dark sentinel aloft the pier closed his eyes to the sound of the incoming tide sizzling upon the shore...forgetting…remembering more so. The locket’s chain whispered from his hand into the luminous sea like an offering....

It was in that time of contradictions that one profoundly alone sought constancy overlooking the swathe of night sea like an exiled lord upon a turret. Like star-crossed Ulysses at the prow within sight of Ithaka. The inevitable entreaty of eyes to the heights. What star brightest of all this eve, he pondered. Tis no star but Venus. What is a star but by its nature impossibly distant and for its proximity there was a greater void then ever seas had breadth. A leonine expectancy lit his eyes in reply to the candular beacon of the house light with its Shahrazadian promise.

“Daisy...” his whisper trailing…

In slow motion he moved as party boats with their revellers passed with a nigh maddening languidity that belied his ardent desire like the night sea’s murmur: “Give me corsair vessels” in their stead he brooded, “to bring him at last the horizon” and hasten forth the dawn or dreamless sleep beneath waves that lent ventriloquism to his own sigh…no words were there to capture what was lost. No solace to be found in the ceaseless murmur of the tides. The saxophone soloist seemed to convey in wordless eloquence his dreams. The gilded age is no golden age and as he lingered by the lantern’s languid sway and the sounds of laughter and music like a venomed honey reached him. More a gilded cage really, he brooded. To be oneself is to be by oneself yet as he averted his gaze with distaste from the silhouettes of couples dancing The Charleston while by closed eyes, he imagined waltzing over the promenade with her. Memory and present passed like two lone stargazers on ships passing over night seas in darkness spectral, a startling moment of recognition ere they pass to new and old worlds. He reopened his eyes and imbued they were by moonlight then as he thought: what armistices could there be between huntsman and herd? He had remembered at The World’s Fair the tragic sight of a great cat pacing in the confines of its barred cage. He saw it being baited and prodded.

“Stop that now!” he protested. His practiced bootlegger’s menace seemed kindred to the spirit of the beast within. He understood all too well the depth of its sadness and huntsman’s desire. Its eyes seemed to smoulder into his psyche baring its teeth till its tormentor’s recoiled at the sinister over-coated man. And its roar diminished to a guttural purr like rising waves subsided.

Beaming tri-furcating like a desert star to a far-faring nomad’s eyes, the tantalising maddening light like a green flame, flared across the sea and lit two haunted eyes…morphing into a vision of Daisy Buchannan dancing in a green dress before his bewitched gaze. His enigmatic presence at dark vigil seemed to hold sway over the night ocean his hand raised to the light as if conjuring the elements further enhancing his mystique. Yet there was naught so cryptic but the desire of every man. He extended his hand beckoningly towards the light only to caress the chill darkness and memory.

The shoreside carnival held no allure. The red Ferris wheel’s revolutions coiled in a circle of fire upon the ocean surface and so he brooded that to have come full circle is to be going in circles. The fireworks lit the sea mist, their trailing arcs flaring dully into the ocean. In his face mirrored to downcast gaze upon the iridescence of sea as if gazing back from fathomless depths and from the masts of sunken ships as futilely as he looked in silent petition to stars. His gaze bespoke their dark soliloquy. Crest-fallen though un-resigned to fate’s inconstancy. As he gazed nigh yearningly upon the sea the pallorous gleam of the moon cast its silvery swathe upon the heaving undulating tumult like a causeway across the ocean, a road strode by Atlantean kings.

The dark waves rose like a toast to the stars, like a procession of black horses passing by in review before a radiant queen envisioned in the moon and by a light across the horizon’s threshold of the ebb tide, the night wind whispered its nocturne melodiously through a cascade of hair like an endearment whispered in a forbidden sonnet by an angel to a mortal daughter of eve and lost between two worlds…for that which is spoken between man and angel is the oldest long-distance relationship ever known. In phantasmal silhouette he paused at last on the crushing brink of the sea as across the dark waves, the sea sighed at the light with the same depth of dark yearning betrayed by a haunting presence by moonlight. An incomplete road to the horizon the pier seemed. Breakers roared and subsided till he heard them no more in his lone vigil.

“I wouldn’t do that Sir!” he was admonished as he caressed its face gently.

“You’re not me,” Gatsby replied.

He looked to a billboard... “The Great Giovanni…The Lion tamer…The Great Gatsby”, he smiled jokingly. Then with gravity:” I will be The Great Gatsby” he laughed with the same feral grin. Almost shouted it out like a rebel’s final battle cry.

“That’s what they’ll call me… An inexplicable promise and sense of immortality was his again.

A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.