Hoops

Hoops written by Wilfred Gibson

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Scene
The big tent-stable of a travelling circus. On the ground near the entrance GENTLEMAN JOHN, stableman and general odd-job man, lies smoking beside MERRY ANDREW, the clown. GENTLEMAN JOHN is a little hunched man with a sensitive face and dreamy eyes. MERRY ANDREW, who is resting between the afternoon and evening performances, with his clown's hat lying beside him, wears a crimson wig, and a baggy suit of orange-coloured cotton, patterned with purple cats. His face is chalked dead-white, and painted with a set grin, so that it is impossible to see what manner of man he is. In the background are camels and elephants feeding, dimly visible in the steamy dusk of the tent.

<poem> Gentleman John

   And then consider camels: only think
   Of camels long enough, and you'd go mad -
   With all their humps and lumps; their knobbly knees,
   Splay feet, and straddle legs; their sagging necks,
   Flat flanks, and scraggy tails, and monstrous teeth.
   I've not forgotten the first fiend I met:
   'Twas in a lane in Smyrna, just a ditch
   Between the shuttered houses, and so narrow
   The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green stack
   Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath
   Brushing the yellow walls on either hand,
   And shutting out the strip of burning blue:
   And I'd to face that vicious bobbing head
   With evil eyes, slack lips, and nightmare teeth,
   And duck beneath the snaky, squirming neck,
   Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads,
   That seemed to wriggle every way at once,
   As though it were a hydra. Allah's beard!
   But I was scared, and nearly turned and ran:
   I felt that muzzle take me by the scruff,
   And heard those murderous teeth crunching my spine,
   Before I stopped - though I dodged safely under.
   I've always been afraid of ugliness.
   I'm such a toad myself, I hate all toads;
   And the camel is the ugliest toad of all,
   To my mind; and it's just my devil's luck
   I've come to this -- to be a camel's lackey,
   To fetch and carry for original sin,
   For sure enough, the camel's old evil incarnate.
   Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil!
   No eye's more evil than a camel's eye.
   The elephant is quite a comely brute,
   Compared with Satan camel, -- trunk and all,
   His floppy ears, and his inconsequent tail.
   He's stolid, but at least a gentleman.
   It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him,
   And bring his shaving-water. He's a lord.
   Only the bluest blood that has come down
   Through generations from the mastodon
   Could carry off that tail with dignity,
   That tail and trunk. He cannot look absurd,
   For all the monkey tricks you put him through,
   Your paper hoops and popguns. He just makes
   His masters look ridiculous, when his pomp's
   Butchered to make a bumpkin's holiday.
   He's dignity itself, and proper pride,
   That stands serenely in a circus-world
   Of mountebanks and monkeys. He has weight
   Behind him: aeons of primaeval power
   Have shaped that pillared bulk; and he stands sure,
   Solid, substantial on the world's foundations.
   And he has form, form that's too big a thing
   To be called beauty. Once, long since, I thought
   To be a poet, and shape words, and mould
   A poem like an elephant, huge, sublime,
   To front oblivion; and because I failed,
   And all my rhymes were gawky, shambling camels,
   Or else obscene, blue-buttocked apes, I'm doomed
   To lackey it for things such as I've made,
   Till one of them crunched my backbone with his teeth,
   Or knocks my wind out with a forthright kick
   Clean in the midriff, crumpling up in death
   The hunched and stunted body that was me -
   John, the apostle of the Perfect Form!
   Jerusalem! I'm talking like a book -
   As you would say: and a bad book at that,
   A maundering, kiss-mammy book - The Hunchback's End
   Or The Camel-Keeper's Reward - would be its title.
   I froth and bubble like a new-broached cask.
   No wonder you look glum, for all your grin.
   What makes you mope? You've naught to grouse about.
   You've got no hump. Your body's brave and straight -
   So shapely even that you can afford
   To trick it in fantastic shapelessness,
   Knowing that there's a clean-limbed man beneath
   Preposterous pantaloons and purple cats.
   I would have been a poet, if I could:
   But better than shaping poems 'twould have been
   To have had a comely body and clean limbs
   Obedient to my bidding.

Merry Andrew

                                             I missed a hoop
   This afternoon.

Gentleman John

                             You missed a hoop? You mean . . .

Merry Andrew

   That I'm done, used up, scrapped, on the shelf,
   Out of the running - only that, no more.

Gentleman John

   Well, I've been missing hoops my whole life long;
   Though, when I come to think of it, perhaps
   There's little cosolation to be chewed
   From crumbs which I can offer.

Merry Andrew

                                             I've not missed
   A hoop since I was six. I'm forty-two.
   This is the first time that my body's failed me:
   But 'twill not be the last. And . . .

Gentleman John

                                              Such is life!
   You're going to say. You see I've got it pat,
   Your jaded wheeze. Lord, what a wit I'd make
   If I'd a set grin painted on my face.
   And such is life, I'd say a hundred times,
   And each time set the world aroar afresh
   At my original humour. Missed a hoop!
   Why, man alive, you've naught to grumble at.
   I've boggled every hoop since I was six.
   I'm fifty-five; and I've run round a ring
   Would make this potty circus seem a pinhole.
   I wasn't born to sawdust. I'd the world
   For circus . . .

Merry Andrew

                                 It's no time for crowing now.
   I know a gentleman, and take on trust
   The silver spoon and all. My teeth were cut
   Upon a horseshoe: and I wasn't born
   To purple and fine linen - but to sawdust,
   To sawdust, as you say - brought up on sawdust.
   I've had to make my daily bread of sawdust:
   Ay, and my children's, - children's, that's the rub,
   As Shakespeare says . . .

Gentleman John

                                       Ah, there you go again!
   What a rare wit to set the ring aroar -
   As Shakespeare says! Crowing! A gentleman?
   Man, didn't you say you'd never missed a hoop?
   It's only gentlemen who miss no hoops,
   Clean livers, easy lords of life who take
   Each obstacle at a leap, who never fail.
   You are the gentleman.

Merry Andrew

                                         Now don't you try
   Being funny at my expense; or you'll soon find
   I'm not quite done for yet - not quite snuffed out.
   There's still a spark of life. You may have words:
   But I've a fist will be a match for them.
   Words slaver feebly from a broken jaw.
   I've always lived straight, as a man must do
   In my profession, if he'd keep in fettle:
   But I'm no gentleman, for I fail to see
   There's any sport in baiting a poor man
   Because he's losing grip at forty-two,
   And sees his livelihood slipping from his grasp -
   Ay, and his children's bread.

Gentleman John

                                           Why, man alive,
   Who's baiting you? This winded, broken cur,
   That limps through life, to bait a bull like you!
   You don't want pity, man! The beaten bull,
   Even when the dogs are tearing at his gullet,
   Turns no eye up for pity. I myself,
   Crippled and hunched and twisted as I am,
   Would make a brave fend to stand up to you
   Until you swallowed your words, if you should slobber
   Your pity over me. A bull! Nay, man,
   You're nothing but a bear with a sore head.
   A bee has stung you -- you who've lived on honey.
   Sawdust, forsooth! You've had the sweet of life:
   You've munched the honeycomb till . . .

Merry Andrew

                                               Ay! talk's cheap.
   But you've no children. You don't understand.

Gentleman John

   I have no children: I don't understand!