Scene Two

PROJECTED TEXT: PASSAGE OF TOO DAMN MUCH TO DRINK.

Bristol, still somewhat tipsy and disoriented from the Kill Devil, wanders the docks, lost. We see figures crisscross the stage, busy with the day. We hear the haunting groan of ships, sails rubbing against their ropes in the harbor, perhaps the coughing of a sick man in the distance, and bits of muffled music from a tavern a good ways off. At moments, Bristol thinks she sees someone walking ahead of her who looks like Adjua, but then the figure disappears. Then more clearly, we hear a sound that at first might seem like rats, but it’s something else: something swinging in the breeze.

BRISTOL: Hello? Is someone there? Hello? Might you help me?

(Exhausted, Bristol sits. She feels Adjua kiss her forehead while The Shadow watches. Suddenly, out of the dark, a life-size cage appears, slightly larger than the one seen in Act One. It is swinging to and fro from a beam on the docks. A dead man has been gibbeted in the cage. Bristol is terrified and covers her mouth, almost retching from the smell. The man’s clothes are rotting and so is the body underneath. There is a small pile of something unthinkable under the cage that has fallen off the decomposing body. But Bristol cannot help her curiosity. She inspects the dead man from a distance.)

I’ve seen you somewhere before? But no. No. (She moves closer in) Maybe. Do you remember? Was it London, outside the Cocoa Tree in Pall Mall? You were, you were . . . It was raining and you were just leaving and your mouth was still stained with chocolate . . .

(She sits near the corpse and sings to herself.)

            Drinking chocolate at the Cocoa Tree,

            Oh how happy one can be.

I’m sure we exchanged a few words. You looked, well, more lively, of course. But even then I said to myself, he is not long for this world. He drinks in a hurry and chocolate is not good for one’s morals. (Beat) But I don’t know you, do I? You’re just a slab of worm beef caught in God’s locket and there’s no key.

(She remembers a line of verse and recites it as a prayer for the body:)

            And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

            And he open’d the coffins and set them all free;

            Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,

            And wash in a river and shine in the sun . . .

(Bristol freezes when she hears a voice.)

BODY: Damn it. There goes another toe. The pieces keep dropping off.

(The body in the cage perks up a bit. It recites:)

            And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,

            And got with our bags and our brushes to work.

            Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm.

BRISTOL AND BODY:

            So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

(Bristol inches forward again. She doesn’t believe what she is hearing, and yet she converses.)

BRISTOL: I’ve never taken to that last line.

BODY: Irony, my lamb. It’s ironic.

BRISTOL: I’ve had two drams of Kill Devil; I almost never drink.

BODY: Oh, for a dram of Kill Devil to wash the tickling maggots from my throat. My brain is thick with flies. Abuzz.

(The body follows the trail of a fly with its eyes. Bristol does too.)

BRISTOL: Do I know you?

BODY: My name is William. You’ve got my book in your hand. Though sadly only the verse, and those intrusive scratchings between my lines . . . Have you seen the engravings?

BRISTOL: Yes. At the bookshop.

BLAKE: I miss the painting far more than the words. The right colors can give you a blow to your chest, a deadly blow, much like love. Words are merely what come after love, to placate the emptiness. (Beat) I never was happy with that last line either. Irony is a cheap ejaculation. I prefer its whorish neighbors: polemic, expostulation, mockery, hyperbole, provocation, abuse, which polite society so often misreads in my verse. I’ll change that line. What would you prefer I say?

BRISTOL: William Blake died in England twenty years ago. I cannot be speaking to him.

BLAKE: Why not? I conversed with my dead brother Robert all my life.

BRISTOL: In a gibbeting cage?

BLAKE: No. In my head. But it’s a similar machine.

BRISTOL: I’m lost. You frighten me. And you have a terrible smell.

BLAKE: I won’t apologize as this isn’t my body. It’s rare that I land in a rotter like this. Not pleasant at all. But when someone, in this instance you, recites my verse near the dying, for a brief few moments I’m here again, inside their expiring flesh. Dying or dead is the only harbor I can reach now. That’s my deal with the Almighty for having penned him a few rather fine verse in my time. I first saw God’s face when I was with fever and only four years old.

BRISTOL: The Almighty?

BLAKE: He stuck his head through my window and I screamed and screamed ’til his colossal hand brushed my cheek and I grew calm in the ice of his touch. He visited again when I was a youth. I lay steaming with contagion in my bed—dying, of course, this time for love. God came into my tiny room and filled it near to bursting. His quiver of sound, light and jubilation, well, it made me quite giddy. He slipped a giant finger inside my nightdress and touched my hard and frenzied flesh until I poured out of myself and into his gaping oblivion. He left me empty as a sack; I never felt such peace again in all my life.

BRISTOL: Shame on you for such blasphemous preaching!

BLAKE: I never told a soul while I lived. But do you really believe that Jesus never had his cock sucked? The Son of God? Ha. The body is a wee coffin of black whose key is in the pocket of our Lord and the world inside him with it. (Beat) Now what do you want, woman? I have only a brief time in the bodies I visit. Then back to my nothing I go.

BRISTOL: I am looking for my father.

BLAKE: Aren’t we all? I thought you were looking for a senator.

BRISTOL: Well, yes, that too, but my father’s name is Dembi Morgan.

BLAKE: And tell me, my dear, what makes this father your father?

BRISTOL: I am his flesh and blood.

BLAKE: Metaphorically speaking?

BRISTOL: I don’t understand.

BLAKE: Of course you don’t. But you do wish to find him?

BRISTOL: Yes. No. (Beat) I’ve had a picture of him in my head all my life. He’s a prince. He’s beautiful. What would you say if you came upon a daughter you’d never known?

BLAKE: My Jesus. Another one. And a black one, too. But, as “all men are alike, though infinitely various,” come into my arms.

(Bristol involuntarily steps toward the cage as though to be embraced.)

Stop. Not these arms! They cannot hold you.

BRISTOL: That’s what they all say, said, the bastards. My lovers. Mostly sailors. The same rotten tune: “We cannot hold you, we cannot pleasure you, we cannot love you. Because you’re not really here.” And they were right in a way. I was always trying to get (Beat) here. And my “here” with them was always a “there” and they knew it. Does that make sense?

BLAKE: Not in the slightest.

BRISTOL: No matter. My scamps are all at the bottom of the sea with Neptune or Poseidon. Tick, tock went the clock, click, click went their bones. I held vigil while they held saltwater.

BLAKE: A lonely occupation.

BRISTOL: “Love seeketh not itself to please.”

BLAKE: “So sung a little Clod of Clay.” But surely there was one who loved you true?

BRISTOL: Kilter Atlas.

BLAKE: Exquisite?

BRISTOL: Oh yes. You had to look at him aslant or hurt your eyes. But the tighter I held him—

BLAKE: —the quicker he slipped away? So sung a little Clod of Clay.

BRISTOL: You already said that.

BLAKE: I’m a poet, repetition dogs me.

BRISTOL: My father is alive and I . . . I want him to stay a prince in my mind.

BLAKE: Perhaps he is. Or perhaps this very meat in this cage is your father. How can one ever truly know? Still, you are your father’s daughter, so I will tell you where he resides.

BRISTOL: But how could you know that?

BLAKE (Shrugs): How could I know the life of a chimney sweep when I’ve never been up a chimney?

(Bristol considers this.)

There are seven miles of dock on this coast.

(Bristol despairs.)

BRISTOL: Oh . . .

BLAKE: The little pinkie has fallen off. I can feel it missing. Put it in your pocket: it will point your way. The only ones still hung and gibbeted on these docks are rebels, so it’s a rebel’s bone. Go on. Pick the finger up.

(Bristol hesitates, then gingerly picks up what she thinks is the pinkie.)

No. That’s the winky.

(Bristol drops it.)

I pray he used it well.

(Bristol sees the finger and picks it up.)

You’ll feel when you’re close by its tremble.

(The body is now still. Blake’s spirit is gone, as though it had never been there. Then Bristol goes.)