Life Is a Dream

BASIL: Dear niece and nephew, our profound
Embrace! As loyal from the start
To our most sentimental plans,
You come with such a show of heart
That we pronounce you, by these banns,
True equals, each a part to part.
We ask, though, since our person nears
Exhaustion from the weight of years,
That you respectfully refrain
From speaking, as it will be plain
Our speech will soon amaze your ears.
For well you know—now mind our words,
Beloved nephew, dearest niece,
Grand nobles of the Polish court,
Good subjects, kin, friends we esteem—
For well you know, men have bestowed
On us the epithet of “wise”
To honor our enlightenment.
Against Oblivion and Time,
Timanthes in his portraits and
Lysippus in his sculptures grand
Proclaim us “Basil Rex, the Great”
And so we’re called throughout these lands.
For well you know, the sciences
Are what we’ve loved and cherished most,
Fine mathematic formulae
By which we’ve robbed Time of its role,
Foreseeing what the future holds,
The only source of its renown,
And presaged more events each day.
For when our charts reveal accounts
Of incidents set to occur
In centuries still unbegun,
The dupe is dull chronology
As we glimpse first what’s yet to come.
Those circular, snow-colored spheres
In glassy canopies that move
Illuminated by the sun
But rent by cycles of the moon;
Those gleaming, diamantine orbs
And planets crystalline in space
Where incandescent stars shine bright
And zodiacal creatures graze,
Remain the major inquiry
Of our declining years, the books
In which the heavens list all fates,
Benign or far less merciful,
On paper strewn with diamond dust
In sapphire ledgers finely lined
With patterned bars of glittering gold,
Inscribed with multitudes of signs.
We study these celestial tomes
And let our spirit wander free
In fast pursuit of starry trails
Wherever their swift paths should lead.
Wise heavens, if you’d only stopped
This active mind before it filled
Their margins with its commentaries
Or indexed every page at will!
If only you’d conceived our life
As but the first of casualties
Exacted by their wrath, this might
Have been our only tragedy.
But those who are misfortune-prone
Feel merit slice them like a knife,
For whomsoever knowledge harms
Is nothing but a suicide!
Though we be late in voicing this,
Events tell better tales than speech
And so, to leave this congress awed,
We ask again that you not speak.
Our late wife, your Queen Clorilene,
Bore us a male child so ill-starred
The wary skies announced his birth
With wonders patently bizarre.
Before her womb, that sepulcher
Predating life, gave living light
Unto the boy—for being born
And dying are indeed alike—
His mother had seen countless times,
Amid the strange delirium
Of dream, a monstrous form not quite
A human, but resembling one,
Which disemboweled her from within.
Once covered with her body’s blood,
The brute would kill her, then emerge
Half mortal man, half viper slough.
Now, come the day the child was born,
These omens proved to be correct,
For dire portents never lie
And strictly see how things will end.
Spheres inauspiciously aligned
Provoked the scarlet-blooded sun
To challenge the cold moon to duel
And turned the heavens rubicund.
With all the earth their battleground,
These two celestial lanterns gleamed
In savage combat perched on high,
Both beaming bright as they could beam.
The longest and most horrible
Eclipse that ever did transpire—
Besides the one that dimmed the globe
The day Our Lord was crucified—
Occurred next. As the planet sensed
Itself engulfed in living flames,
It must have thought the throes of death
Were making its foundations shake.
Then, suddenly, the skies grew black
And sturdy buildings lurched and spun.
The clouds rained stones upon the land
And rivers coursed along like blood.
This fatal confluence of stars
Or planetary pull prevailed
At Segismund’s birth, presaging
The foulness of his soul that day.
For life, he gave his mother death,
And by such savagery affirmed:
“I am a man who will not cease
To menace all mankind in turn.”
Recurring to the sciences
For guidance, we divined dire plans
For Segismund. We learned our heir
Would be the most rebellious man
The world could know, the cruelest prince
And even most ungodly king
Whose reckless rule would leave the realm
Divided and in open rift,
A fractious School for Treachery
And roiled Academy of Vice.
These signs revealed one so possessed
Of furious rage and violent crime
We even saw him set his heels
Upon us as we lay beneath—
This gives us great distress to say—
The brute soles of his conquering feet!
The silver hairs that grace this crown
Were but a carpet for his steps.
Who’d not put credence in such doom
Precisely when such doom is read
Secure in one’s own study where
Self-interest plies its influence?
So, putting credence in the fates
As prophets given to dispense
Bleak auguries of promised harm
Through omens and foretokened signs,
We ordered that the newborn brute
Be everlastingly confined
To find out whether an old sage
Might thwart the dictates of the stars.
The false news of his stillborn birth
Was propagated near and far
While we, forewarned, ordained a tower
Be built between the craggy peaks
Of two remote, secluded hills
Where light could scarcely hope to reach
So that these rustic obelisks
Might seal off entry to the place.
The strict laws and harsh penalties
For breaking them were then displayed,
Declaring a forbidden zone
Off limits to all sojourners
Who’d think to pass, the grave result
Of these events we’ve just referred.
There Segismund, our son, dwells yet,
Imprisoned, wretched, and forlorn,
Attended by Clotaldo, still
His only company of sorts,
Who tutored him in sciences
And catechized him in beliefs
Of Christian faith, the only man
Who’s seen him in captivity.
Three issues guide us here: the first,
As we hold Poland in such high
Esteem, our lasting wish has been
To free her from the heinous plight
Of serving tyrant kings. Indeed,
A sovereign who would so imperil
The native soil that is his realm
Cannot be said to govern well.
The second bears upon the charge
That, by our actions, we’ve removed
The right to reign from its true line—
Of which no codex would approve—
Through lack of Christian charity
As no existing law permits
A man who’d keep another man
From tyranny and insolence
To take on those same qualities.
For if our son’s a tyrant, then
How may we perpetrate vile crimes
To keep him from committing them?
The third and final point entails
Determining to what extent
A person errs too readily
By trusting in foretold events,
For though our heir may be disposed
To outbursts and impetuous acts,
This bent is but a tendency.
The direst fate, we know for fact,
Much like the rashest temperament
Or strongest planetary pull,
May boast some influence on free will
But cannot make man bad or good.
Engrossed, then, in these quandaries
And hesitant with self-debate,
We hit upon a remedy
That’s sure to leave your senses dazed.
Tomorrow, we will have enthroned—
Without him knowing he’s our son
Or your next king—the man who bears
The fateful name of Segismund.
Beneath our royal canopy
And seated in our august place,
He’ll have his chance to reign at last
As all our subjects congregate
To pledge their humble fealty.
In doing so, it is our hope
To solve three matters that relate
To questions you have heard us pose.
One, should our heir display a mien
Deemed prudent, temperate, and benign
And thus belie what heartless fate
Forebode in all it prophesied,
The realm will see its natural line
Restored, as till this hour the prince
Has held court only in those hills,
A neighbor but to woodland things.
Two, should our son reveal himself
Rebellious, reckless, arrogant
And cruel, inclined to give free rein
To vice that typifies his bent,
We will have acted piously,
Complicit with time-honored codes,
And shine like an unvanquished king
When we depose him from our throne,
Returning him to prison not
In cruelty, but punishment.
Three, should the heir apparent
Show the qualities that we suspect,
Our love for Poland’s subjects will
Provide you with a king and queen
More worthy of this sceptered crown,
To wit, our nephew and our niece.
The individual right to reign
Comes wedded in these two, conferred
By dint of their intended bond,
And both will have what both deserve.
For this is our command as king;
The nation’s father bids it so.
We urge it as a learned sage;
This wise old man is thus disposed.
If Spanish Seneca believed
The king is but a humble slave
Within his own republic’s land,
Then we beseech you as the same.

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