Lowther

Where the Castle Is - Howard Moss

The upkeep of the castle is
The downfall of the cottages
Where fishermen and peasants live
Or used to live. The young men leave
In homemade boats in which they drown,
In makeshift planes that burn and crash,
Or die of boredom on the train
That starts each month for Cold Cash,
Only to find when they arrive
That that’s not where the castle is.

The women left live in the sticks,
And when they do the weekly wash
Or mend the nets to catch the fish,
They sing this song: “We work for weeks
For nothing. Now the men have gone,
We’d like to be where money talks,
For all the rest is gibberish.”
They pack their bags and take the train
And travel through a strange terrain,
But not to where the castle is.

When there’s no one left but children
And the very old, the young
And lame survivors play a game
Invariable in its details
In which they take the daily trash
Down to the dump and sing a song
About ash heaps and burials
Whose burden always is the same:
“If we were old, if we were young,
We’d find out where the caste is.”

At Cold Cash, where the castle is,
Or where it is supposed to be,
Nobody ever dies, it seems;
They just go on—from first to last
A series of monotonies—
And they play bridge, mah-jongg, and gin
The while they sing their tribal song,
Which has no verse but a refrain:
“We’re here. And if we’re here, of course,
This must be where the castle is.”

But even kings get sick and bank
Accounts go bad and miracles
Occur, though sometimes in reverse;
Elaborate discrepancies
Narrow down from bad to worse;
Abysses open in a wink
Below the shining pinnacles—
“We do not know the place,” they sing,
“That once we thought the castle was.
Do you know where the castle is?”

They travel near, they travel far
To seek out where the castle is,
And come upon the cottages,
Which lie in smoking ruins, and there’s
No man alive, no woman now
To point the way, and though they sift
Through the debris and pan the clay,
Searching for the smallest clues,
They haven’t found out to this day
Just where the castle was, or is.