I had nothing to do with the murder of the Corsican 
/adonic Sebastiani's daughter
nor anything to do with her (as investigator or detective, 
/I mean)
tho I was an adviser to Edgar Allan Poe as an entomologist 
/on the occasion of The Gold Bug,
and in his investigation of the Double Murder of the Rue 
/Morgue,
as an expert in fingerprints and digitalis. 
Sometime I had then whim of drinking winds or fighting 
/with them -as Carolus
Baldelarius did- or to take to my heels or his wenches:
they turned out to be quite nice -without their pandes-. 
I enjoyed profitable sinecures during the reign of 
/good-natured Dagobert,
generous prebends, concessions, chaplaincies, and gains 
/in the reign of the Dipsoda's King,
and I also enjoyed the favors of Doña Urraca
(who was not Rossini's Gazza Ladra, tho she were
a robber of hearts or lovers or favorites or jealous suitors).
I was a very high singer, as deep bass singer, at the 
/Serapion's Chapel
(where diere was no sopranizing); conservator,
conservative -but not much- of Incunabula, in the 'Panida's' 
/Alexandrine,
(with subsidiary offices in 'El Globo' and affiliated offices 
/in 'The Owl's Room.)
I represented Gaspar Hauser for sixteen years
and for as many weeks and three days I was the shadow,
the shadow itself that Peter Schlemil misplaced.
I  was the boy -the stirrup boy- for Queen Christina of 
/Sweden
and sometimes also for Ebba Sparre. 
I was the boy - the sword boy- for the Duchess of 
/Chaumont
(who was quite formidable and had a quite warm small 
/forest): with her I put off something very difficult
-between sheets-.
I was a scribe for Samuel Pepys -how crude his Diary
/was!-    
and substituted him as assistant aide-de-camp to his 
/jealous spouse.  
I was a copyst for Milton (his Paradise Lost was quite 
/lengthy although a good part of it was lost: I suppressed 
/quite a few Cantos)
and by his side I found my own Paradise (if the poet was 
/blind -what lovely eyes those of his Deborah!)

I was translator of cablegrams for Xerxes the Magnificent; 
telephone operator for Artaxerxes the Stutterer;
/announcer for the Sphinx
and confidant of its secret; ventriloquist por Darius III 
(Codomannus) the Multiloquist, 
who was quite a chatterbox;
retransmitting loudspeaker for Eubolius the Mute, 
/son-in-law to Tacitus and his disciple
and rival; shell of the eolic and echolaic ocean sea and 
/interpreter
for Louis II the Stutterer -fadier of Charles the Simple 
/and King of Gaulle.
I acted as a knight-errant at the right side of the Invincible 
/Pelicine of Boeotia
and at the left side of the Oiympic Champion Tirant the 
/White, shooter at the target:
where he set his eye on, he introduced his prick; 
and behind the ardent Bradamante, backing her
-it is a way to put it­
and at the avant-garde, but looking at her -of tender Marfissa...
I was a scribe at the service of Ambrose Calepine 
and of the Toasted one, and of Matías Aldecoa and of the 
/creator of the Mahabharata;
I was -still am- an expert graduate ¡n Clichés, 
disciple of León Bloy and of the one who wrote about 
/the Diurnals-.
Crossword fan ad interim, logogripharian ad-valorem and 
/ad-piacerem
to Cleopatra: cultivator of her dark nipples and shepherd 
/of her asps,
and kinesiologic cryptogrammatist to her and to Venus 
/Calipigia, 'the wind behind under full sail!. 
I was a failure and bored bank bookkeeper, 
holder of Neptune's trident, 
keeper of booldets -in the overcoat pockets­
and of small notebooks -sometimes blue ones- under the 
/wing.
Upholder of thesis and antithesis and synthesis without 
/support.
Maintainer -through abstinence- of Poetry Competitions 
and upholder of the Fruit ones -milk and honey and 
/cherries- without fasting.
Scimitar carrier for Harum-al-Rashid, sword carrier for 
/Mandricardo the Mandrian,
hammer carrier for Charles -Martel;
saber carrier for Roland, sword carrier for Oliviero, 
/Moorish dagger cárrier 
fot Fierabras, spear holder for Lanzarote (good Laucelot 
so devoted to his Guinevere!)
and for King Arthur of the Round Table...; 
lamp carrier for Aladdin, the Madly Lucky one, and 
/guardian and cerberus of his ring
and of the Nibelungen one: but never guardian or cerverus 
/or eunuch in any harem...
And I was the fifth of the Three Musketeers (there is no 
/worse fifth -twenty years after-.
And Herald for John Lackland and trustec for Homeless 
/John,
dread of Fearless John and the third John of Juan de 
/Juanes,
Carder of Juan Lanas'wools and intimate foe of Juan de 
/la Cosa, whose thing was nothing extraordinary...
Heart of Richard Coeur de Lion; William Tell's bow; and
/breast-plate of Jeanne the 'Good Lorrainaise'; 
right eye for Philip, monocle for the Cyclop, staff for
/Homer and blindfold for Argos.
Boatswain for L'Olonnais and for Morgan, for Captain 
/Blood, for Captain Kidd, for John Silver
and for the Black Corsair: Thunders of Hamburg! Niagara 
/Falls! Damm Sr. Crotaras!
Earthquakes of Cúcuta, of Cácota and Chinácota! 
I was Sigsbee top the Duchess of Longueville, 
who was not short at all, to the Duchess of Chevreuse 
/who, If she consented, wanted to do it at once;
gentleman servant to Angela Pietragua, 
page boy to Hortense de Beauharnais 
(the famous one) and of her 'Beau Dunois', and to Pauline,
/beatifully endowed and flor in marble but for Canova; 
cherubino to the Abrantes Lady and -before- suitor of the
/Duchess of Alba (when Goya did not pretend to be
/deaf but to be blind)
-the dawn one was always with the De Alba one...; how 
/incandescent Cayetana was!

And I was Grand Seneschal to Prince Labrunie of 
/Aquitaine, -of dthe abolished
tour, according to Nerval 'The Unfortunate'; 
and Seneschal to Baron of Tenebria and Tantalia, 
and 'Canciller de Velludo' to Giulia Doni, my sweet 
/Dogaressa.  

I was sauce taster for Brillat-Savarin and for Vatel, 
wine taster for Sir John Falstaff
poultice for bis Merry Wives of Windsor, 
sleepless 'catabaucalesist' for Dom Insomnia;
re-taster of Catherine of Russia (or Russian Leather); 
wind taster for the Winds Rose.
I was mystagogue, Proto-Magician, Archi-Pompano 
/(sometimes)
but never architriclinium or corybant or coryphaeus
-and much less suitor or retinue member or cropper of 
/the latter­
neidier clown, fool, simpleton or idiot. 
I was Merchant of Venice, third of the Mehechmians and 
/one of the Two Gentlemen of Verona,
not one of the Seven Infants of Lara, 
but was the thirteenth of the Twelve Peers of France
who would in fact be Twenty-Four bad they not been 
/odd...;
and mopper of Mambririo's Helmet:
there is no such barber's bowl (nor any Barber of Seville. 
/or any Barber of Baghdad);
I was appointed Tax Collector and Senior Officer at the 
/Intendence of Bickerings and of the Give-and-Take of 
/Gossips
of the Sugar Milis Cooperative
-Section of Exploitation of rotten subproducts and redtape; 
I was no good at that, as it is obvious, but was quite good 
/at dispensing emoluments at the Barataria Island
-which really was a peninsula- and exclusive distributor 
/of Sancho I, the Lilaila, who was a collector of proverbs. 
I was an expert in proparoxytology overproparoxytology 
/and in pan-chaotics and pan-elliptics,
I, Beremund the Fool, I, Beremund;
I was -and still am- emeritus catacretic, and echolalic 
/bathologist;
and an important cultor of blunders, bloomers, nonsense,
/pirouetting, dodging, and mocking pranks; 
re-docrorate 'Musurgus'or 'Licensed in License';
-as used to say about himself Fray Tomás de la Carrasca-; 
and helmsman of Argo, 'the winged ship', 
galley slave of Cyrane Hercules and Savinian of Bergerac 
/-before Moliere apropriated it for his own use­
mizzenmast topman of Espronceda's 'pirate vessel', or
/perhaps Billy Budd himself;
cabin boy in Odysseus'ship - and I heard the Sirens!-; 
I am 'the only one on board of my ghost ship'
-the Hyperethusa ship-;
and I was clairvoyant, and daring clairvoyant, skillful in 
/fallacies
and silly scruples and tricks and puns and farces. 
I did not qualify -I repeat it and ratify it- as gossip, 
nor as a 'come-back-later' nor as a waiting room pillar, 
/nor as notes eliminator for favorites.

I was a Mylesian fabulator (without being the Golden Ass 
nor the Golden Calf);
mixtifyng chronicler -later on- and well taught 
by Courtil of Sandraz, and -in addition- trader 
in spices, panaceas, penicillins, cure-alls, trinkers and 
/bubbles and drapes:
swapper, junk dealer (stalKer of tips), Street hawker and 
/Autolytic;
and maker of sallets, helmets, casks, aegises, and of coats 
/of mail
(traps, not sallets, of Mr. Liar! for in Spanish 'celada' 
/means both a sallet and a trap in chess.
I repeat that I didn't cut the nose of Don Pedro de Heredia 
neither cut off the ears of Malchus or of Midas, neither
/did I invent the gunpowder,
nor was I the one who cooked the lard,
nor the one who -quite recently- discovered London on 
/the Thames
or Stratford-upon-Avon (this one was Shakespeare, 
and the other..., I recall no longer, if Chesterton said it); 
but I did destroy -with Martín Vélez- a Sunday 
market in Concordia (where Ñito was born), and there I
/was put un prison,
and another market in Titiribí, and was exiled; 
I was also in Jail ¡it Heliconia for asking for 'The Verracco
/de Guaca'.
Later on I shall talk abour other prisons... The last and 
most recent -what a Jail!­
I'll talk about it another day (and it is another story...)

I practiced Chiromancy and Necromancy
-ir was a complete failure, even moneywise-; 
once in Helade I tried Anthropophagy:
what a stupendous cannibal I was!
and how delighful and tasty were the Nine Muses, the 
/Three Graces and Danaus Fifty Daughters!
I worked ¡n Microbiotics and investigated Macrocephalic 
and Phallics, that didn't make me rich, 
but as a Genealogist I made good profits!:
everyone turned out to be a great-great grandson
-if not fourth grandson- of Doña Berenguela, 
or of Don Fruela -who died a bachelor-, 
of the Arcipreste of Hita and of Don Suero who was 
/sterile,
if not of the Marchioness of So-and-So, the great Grandee 
/of Spain and the Indies,
or of Isabelona...
(without mentioning that a Jew could not be found even 
/for thirty pieces of silver
nor even looking for him with Diogenes' lantern -which is 
/quite a lantern!).
And I was bored with the conditioned Spanish Genealogy 
and devoret myseff to gold mining, which is an 
/unproductive atavic hobby.
I discovered placers and pleasures ¡n the Andágueda river
-with Efe Gómez- and by Bebaramá: not much platinum, 
/nor much gold... but what lovely wenches!

I set up an inmense sunset factory
with red glows, in series, and now I am tryng ro finance 
/it...;
I then founded a factory of Armenian paper (in Calarcá) 
with branches ¡n Pereira, Sevilla and Salento, 
and another factory of Muzo butterflies and butterflyng 
/muses),
and another of paper birds together with Unamuno 
and another of Hamler Monologues with Ophelia. 
I organized a central for producer ¡n Aguadas, with a 
/distributing warehouse in London,
and a shop of essays and hypermodern gambits for chess, 
/and ouvertures for dark chamber orchestras,
and also of apertures -'looking for the place to start clearing 
/the ground'­
Later on I wanted to exchange something for old 
/lamps
or for new or restored lamps -I don't remember. 
or for other trifles: the proposal is still valid! 
there has not been a poster an impostor or a postulant!
/I barter my life
for a night ¡in the warm and fallacious arms of My 
¡Chimaera!
or for fifteen minutes betwen Deidamia's thights, 
a deity of mine and of how many others...!

After being burteffly maker, I was a hunter of Muzo 
/butterflies -emeralds, scat! -
and of somortas'in the Urals, and of hephaestites -from 
/where? Does Pliny know?, and orchidologist
(specialized in cattleyas because of what Marcel Proust 
/said);
conchologist -as Poe was- (and always pursuing that rosy 
/conch
that disturbed Lelian, the Faun -when anverse and not 
/inverted-).
I was a whaler, as Jonas and Melville were, and Sirens 
/fisher: not deaf Ulysses, but avid cabin boy
always on the alert for their spelling songs! Ir is a lie that 
/Sirens have no legs...:
about their tails...: to swim they use their zippers 
which they later discard...

In addition to being supervisor of their gala wardrobe 
I was a cicerone for the Peripathetic Penguins in their 
/excursion to Ecbatana
(riding dromedaries)
and in their elephantine travel to Gold Noland, not really 
/a travel: but chryselephantine.
I was left wing in the football team called the unbeaten 
/team of 'Cocojondo'.
I was a chess pawn when the game used to be played 'in
/Vivo':
I crowned into a mad Bishop to slandy take the Queen,
an other times a Rook of gules to take the Queen,
or a Knight to mount the Queen
(I mean to say rhar if I was a chess expert
I was an ace ¡n checkers).
I was a champion in disc throwing with three 
/thousand-and-eight records
after being a propper-up clouds bowman 
and of anorher William Tell, to hit the cleft apple, 
with a vibratile sponge...
I, Beremund the Fool, I, Beremund.

I, Beremund the Fool, sailed along all the routes, 
evaded all reefs, stumbled against every key, arrived at
/each bay,
I skirted all reefs, overcame all sandbanks 
and tried all sorts of trades...
Sometimes I reposed -not always did I sleep, for then I 
/dreamed,
notalways if I was awake, and even when I lay down
for then I dreamed that if I was making love sometimes 
/I took a rest;
if -after lethal Morpheus- I was lithic, in addition, not an 
/Orphic Orpheus, and without annals, I was Tacit...
Sometimes I took a rest... Everything has its lacunae:
I come from one of them -but not of Themis-,
I, Beremund.
I, Beremund the Usual, I acted as a secrerary to the man 
/in question,
who was, in his turn, the Big Shot of Vargas and an expert 
/in taking to his heels.
The man in question -correspondent of Mme. De 
/Sevignée­
kept also correspondence with Lord Chesterfield, tho both 
/of them were illiterate.

How thoughtful, then, my Secretariat was! Fortunately 
/only by day.
My evening jobs,
my nightly jobs were very pleasant indeed, tho sometimes 
/exhausting:
now it was the anonymous young milliner, the sunset one, 
now it was the Vargas'girl -Doña Mencía- fortyish and 
/elegant low class woman and thoroughly randy;
the three of Villadiego who were worth Nine Muses 
and were already Three Graces whose graces 
I wish to sing about: they were called The Three of 
/Villadiego and they were thus:
thr eldest, Doña Pura... was really very pure; 
Doña Virtudes -the middle one- virtuous and 
/archivirtuous with her private instrument,
the rebec for Duo-Sonatas,
tho for Trio-Sonatas she preferred the flute - not the 
/transverse one;
Doña Mercedes, the youngest, ready to give her favors, 
/giver of her treasure
-which was quite worthy- and in order to listen to the
/refrain again, 
return to the ritornello... 
But nothing like their cousins!
They were Alda, Leah, Cassandra, Livia, Yseult... 
the first and fourth brunettes, the second, third and fifth 
/blondes,
and all of them fine experts: what a string quintet! 
(but crazy): what mastery as a chamber ensemble! 
what prodigious soloists!
And the Vargas'nieces! Aíxa! Eglée! Tarrasia! Vera! Elsa! 
I was in those days an occasional conductor and 
/coordinator -on two occasions- of the ensembles;
what a learned baton! -without praising myself-. If they 
/acted as soloists
I accompanied them at the pianoforte,
I, Beremund the Fool.
I, Beremund the Usual...
I, Beremund the Fool, was an inventor of mirages,
devourer of dreams (Lenormand), -cannibal of myself,
anthropophagous of myself- decanter of fancy
philters created by my own fantasy

After being goat shepherd, I was tamer of zebras and
 /charmer of cobras...
I was diver of charades and diver of mirages, 
doctor in hieroglyphic riddles, decipher of oracles... 
coder of messages without a cunning messenger. 
And oracle myseff. I myself graduated in mirages, 
/hieroglyphic, cryptic.

If I never knew where herons lay their eggs, 
I never ignored how the Swan made love to Leda, 
or the Bull to Europe, or the Snake to Eve and Lilith; 
neither was it an abstruse arcane problem to me Danae's 
/bath:
the blonde plebeian rain the dark gold
of her fleece and of her ardent sex.
If I never knew more than Lepe and never knew as much 
/asLepillo
nor less than Briján, 
I didn't ignore Werther's sorrows or King Lear's griefs
(and without Cordelia!) or the sorrows of Richard III... 
/my kingdom for a horse,
for a pony, for a nag, for an acephalous Bucephalus! 
And his kingdom -and mine- was and is another island, 
/the Barataria...
I, Beremund the Fool, 
Beremund the Unusual, the Trickster, was never an acolyte, 
and erected towers, destroyed mills
-windmills the latter, ivory the former­
but did not inhabit my towers, neither did I return to 
/Abylund: I lived in my small fort...
I didn't come out of myself, but did enter into myself
-not only in a metaphysical sense-: I mean to say that I 
/entered into my own self
my own, because it was my own creation, or, if mine,
-always- through a donation of that which was hers
-if for me, for both of us, in barter
-barter and exchange- of her own which belonged to me 
/and to us both... A tongue twister? An enigma?
-No, never!: paradigm of the mutual surrender, of the 
/mutual giving over...
metaphysical physics.
I was an illustrious fool, excessively credulous -what the 
/hell!- several times, as tho I didn't know them,
and in a few others, extremely cunning: and always, 
/always, always - finally- a fool!
ma non troppo, no!
I was also shrewd -I have said it already- and also mole 
/and lynx. I have always been something of everything:
blunt and acute, lame and pure as nobody, neat and
/tortuous, torpid or subtle without rival... 
I, Beremund the multivarious Fool.
I, Beremund the Fool, later represented Oblomov: how 
/thoroughly boring,
what a Buddhistic ataraxia, what an Echandian inactivity,
what a Greiffian 'far niente'!
I also was a condottiero: Napoleon was nothing to me,
a symbolic Colleone, a jobless Gattamelata, a Charles XIII 
/of no use, Cesare Borgia
-Cesar or Nothing- in Lucrezia's diapers... (or in her 
/panties...)
(non existent? Existentialist?)
I was a condottiero: bad or worse leader: but anyway 
/worse led...
I mixtified impassibly (if I had some confidences),
-puerile... aged-; I always served my heart -in a silver 
platter- as the Essenian's head, to the Herodias 
in turn or to any Judith -ex-Holofernes...
I shared with the Arcipreste of Hita the wide-hipped one:
well! the Arcipreste didn't bother about trifles 
and I wasn't -nor am- allergic to them, no! 
(for she was quite hairy
clever in tricks, and an expert in bed). 
Cymodoce, now.
I vaguely remember that I was madly in love
-such a long time ago?- with a Brunette Night -everything 
/comes back
-and -more recently- with some Moorish Queen:
despite being Moorish she was blonde and had a Greek 
/name:
the youngest of the Charites tho the greatest of them.
I was forgetting that I was also a poet, at my own risk:
but fortunately nothing remained written:
as I was singing at Nobody's ear
all my poetry became harvest of Aeolus, booty of the Sea 
/and spoils of the fire!
I presumed to be a philosopher, if I only deducted 
that the rest is worth less if the whole is worth Nothing 
and that life is as important as the instant lasts...

More worthy yesterday, less worthy nowadays...,
I understand and swear that I am a bit crazy,
muddled in the mind and scatterbrained...
But not so rnuch...
With this I put a stop, tho not a full stop, whilst I 
/remember,
whilst I recall new and oid trades, new and ancient jobs 
and other adventures, fortunes and misfortunes and 
/various avatars of Beremund,
of Beremund the Fool, the displaced, the useless, the Vain
Master of Idleness...

Laus Leo

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