Leatherwood's Pensieve

May 28, 2006

The Frivolous Cake

A couple of years ago, I was just arriving in chapel when Young Master Moore read for me a most glorious poem entitled “The Frivolous Cake.” The poem struck me as one of the most deliciously funny I had ever encountered, though most of that, I’m sure, was Moore’s superb delivery. I didn’t remember the name of the book he was reading, and never thought I would encounter the poem again. Yet now I have. He was reading Titus Groan, the first book in the Gormenghast Trilogy. A friend of mine from work is loaning me the books. I am finding them ... interesting, shall we say.

The books are unquestionably, undeniably brilliant. The author, Mervyn Peake, has a command of the English language one encounters only rarely. However, he has up to this point in the book (87 pages in) used that power to create the most grotesque, hideous, wretched imagery I can recall ever encountering. It’s also quite dense, though probably not so bad as Charles Williams. The book has been — until the last few pages — a nightmare. I read on in hopes that one who can conceive of such phrases as “stenching cherubs,” “belching angels,” “creamy faces,” “ghastly little ineffectual fillets,” etc., can also use that talent to create something beautiful. I’m continuing to read on in hope of finding something good (to help wash away the foul taste of the previous 87 pages).

Maybe this just isn’t my kind of writing. Maybe I’m simply too unenlightened to appreciate it. Maybe it’s all rot (though I doubt it).

But regardless, at least I like this poem. I like it very much, actually.

The Frivolous Cake

A freckled and frivolous cake there was
That sailed on a pointless sea,

Or any lugubrious lake there was
In a manner emphatic and free.

How jointlessly, and how jointlessly
The frivolous cake sailed by

On the waves of the ocean that pointlessly
Threw fish to the lilac sky.

Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was
Of a glory beyond compare,

And every conceivable make there was,
Was tossed through the lilac air.

Up the smooth billows and over the crests
Of the cumbersome combers flew

The frivolous cake with a knife in the wake
Of herself and her curranty crew.

Like a swordfish grim it would bound and skim
(This dinner knife fierce and blue),

And the frivolous cake was filled to the brim
With the fun of her curranty crew.

Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was
Of a glory beyond compare—

And every conceivable make there was
Was tossed through the lilac air.

Around the shores of the Elegant Isles
Where the catfish bask and purr

And lick their paws with adhesive smiles
And wriggle their fins of fur,

They fly and fly ’neath the lilac sky—
The frivolous cake, and the knife

Who winketh his glamorous indigo eye
In the wake of his future wife.

The crumbs blow free down the pointless sea
To the beat of a cakey heart

And the sensitive steel of the knife can feel
That love is a race apart.

In the speed of the lingering light are blown
The crumbs to the hake above,

And the tropical air vibrates to the drone
Of a cake in the throes of love.

Peake, Mervyn. Titus Groan. © 1967, 1968. pp. 85–86