A Verbal Fig Leaf · Track 20 · middle
Clatterdevengeance
Clatterdevengeance (1650s) — Six syllables of pure noise. The word means nothing and everyone laughed anyway. VOLUME: II. THE COINERS, 1600–1699. THE DODGE THIS ERA: The dodge became SPORT. Urquhart translating Rabelais invented dozens in an afternoon; nobody was hiding anything, they were competing. The richest century on the list, and the most useless for actually concealing meaning. Sing the AVOIDANCE, never the anatomy.
No audio yet — generation pending.
Lyrics
Crown-folio paper, three groats a quire, A solitary candle and a settling fire. The Frenchman's ghost is standing at my back, Demanding something louder than a simple tap. I have a little margin on the page to feed, A momentary stutter of the ink and the sleeve. My jaw vibrates with letters I have yet to write down, A tiny little syllable is chased out of town. Why use a whisper when you want a marching band? Why take a shortcut when the afternoon is damp? Four letters are a tragedy, a failure of the pen, When you can build a carriage out of eight or maybe ten. Oh, give them a Clatterdevengeance, Six heavy syllables, iron and brass. A magnificent tumbling down the front stairs, A sudden collapsing of logic and glass. A joyful destruction of tables and chairs. It means absolutely nothing at all, But it rattles the plaster right off of the wall. A rhythmic and ruinous, glorious mess, A monument built out of sheer excess. No lady is blushing, no reader is spared, The parlor is empty, the floorboards are bared. I am tossing the lexicon over the side, To see how much alphabet one man can drive. It takes half a minute to say it out loud, A thunderous volley to startle the house. You build up the rhythm, you hammer the beat, A breathless invention, a staggering heat. So give them a Clatterdevengeance, Six heavy syllables, iron and brass. A magnificent tumbling down the front stairs, A sudden collapsing of logic and glass. A joyful destruction of tables and chairs. It means absolutely nothing at all, But it rattles the plaster right off of the wall. A rhythmic and ruinous, glorious mess, A monument built out of sheer excess. We are not hiding the silver today, We are putting the silver on shining parade. Let the Puritans scowl at the ink on the sheet, I am dropping an anvil right into the breeze. A racket, a riot, a tumbling cart, The noisy mechanics of outdoing art. Six heavy steps to the top of the peak, Too long to spell and too tangled to speak. The candle burns low on the foolscap and then... I suppose I will have to invent it again. Just ink on the table. Just noise in the dark.