Crows devour the eyes of the dead when the dead no longer have need of them,
but flatterers destroy the souls of the living and blind their eyes.
Worse still than the worst sycophant was Il Dottore Giovanni Humanitatis,
whom Arlecchino had somehow become the reluctant servant of.
He was a windbag who talked big while the other professori were about,
but would gild his robes if a visiting Moor should so much as darken his path.
He was always going on and on with much pathos about Helvetic philosophy
(or at least his weird, distorted understanding of it)
and the big man around town, too busy doing big things and convening synods of other big people,
frequently sent poor Arlecchino out on some fool’s errand for him
(which he actually didn’t mind as it got him out of ear’s shot.)
Giovanni had caught wind
(and what a smelly wind it was, too!)
that the Spaniard Miles Quixote had a good deal going on some slightly used windmills.
Giovanni was big on renewable resources
(you should see how often he summoned dead arguments back to life
like a latter-day hero Aesculapius, or plagiarized his own briefs over and over again.)
Plus he wanted to stack the windmills one atop the other
until he could mount high heaven and prove it was vacant.
(Vacant as the eyes of Donna Ganassa, his wife, when they had their biweekly scheduled love sessions.)
So it was that Arlecchino found himself Iberia-bound, riding bareback
on a lumpy, obstinate, good-for-nothing donkey whom he dubbed Huey,
so that whenever he thrashed the beast’s rump with his bouquet of myrtle and amaryllis
his face would grow a wistful grin, thinking of his allergic boss.
Thus occupied, Arlecchino nearly missed the stranger upon the road
and as it was, had to abruptly swerve his ass to avoid crashing into him.
The man resembled Odysseus or Orestes or maybe it was Oedipus
(one of those O-heroes, at any rate; they’re all basically the same, am I right?)
He had a tattered cloak and a big floppy hat and was mumbling mad things to himself
– the guy had a real gallows sense of humor. Arlecchino was unsettled by his grim demeanor,
and so kicked his gallant steed into a gallop before the vagabond could so much as get a word out.
Later, while on a shortcut through a spooky wood, Arlecchino came upon another man,
a fey and somber man of regal mien who sat upon a barrow and ate mushrooms and drank tea.
This time the zani fellow waited for a speech, but none was forthcoming,
so he bid him adieu and found a way out through a grove of elder trees.
The next to cross his path was a wild man in animal pelts and whiteface and a woman’s dress;
he howled and danced and offered to share his jug of wine with Arlecchino, but he declined.
Later he was joined by Hermes and Dionysos, out on a merry revel.
They told him to free himself from bondage and steer his own course in life
instead of taking direction from his fellow mortals.
Arlecchino thought that a very sensible thing to say
and so stepped off the stage and through the mirror,
hungry to explore all the world holds and has in it,
and fuck everyone else too.
Arlecchino hasn’t looked back since,
content to be his own man instead of just acting out a mindless archetypal part.
