RAINBOW CLOWN NEWS

Songs were written on that boat before novels were. The captain refused to accept any other construction in those years. He would sleep in the day and then climb to the deck with the moon and smoke his tobacco, watching the ice bergs scud and shrink over the horizon, watch the smoke rise over the mast and stain the stars with flowery nicotine. Anytime one of the crew had an idea for a novel they would be given a seven hour lecture on scurvy and the problems the ocean would have with anything as moudly and orange as a novel. No, he would say, lighting his fourteenth cigarette of the night. Only songs were to be played on his ship. Only songs were to be conjured from the deep.

His crew would listen to anything he said, they would follow anything he led them toward. They would crew the ship forging west through snowcapped oceans and mountains of salt frothing like sugar under black lizard skies. Later when they were all old in mountain cabins far away from the oceans, as far from the sea as their horses and careers and families could take them, they would still talk about him like stone. Like a hutch of old books they would refer to him and praise him. They were all holy men in those days and nights, after their finest moments. By then novels ruled the straits, the trade routes. By then the songs were already old and frosted. Nobody remembered but them.