The Piece that Passeth Understanding

Gus Ferguson

An interesting literary event
took place in the Cape Province
in August 1957: Duchamp Van Zyl,

Master of the 2nd Caledon Boy
Scout troop made patrol leader, Ken Egan, send
Eliot's Wasteland by semaphore
from the top of a koppie near Genadendal
to the neighbouring village of Greyton.

Receiving the poem through binoculars
Duchamp read it out, letter by letter,
from the roof of the Posting House
to a small, sullen crowd assembled below.

Completing the excercise in three days.
Ken was awarded his signalling badge.
His only snags were in rendering
Madame Sosostris's cold in the nose
and trying to prove to the sceptical crowd
that the Sanskrit quotes were not simply a
sequence of semiotic literals.

A notice in the Greyton Gazette
was spitefully sent to Faber & Faber
by the Overberg Bard, Tertius du Plooy.
There is, however, no substance to the
legend that the publisher transmitted
his intention to sue for copyright
by (da-da-da-datta-da) morse code.

LitNet: 12 May 2005

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