Thyrsus

A two-page prose-poem about hearing a video in a 'gloomy gallery' of another writer rhapsodising about RLS's walking stick: wonderfully 'here', once 'actually' held by 'his hand'. He too attempts to 'lean in' and connect directly with the fictional worlds Stevenson created, through mixed recollections of 'Falesá', Treasure Island and Weir. T he 'capricious meanderings' of the piece seem to reflect those of the Bacchantes' thyrsus in the Baudelaire epigraph and the discourse about the stick being 'actually here' is deflated in a final note that claims that RLS never owned a walking stick.