Stiff-backed in a train carriage, smiling across,
The kindly gentleman opens up his black bag
To coax a little girl into puzzles and games,
Her laughing mother looking fondly on.
Pert cherubs, an ever-enlarging harem
Of prepubescent mademoiselles, all his own!
Meticulously fussing in his college studio,
He poses another darling for the camera.
Seductive visions, collected to be cherished…
Malarial fever of perverse invention,
Gadgets and improvements, sophic sleights,
Self-patented methods of being a self.
Stammering nonce, vestal virgin of the word,
He catalogues monstrous hoards of letters,
Each trophy arranged by precise protocol,-
‘Explanatory”,”advisory”,”diverting”, “offended”.
Walking acrostic,the player and the game,
Salvaging shipwrecks from sleepless nights,
Knotty paradoxes,delicious freaks of logic,
He savours the biblical violence of puns.
Rowing on the river, by Elysian meadows,
The exultant reverend extemporizes a tale
To bright little Alice, rapt as she coxes,
“Promise, Mr Dodgson, to write it all down!”.
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Venerable Gnome's Remarks
Laconic light says everything,
Blent with every place and time;
Thesaurus earth’s imagining
Lives by synonym and rhyme.
The cherry stone’s a batholith,
A planet’s magnetic core;
Fruiting flesh cleaves to pith
And grows into its contour.
The gardener by his occult art
Prunes a necessary end,
Grafts a cutting from his heart,
Some stunted growth to mend.
Mountain stumps muster heights
Of land long-weathered;
The farmer’s goat protests, fights
But stays fast-tethered.
Grit has edged into the shell,
Reserved beneath deep sands;
Above, a ship rings its bell,
Summoning on deck all hands.
Silence in the mouth is rolled,
Savour of ruins, forgotten kings,
And men who murdered all for gold
And envied birds their wings.
Blent with every place and time;
Thesaurus earth’s imagining
Lives by synonym and rhyme.
The cherry stone’s a batholith,
A planet’s magnetic core;
Fruiting flesh cleaves to pith
And grows into its contour.
The gardener by his occult art
Prunes a necessary end,
Grafts a cutting from his heart,
Some stunted growth to mend.
Mountain stumps muster heights
Of land long-weathered;
The farmer’s goat protests, fights
But stays fast-tethered.
Grit has edged into the shell,
Reserved beneath deep sands;
Above, a ship rings its bell,
Summoning on deck all hands.
Silence in the mouth is rolled,
Savour of ruins, forgotten kings,
And men who murdered all for gold
And envied birds their wings.
Wild Card
I can see through you,
Read the cards in your hand.
I am here to take your money.
Do you believe me to be the strongest, the best?
Well, then, I am, I am.
I scrutinize your every mannerism,
As you give yourself away;
Be you timid, or aggressive,
I catch the false notes.
There you are, stripped bare,
The unsuspecting loser,
Thinking yourself oh-so clever
Even as you throw the game away.
I will step aside to watch you fall in slow motion,
Then kick your corpse with pleasure.
I will mesmerize you; bend your will
to my own
Drive you to suicide then show you
That you held the winning hand after all.
I live for my opponents;
I con them, manipulate them, get them where I want them,
Wait very patiently
Then deliver the killer punch.
What fun to misplay a few hands on purpose,
To bluff and counter-bluff.
Who is the sucker here?
You think it is me?
With a raise too aggressive
Or a call too timid,
With the tiniest gesture,
Sooner or later
You will give yourself away;
Sure that you alone
Can defy the odds,
You will overplay your hand.
We are the night’s assassins,
Men who like to win,
Edging towards the showdown,
Ready to go broke.
Here you need your sixth sense to survive.
Look into the others’ minds,
See their agonies and delusions,
Feel the whims of fate.
At times you almost feel divine,
Letting the energy flow through you,
Taking over your thoughts and decisions,
Guiding you serenely one way or the other,
Until you just know that you are going to win,
If only you listen to the voice within,
Your hand steady, your patience absolute,
Doing everything for a reason.
There you are, always keeping score,
Counting your money,
Keeping your show on the road,
One day a millionaire, the next day broke.
Do you have the nerve to back your own instincts,
To take your life in your own hands?
Believe in no one and nothing,
Wage silent war with all your ingenuity,
Superstitious and cruel.
Out of a myriad possibilities,
I am dealt a single hand,
A single combination of chances.
I take my life to the table
And play.
I am the businessman juggling figures,
The politician telling lies,
The cheating spouse,
The manipulative child.
Sometimes, it seems, I want to, I have to, lose,
The agony makes me happy for a while,
In this foul world that only pleases fools.
Read the cards in your hand.
I am here to take your money.
Do you believe me to be the strongest, the best?
Well, then, I am, I am.
I scrutinize your every mannerism,
As you give yourself away;
Be you timid, or aggressive,
I catch the false notes.
There you are, stripped bare,
The unsuspecting loser,
Thinking yourself oh-so clever
Even as you throw the game away.
I will step aside to watch you fall in slow motion,
Then kick your corpse with pleasure.
I will mesmerize you; bend your will
to my own
Drive you to suicide then show you
That you held the winning hand after all.
I live for my opponents;
I con them, manipulate them, get them where I want them,
Wait very patiently
Then deliver the killer punch.
What fun to misplay a few hands on purpose,
To bluff and counter-bluff.
Who is the sucker here?
You think it is me?
With a raise too aggressive
Or a call too timid,
With the tiniest gesture,
Sooner or later
You will give yourself away;
Sure that you alone
Can defy the odds,
You will overplay your hand.
We are the night’s assassins,
Men who like to win,
Edging towards the showdown,
Ready to go broke.
Here you need your sixth sense to survive.
Look into the others’ minds,
See their agonies and delusions,
Feel the whims of fate.
At times you almost feel divine,
Letting the energy flow through you,
Taking over your thoughts and decisions,
Guiding you serenely one way or the other,
Until you just know that you are going to win,
If only you listen to the voice within,
Your hand steady, your patience absolute,
Doing everything for a reason.
There you are, always keeping score,
Counting your money,
Keeping your show on the road,
One day a millionaire, the next day broke.
Do you have the nerve to back your own instincts,
To take your life in your own hands?
Believe in no one and nothing,
Wage silent war with all your ingenuity,
Superstitious and cruel.
Out of a myriad possibilities,
I am dealt a single hand,
A single combination of chances.
I take my life to the table
And play.
I am the businessman juggling figures,
The politician telling lies,
The cheating spouse,
The manipulative child.
Sometimes, it seems, I want to, I have to, lose,
The agony makes me happy for a while,
In this foul world that only pleases fools.
War in the Labyrinth
The eye on manoeuvrres
Constructs a terrain,
A battleground of souls.
Is it true we can escape
From rooms full of knick-knacks,
The tyranny of hollow objects
And “good taste”?
Shall we return to ourselves in triumph,
Skeletons singing?
Mother Hell has borne another litter.
Look; a man, so tiny,
A frightened rabbit running,
Fleeing the earth’s upheaval,
Clinging to the ground,
Crying out to God,
Whom he suddenly believes in.
Wolfskinned, bearskinned,
Exiled from humankind,
The warriors, the neophytes,
Breathe fire.
Buried alive,
Speechless corpses,
They are heaved
Into a ditch.
Do we only dream them,
The unseen foe?
Men, like us,
Small, earth-coloured,
Startled from under rocks
And bushes.
On the edge
Of never-having-been,
We dwell in severance,
With severance to come.
Stripped of prideful skin,
Blindfolded,
Branded,
Maimed,
We make nowhere home.
The Ice Age crushes us
With glaciers.
Superstition slithers under the skin;
Rumour’s voodoo rides us.
Welcome to the trance.
Do you too wish to pledge your heart
To the pyre,
To be burned transparent?
Stuttering, mute,
The dismembered
Huddle, blindly staring,
In the hospital grounds,
Demonic spasms quaking
Their puppet bodies,
Their white-knuckled hands
Clenching nothing.
Blood of the slain
Runs off through the proper channels.
Horses turned to glue.
Someone somewhere
Lights a cigar.
And the loveless sleep in their own arms,
Unable to trust what they might reach.
Constructs a terrain,
A battleground of souls.
Is it true we can escape
From rooms full of knick-knacks,
The tyranny of hollow objects
And “good taste”?
Shall we return to ourselves in triumph,
Skeletons singing?
Mother Hell has borne another litter.
Look; a man, so tiny,
A frightened rabbit running,
Fleeing the earth’s upheaval,
Clinging to the ground,
Crying out to God,
Whom he suddenly believes in.
Wolfskinned, bearskinned,
Exiled from humankind,
The warriors, the neophytes,
Breathe fire.
Buried alive,
Speechless corpses,
They are heaved
Into a ditch.
Do we only dream them,
The unseen foe?
Men, like us,
Small, earth-coloured,
Startled from under rocks
And bushes.
On the edge
Of never-having-been,
We dwell in severance,
With severance to come.
Stripped of prideful skin,
Blindfolded,
Branded,
Maimed,
We make nowhere home.
The Ice Age crushes us
With glaciers.
Superstition slithers under the skin;
Rumour’s voodoo rides us.
Welcome to the trance.
Do you too wish to pledge your heart
To the pyre,
To be burned transparent?
Stuttering, mute,
The dismembered
Huddle, blindly staring,
In the hospital grounds,
Demonic spasms quaking
Their puppet bodies,
Their white-knuckled hands
Clenching nothing.
Blood of the slain
Runs off through the proper channels.
Horses turned to glue.
Someone somewhere
Lights a cigar.
And the loveless sleep in their own arms,
Unable to trust what they might reach.
Egyptian Baraka
You, who drink tea in the date palm’s shade,
A few steps and you are in the desert,
With the Nile running south to north
And the sun chasing east to west,
And you at the crossroads,
Always at the crossroads.
Stones, sand and dust are your birthright,
Where wild dogs and jackals patrol
And the mountainside caves
Are filled with bits of ancient bones.
Can you hunker down, sit still
And live with the gods?
We are dead men in the house of life,
Praying for the river to rise to sixteen ells,
The number of abundance.
In the hands of Osiris,
In the hands of Jesus,
Are the crook and flail.
Cut me a coffin from a sycamore tree
And I shall float downriver,
Lying on my back.
Mother, light a candle for your son.
A few steps and you are in the desert,
With the Nile running south to north
And the sun chasing east to west,
And you at the crossroads,
Always at the crossroads.
Stones, sand and dust are your birthright,
Where wild dogs and jackals patrol
And the mountainside caves
Are filled with bits of ancient bones.
Can you hunker down, sit still
And live with the gods?
We are dead men in the house of life,
Praying for the river to rise to sixteen ells,
The number of abundance.
In the hands of Osiris,
In the hands of Jesus,
Are the crook and flail.
Cut me a coffin from a sycamore tree
And I shall float downriver,
Lying on my back.
Mother, light a candle for your son.
Gods and Men
Some say the gods are with us still,
That they never even left us,
They are here in our letters,
Seldom glimpsed,
But not to be denied.
Mercurial is the word for it,
The way they evanesce,
These presences,
Outliving liturgy and rhyme.
Are the gods displeased with us?
Does our literature offend them?
When Ajax Oileus
Saw Calchas walking
He knew just from his gait
That it was Poseidon in disguise.
Perhaps you know the feeling.
Carefully the gods select
Those to whom they appear.
They judge their effects most shrewdly.
Centaurs are still needed,
Grazing among the trees,
Subtle as apostrophes and semi-colons.
Socrates was proud
To call himself a nympholept;
And who knows but drowning
Made Hylas wise?
What you scry in the water
Is yours to work with,
That quivering dazzling force.
The spider’s lexicon will trap you
Just like any other fly.
The offices of sound allow you this:
A puissant gesture, a winning glance.
The gods, too, were mortal once.
That they never even left us,
They are here in our letters,
Seldom glimpsed,
But not to be denied.
Mercurial is the word for it,
The way they evanesce,
These presences,
Outliving liturgy and rhyme.
Are the gods displeased with us?
Does our literature offend them?
When Ajax Oileus
Saw Calchas walking
He knew just from his gait
That it was Poseidon in disguise.
Perhaps you know the feeling.
Carefully the gods select
Those to whom they appear.
They judge their effects most shrewdly.
Centaurs are still needed,
Grazing among the trees,
Subtle as apostrophes and semi-colons.
Socrates was proud
To call himself a nympholept;
And who knows but drowning
Made Hylas wise?
What you scry in the water
Is yours to work with,
That quivering dazzling force.
The spider’s lexicon will trap you
Just like any other fly.
The offices of sound allow you this:
A puissant gesture, a winning glance.
The gods, too, were mortal once.
Goth Girl (Moonflower)
Ah the scary Egypt of her skin!
Black Madonna,
I will light a candle for you.
This twisted romance
Exalts its victims.
The moonflower blooms only at night.
Always the strange one,
The shadows’ favourite,
She knows imagination
To be true revenge.
Only those with pennies on their eyes
Can truly love life.
Black, red and white,
She sees Venus rising
In her silver skull-ring.
At home among headstones
And stone angels,
She wanders,scrying epitaphs.
“Drink wine with the dead,” she says,
“Black wine…”
With black wax she seals
A black-edged letter
And covers the mirrors,
Sets lilies in a vase.
She fingers a spider’s web rosary of skulls,
And sleeps in a coffin of words.
Her hands are full of red ankhs,
Looping questions.
Always the crossroads,
The decisions of art,
Holding on, contemplating, patiently,
Bearing the tension,
To see what emerges
From sperm and ovum.
She loves the taste of wormwood,
And the green fire of death.
She balances
The perforated spoon over the bulbous glass
And, drizzling water over the sugar cube,
Watches the seagreen turn milky.
In her garden
She grows monkshood and digitalis.
Someday, she whispers, I will find the black rose.
And in the meantime
There are black tulips, black sweet William,
Ace of spades.
And now let us dine
On black truffle with white asparagus,
And toast the night in ancient red wine
From a bottle sleeved in cobwebs and dust.
Black Madonna,
I will light a candle for you.
This twisted romance
Exalts its victims.
The moonflower blooms only at night.
Always the strange one,
The shadows’ favourite,
She knows imagination
To be true revenge.
Only those with pennies on their eyes
Can truly love life.
Black, red and white,
She sees Venus rising
In her silver skull-ring.
At home among headstones
And stone angels,
She wanders,scrying epitaphs.
“Drink wine with the dead,” she says,
“Black wine…”
With black wax she seals
A black-edged letter
And covers the mirrors,
Sets lilies in a vase.
She fingers a spider’s web rosary of skulls,
And sleeps in a coffin of words.
Her hands are full of red ankhs,
Looping questions.
Always the crossroads,
The decisions of art,
Holding on, contemplating, patiently,
Bearing the tension,
To see what emerges
From sperm and ovum.
She loves the taste of wormwood,
And the green fire of death.
She balances
The perforated spoon over the bulbous glass
And, drizzling water over the sugar cube,
Watches the seagreen turn milky.
In her garden
She grows monkshood and digitalis.
Someday, she whispers, I will find the black rose.
And in the meantime
There are black tulips, black sweet William,
Ace of spades.
And now let us dine
On black truffle with white asparagus,
And toast the night in ancient red wine
From a bottle sleeved in cobwebs and dust.
Apparently Not
I kiss the globe of silence. It is the season of mimes. Our bodies reinvent us.
The thorn tree flowers for the dead. Tangerine sunset flows under the bridge.
Your smile: puppet theatre spinning through space.
In phantasmagoria,cinema of semblances, I strike another lightning, a bargain, a choice.
Transcontinental pollen travels unseen on winds of speech.
Superstition of habit contains me.
Snowy promises are melting, and all is hesitation.
One by one, the tarot cards are laid.
Tribunals in attics and basements reckon the river’s rise,the apple’s fall.
Lying mouth,have you tasted the sweetness of ash?
Silence after anger. A subtle poison distils drop by drop.Grating metal, and blizzards at the poles.
Every moment’s threshold arraigns you. Doubt falls upon you with a thrush’s beak.
Truth rises overhead, stars seen in daytime from the bottom of a well.
Anemophilous mind, what will the next wind bring?
I must walk forever the tightrope between Here and There.
Every day I perjure my essence.
The antipodes are mine.The glass globe whirls with intermingling reflections.
A moment ago, it must have been, I sucked in the insufferably sweet tang of apple juice, cool from the carton.
The mind reclines like a bored sultan amid silken pillows. I extemporize a self from sensation,intuition,contemplation,decision,velleity,
volition,action,absorption,contrition.
“I see,” says the dark sad voice.
Peek-a-boo world, now you see me, now you don’t.
Too much lassitude and misunderstanding.
Life in parenthesis becomes us. All our meanwhiles evaporate in the sky; perhaps they return as rain.
Notes of a slow sad music arabesque on the stave of night.
The thorn tree flowers for the dead. Tangerine sunset flows under the bridge.
Your smile: puppet theatre spinning through space.
In phantasmagoria,cinema of semblances, I strike another lightning, a bargain, a choice.
Transcontinental pollen travels unseen on winds of speech.
Superstition of habit contains me.
Snowy promises are melting, and all is hesitation.
One by one, the tarot cards are laid.
Tribunals in attics and basements reckon the river’s rise,the apple’s fall.
Lying mouth,have you tasted the sweetness of ash?
Silence after anger. A subtle poison distils drop by drop.Grating metal, and blizzards at the poles.
Every moment’s threshold arraigns you. Doubt falls upon you with a thrush’s beak.
Truth rises overhead, stars seen in daytime from the bottom of a well.
Anemophilous mind, what will the next wind bring?
I must walk forever the tightrope between Here and There.
Every day I perjure my essence.
The antipodes are mine.The glass globe whirls with intermingling reflections.
A moment ago, it must have been, I sucked in the insufferably sweet tang of apple juice, cool from the carton.
The mind reclines like a bored sultan amid silken pillows. I extemporize a self from sensation,intuition,contemplation,decision,velleity,
volition,action,absorption,contrition.
“I see,” says the dark sad voice.
Peek-a-boo world, now you see me, now you don’t.
Too much lassitude and misunderstanding.
Life in parenthesis becomes us. All our meanwhiles evaporate in the sky; perhaps they return as rain.
Notes of a slow sad music arabesque on the stave of night.
Accidental Man
Shapechanging shiver-world,
Whirlpool of innumerable destructions,
Irresistibly I wish my self into place.
Poised in descent, fortunate shadow,
Something decides me,
Precipitated from the turbulent solution.
Sodden clothes drip on the washing-line.
Grass, meek and invincible, pulses.
My father stands pruning his favourite apple tree.
All things, in time, return to the root,
And tremble again with mysterious commission.
The damp black soil smells of feeling
Caught from a pigeon’s wings.
An appletree’s shade, sly fusty savour,
Tickles, yeasts the doughy mind
And quizzical sensation startles
The moment’s tendril-ends.
Tunnelling through days,
I sacrifice to a preternatural precision,
Sworn to read the inner stranger’s palm.
How to master the correct technique
To seduce each obstacle’s singular gift,
Absorbing until absorbed?
The mysteries of equilibrium
Hold us ransom-
Rich bewilderment,
Feminine sensuality of thought.
Self-swindlers, proud of the mastered trick,
We limp through the amateur theatricals
Of lopsided men.
Evening’s apocalypse tempers me
Where I lease desire,
Husbanding the world under flesh.
Hesitations on the stairway,
Fumbled exchanges…
What feeds the underwater flame?
The self cannot be paraphrased
Or translated,
Or banished to parenthesis.
The philatelist proudly scrutinizes
A triangular stamp;
The butterfly collector scrambles
After a twinkle of wings.
Whirlpool of innumerable destructions,
Irresistibly I wish my self into place.
Poised in descent, fortunate shadow,
Something decides me,
Precipitated from the turbulent solution.
Sodden clothes drip on the washing-line.
Grass, meek and invincible, pulses.
My father stands pruning his favourite apple tree.
All things, in time, return to the root,
And tremble again with mysterious commission.
The damp black soil smells of feeling
Caught from a pigeon’s wings.
An appletree’s shade, sly fusty savour,
Tickles, yeasts the doughy mind
And quizzical sensation startles
The moment’s tendril-ends.
Tunnelling through days,
I sacrifice to a preternatural precision,
Sworn to read the inner stranger’s palm.
How to master the correct technique
To seduce each obstacle’s singular gift,
Absorbing until absorbed?
The mysteries of equilibrium
Hold us ransom-
Rich bewilderment,
Feminine sensuality of thought.
Self-swindlers, proud of the mastered trick,
We limp through the amateur theatricals
Of lopsided men.
Evening’s apocalypse tempers me
Where I lease desire,
Husbanding the world under flesh.
Hesitations on the stairway,
Fumbled exchanges…
What feeds the underwater flame?
The self cannot be paraphrased
Or translated,
Or banished to parenthesis.
The philatelist proudly scrutinizes
A triangular stamp;
The butterfly collector scrambles
After a twinkle of wings.
Under Neptune
Redeem me,
I would buy back my soul…
Sometimes eloquent,
Sometimes mute,
The daimon aspires
Towards the divine…
Dissolve,
Merge,
Forget aloneness
And death…
The waters,
The warm blue waters,
I have never ceased to dream of them…
Now come the false messiahs
And the true,
The dreams of the foetus
And the teratism
In this age of drowning.
O, Melusine,
Melusine…
No need of gods
And heroes
And monsters,
Man is mystery enough…
Does the right hand know
What the left hand is about?
Floating in my bathtub,
Archipelagoes of skin
Breaking though the surface,
Warm sheen slithers over me
Deliciously,
Soothes the aches,
Seduces, lulls, protects…
This immersion
Is both enchantment
And terror-
Drops and oceans,
Can you really make me new?
The baby is emerging,
Blood-and-water-slimed…
Nammu,
The sea,
You are essence and fate,
And my life is water,
Sperm,
Fish.
This is the world of illusion:
Rain, sap, semen, milk and blood,
Circulating
Through the endless succession
Of created worlds,
Each of which is swallowed
By the ocean whence it rose.
Fantasies, longings, nightmares and unknown powers
Roil me from the source,
Rich in imagination
And deception.
Pharaoh of desires,
Are you ready to die?
Lie down in the sarcophagus,
Embark with the sun.
Osiris stands before you,
With his phallus of clay.
The addict cries for release
Yet one hand reaches still
For the redeemer’s black gift,
The bewitching poison
That vouchsafes paradise.
In the baptismal font
I scry strange shadows
Moving in the ocean;
Will the Holy Ghost
Invest our Mass,
Or will death be the only fusion?
This is the séance
Of the mind
And flesh,
When phantoms intrude
And ectoplasm revels.
Are the planets out of kilter?
Emotions run amok,
Quaking the world’s womb
With black hysteria.
The mesmerist’s hands
Lift ritual in the air,
Invoking elementals;
Chant, beat and dance
Steal beneath the bounds
For the liturgy of waves.
Pleasure’s martyr, invite the whip
For your suffering will be
Salvation, as you expiate
Sin in fierce penance;
The empress, fate,
Means to hurt you
And by fierce blows
Draw the venom out.
In the mirrors
The faces and bodies
Of lover and beloved
Interchange;
Perfection breaks its acolytes
With a ruthless sneer
As they fool themselves
With glamour.
We will be Caesars of the invisible,
And transform state and spirit
As one, with one flourish,
Serving new devotions
Where passion and compassion meet.
I would buy back my soul…
Sometimes eloquent,
Sometimes mute,
The daimon aspires
Towards the divine…
Dissolve,
Merge,
Forget aloneness
And death…
The waters,
The warm blue waters,
I have never ceased to dream of them…
Now come the false messiahs
And the true,
The dreams of the foetus
And the teratism
In this age of drowning.
O, Melusine,
Melusine…
No need of gods
And heroes
And monsters,
Man is mystery enough…
Does the right hand know
What the left hand is about?
Floating in my bathtub,
Archipelagoes of skin
Breaking though the surface,
Warm sheen slithers over me
Deliciously,
Soothes the aches,
Seduces, lulls, protects…
This immersion
Is both enchantment
And terror-
Drops and oceans,
Can you really make me new?
The baby is emerging,
Blood-and-water-slimed…
Nammu,
The sea,
You are essence and fate,
And my life is water,
Sperm,
Fish.
This is the world of illusion:
Rain, sap, semen, milk and blood,
Circulating
Through the endless succession
Of created worlds,
Each of which is swallowed
By the ocean whence it rose.
Fantasies, longings, nightmares and unknown powers
Roil me from the source,
Rich in imagination
And deception.
Pharaoh of desires,
Are you ready to die?
Lie down in the sarcophagus,
Embark with the sun.
Osiris stands before you,
With his phallus of clay.
The addict cries for release
Yet one hand reaches still
For the redeemer’s black gift,
The bewitching poison
That vouchsafes paradise.
In the baptismal font
I scry strange shadows
Moving in the ocean;
Will the Holy Ghost
Invest our Mass,
Or will death be the only fusion?
This is the séance
Of the mind
And flesh,
When phantoms intrude
And ectoplasm revels.
Are the planets out of kilter?
Emotions run amok,
Quaking the world’s womb
With black hysteria.
The mesmerist’s hands
Lift ritual in the air,
Invoking elementals;
Chant, beat and dance
Steal beneath the bounds
For the liturgy of waves.
Pleasure’s martyr, invite the whip
For your suffering will be
Salvation, as you expiate
Sin in fierce penance;
The empress, fate,
Means to hurt you
And by fierce blows
Draw the venom out.
In the mirrors
The faces and bodies
Of lover and beloved
Interchange;
Perfection breaks its acolytes
With a ruthless sneer
As they fool themselves
With glamour.
We will be Caesars of the invisible,
And transform state and spirit
As one, with one flourish,
Serving new devotions
Where passion and compassion meet.
Cybernaut
To enter the Heavenly City,
Radiant with sapphire, emerald, amethyst and chrysoprase,
Floating on clouds…
I sit before my computer,
Seeking a home for the soul.
New technologies of desire
Call the fallen in,
Beyond the Primum Mobile,
Into the Empyrean.
Dante Alighieri is setting out,
His guide a man dead for a thousand years.
He is paper and a voice.
One reader after another
Draws up intricate maps of Dante’s Hell,
Complete with precise measurements and cartographic projections.
In the nave of the Arena Chapel in Padua,
Gabriel kneels, announcing to Mary a son,
And our eyes reach through the wall
Into the space beyond.
Out there, my journeys cannot be measured,
In my perfect body,
My body of light.
Radiant with sapphire, emerald, amethyst and chrysoprase,
Floating on clouds…
I sit before my computer,
Seeking a home for the soul.
New technologies of desire
Call the fallen in,
Beyond the Primum Mobile,
Into the Empyrean.
Dante Alighieri is setting out,
His guide a man dead for a thousand years.
He is paper and a voice.
One reader after another
Draws up intricate maps of Dante’s Hell,
Complete with precise measurements and cartographic projections.
In the nave of the Arena Chapel in Padua,
Gabriel kneels, announcing to Mary a son,
And our eyes reach through the wall
Into the space beyond.
Out there, my journeys cannot be measured,
In my perfect body,
My body of light.
Thangka of Tibet
Stone, stone and scant soil,
Dragons of heat and cold lashing the body,
Summer squalls of lightning
Blows sandstorms and hail,
Avalanches of light sear the mind,
Thunder chases across the grasslands,
Only 40 million years ago
All this was under the Sea of Tethys.
Black, white or red, the serpent spirits
Coil electric about precious stones;
The demoness lies supine across
The land, naked, knees raised
And splayed, vulva exposed,
And rock-ogresses
Stalk after human prey.
Nail the earth down with daggers,
With words, tent pegs, mountains.
The sixty years of Jupiter’s solar orbit,
The five periods of twelve years,
The auspicious conjunction of every twelve years
Call us to purification.
All-penetrating and embracing light
And emptiness; within it is vision;
And within the sphere of vision
Is constantly transmuting illusion
Of appearances in the world.
The master pierces a rock with his staff
And clears a path for the willing.
Outward resounds the concentric circles
Of the seed-syllable of the goddess,
Out of emptiness, to be invoked.
The chakras of the earth call you
To explore the energy, the current
And discover in yourself the same.
Approaching for the first time the cave
Of power so long sought, through hardship
And peril, the pilgrim becomes a giant,
Senses heighten; colours are brighter;
Shapes more focused; hearing is keener;
Smell, taste and touch all on fire;
He feels weightless, floating,
Thoughts drift in and out, free
Of attachment; time stops in bliss,
And the signs of the new life
Arise in his path….
They carry the broken corpse
Up the mountainside into the sky;
And at dawn the butchers shear the hair,
Open up the body, eviscerate the organs,
Amputate the limbs, cut up the flesh
Into small pieces and pound the bones
To powder with a rock; then the pieces
Are spread around and the vultures
Are summoned, and fall upon the feast,
And what they leave the dogs will take.
Dragons of heat and cold lashing the body,
Summer squalls of lightning
Blows sandstorms and hail,
Avalanches of light sear the mind,
Thunder chases across the grasslands,
Only 40 million years ago
All this was under the Sea of Tethys.
Black, white or red, the serpent spirits
Coil electric about precious stones;
The demoness lies supine across
The land, naked, knees raised
And splayed, vulva exposed,
And rock-ogresses
Stalk after human prey.
Nail the earth down with daggers,
With words, tent pegs, mountains.
The sixty years of Jupiter’s solar orbit,
The five periods of twelve years,
The auspicious conjunction of every twelve years
Call us to purification.
All-penetrating and embracing light
And emptiness; within it is vision;
And within the sphere of vision
Is constantly transmuting illusion
Of appearances in the world.
The master pierces a rock with his staff
And clears a path for the willing.
Outward resounds the concentric circles
Of the seed-syllable of the goddess,
Out of emptiness, to be invoked.
The chakras of the earth call you
To explore the energy, the current
And discover in yourself the same.
Approaching for the first time the cave
Of power so long sought, through hardship
And peril, the pilgrim becomes a giant,
Senses heighten; colours are brighter;
Shapes more focused; hearing is keener;
Smell, taste and touch all on fire;
He feels weightless, floating,
Thoughts drift in and out, free
Of attachment; time stops in bliss,
And the signs of the new life
Arise in his path….
They carry the broken corpse
Up the mountainside into the sky;
And at dawn the butchers shear the hair,
Open up the body, eviscerate the organs,
Amputate the limbs, cut up the flesh
Into small pieces and pound the bones
To powder with a rock; then the pieces
Are spread around and the vultures
Are summoned, and fall upon the feast,
And what they leave the dogs will take.
On Mount Athos
A ladder hangs down the cliff face to a hermitage high on a sea-gazing rock;
Monks have clambered down these rickety steps for millennia,
Renouncing the world to praise God,
Lowering baskets on pulleys for the alms of passing fishermen.
On these cliff paths you cannot free yourself,
Unless you face the worst evils within
And see through them.
Long shadows of cypress trees trammel the hill
And ravens gyre overhead.
This is the Garden of the Virgin:
Chestnut and fir and holly oak,
Monasteries with terraced gardens, olive groves and vineyards,
Thirteen days behind the rest of the world.
Read, if you can, the chrysobuls of time.
Here you must transfigure the passions
To recover the essence,
The truth of yourself and the world.
Three times the monk circumambulates the courtyard,
Striking the semantron on his shoulder,
Summoning the faithful into the church’s ark.
To be vigilant is all,
To practise the goldsmith’s attention,
The iconographer’s love.
A narrow path above the sea,
A bridge of prickly pears and purple irises,
The air nectar-sweet, the cliffs broom-yellow,
Sparrows flitting in the olive groves...
This is your way.
Wake and pray;
Thereby engage the world,
Putting one foot before the other, time and time again,
Onward into liturgy, service and grace.
And, after all,
All you are doing
Is walking.
Monks have clambered down these rickety steps for millennia,
Renouncing the world to praise God,
Lowering baskets on pulleys for the alms of passing fishermen.
On these cliff paths you cannot free yourself,
Unless you face the worst evils within
And see through them.
Long shadows of cypress trees trammel the hill
And ravens gyre overhead.
This is the Garden of the Virgin:
Chestnut and fir and holly oak,
Monasteries with terraced gardens, olive groves and vineyards,
Thirteen days behind the rest of the world.
Read, if you can, the chrysobuls of time.
Here you must transfigure the passions
To recover the essence,
The truth of yourself and the world.
Three times the monk circumambulates the courtyard,
Striking the semantron on his shoulder,
Summoning the faithful into the church’s ark.
To be vigilant is all,
To practise the goldsmith’s attention,
The iconographer’s love.
A narrow path above the sea,
A bridge of prickly pears and purple irises,
The air nectar-sweet, the cliffs broom-yellow,
Sparrows flitting in the olive groves...
This is your way.
Wake and pray;
Thereby engage the world,
Putting one foot before the other, time and time again,
Onward into liturgy, service and grace.
And, after all,
All you are doing
Is walking.
Mandala
Now the ripening:
Cultivating and rehearsing death,
Becoming the right sacrifice,
Finding the light that shines
At the moment of death;
Germinating and growing in the womb,
Developing into infant, child and adult
With conscious care.
Forms, feelings, perceptions, volition and consciousness
Whirl me about in this world.
Everything begins and ends at Mt Meru;
Climbing phantasmal slopes into the sky’s circle,
Through winds and rainbows and lightning,
The cravings and agonies of the overmighty self.
Can I use the inner and outer wheels of time,
Matching my mind and body to their spin?
Winds from all quarters course through me
About the zodiac, the riding planets,
And all is waking, dreaming, deep sleep or bliss –
Cleanse the winds and know emptiness,
Creating your mandala, taking control…
Purify with incense and saffron water
The crystal vase of pacification
And the gold vase of submission
And the silver vase of increase.
The offering fire melts and boils
All the old impurities in the skull-cup
Until they turn the colour of the moon.
Closer and closer to the centre,
Approaching, ever more clearly you behold
The void, most excellent and sublime;
When this mandala is done,
When we are Buddhas of the world,
We shall annihilate the image,
And pour it into the river,
Watching the concentric circles vanish.
Cultivating and rehearsing death,
Becoming the right sacrifice,
Finding the light that shines
At the moment of death;
Germinating and growing in the womb,
Developing into infant, child and adult
With conscious care.
Forms, feelings, perceptions, volition and consciousness
Whirl me about in this world.
Everything begins and ends at Mt Meru;
Climbing phantasmal slopes into the sky’s circle,
Through winds and rainbows and lightning,
The cravings and agonies of the overmighty self.
Can I use the inner and outer wheels of time,
Matching my mind and body to their spin?
Winds from all quarters course through me
About the zodiac, the riding planets,
And all is waking, dreaming, deep sleep or bliss –
Cleanse the winds and know emptiness,
Creating your mandala, taking control…
Purify with incense and saffron water
The crystal vase of pacification
And the gold vase of submission
And the silver vase of increase.
The offering fire melts and boils
All the old impurities in the skull-cup
Until they turn the colour of the moon.
Closer and closer to the centre,
Approaching, ever more clearly you behold
The void, most excellent and sublime;
When this mandala is done,
When we are Buddhas of the world,
We shall annihilate the image,
And pour it into the river,
Watching the concentric circles vanish.
Yantra
So you build, conserve and finally dissolve
Forms, working with square, circle, triangle
And point; welcome to the spider’s web,
The seed-sound’s expanding contracting vibration,
An atom,
A star.
This is your revelation, your instructions,
These charts to navigate by,
And now you are inside the sacred enclosure,
Inside the body of the god,
The pilgrim maze.
The earthenware jar sits spherical and auspicious,
Filled with water, with the universe,
The nectar of immortality.
You are here to translate, to transform,
As best you can, in confused times,
Making a circuit
From star to star.
Out from the nucleus
Force-lines radiate outwards in concentric circuits
And dissolve at the outer limits.
Dissolve the gross in the subtle;
Multiple powers rouse you within the yantra,
Towards wisdom and perfection,
Divine, heroic, terrifying, demonic or peaceful,
Stripping reality to the bone,
As out of contradiction and paradox
Harmony struggles to achievement.
Forms, working with square, circle, triangle
And point; welcome to the spider’s web,
The seed-sound’s expanding contracting vibration,
An atom,
A star.
This is your revelation, your instructions,
These charts to navigate by,
And now you are inside the sacred enclosure,
Inside the body of the god,
The pilgrim maze.
The earthenware jar sits spherical and auspicious,
Filled with water, with the universe,
The nectar of immortality.
You are here to translate, to transform,
As best you can, in confused times,
Making a circuit
From star to star.
Out from the nucleus
Force-lines radiate outwards in concentric circuits
And dissolve at the outer limits.
Dissolve the gross in the subtle;
Multiple powers rouse you within the yantra,
Towards wisdom and perfection,
Divine, heroic, terrifying, demonic or peaceful,
Stripping reality to the bone,
As out of contradiction and paradox
Harmony struggles to achievement.
Dancing the Rumba
The world sits on a woman’s hips.
The face, impassive, eyes staring high
Is an African mask,
As the bodies, ruled by rhythm,
Shake and rotate,
The hymn of the virgin and the whore.
The woman hardly moves her feet,
Concentrating on contortions
And shuffling within a small square;
While the man circles endlessly round her,
Showing off with cocky flair,
Sometimes charging in at her,
Without ever touching,
Only to retreat, defeated by her power,
Till eventually she feigns
Surrender to his gestures,
Catching the kerchief he tosses
To throw it coquettishly back.
The moment when navels meet;
That is the source,
The transaction of life for death,
The lethal snakebite,
A fiery fall
Into the Congo’s currents.
Never was the low so high,
Nor the high so low;
Nor truth and lie so close;
Nor the open so closed
And the closed so open;
In this consecrating desecration,
This beautiful revolt.
The face, impassive, eyes staring high
Is an African mask,
As the bodies, ruled by rhythm,
Shake and rotate,
The hymn of the virgin and the whore.
The woman hardly moves her feet,
Concentrating on contortions
And shuffling within a small square;
While the man circles endlessly round her,
Showing off with cocky flair,
Sometimes charging in at her,
Without ever touching,
Only to retreat, defeated by her power,
Till eventually she feigns
Surrender to his gestures,
Catching the kerchief he tosses
To throw it coquettishly back.
The moment when navels meet;
That is the source,
The transaction of life for death,
The lethal snakebite,
A fiery fall
Into the Congo’s currents.
Never was the low so high,
Nor the high so low;
Nor truth and lie so close;
Nor the open so closed
And the closed so open;
In this consecrating desecration,
This beautiful revolt.
Dashiell Hammett (1894 – 1961)
Tall sword of a man in a dark suit,
Intense eyes staring out suspiciously
From under a soft felt hat,
Slender-fingered gambler’s hands
Playing no one’s game but his own,
He never lied and never faked,
Walking proudly with maverick grace.
He preferred the honesty of silence
To the casual corruption of words,
Sifting truth from lies, trusting no one,
Turning from the random godless world
To alcohol, women and cards.
All was chaos and injustice,
But one brave man alone with his conscience
Could shore up the walls of civilisation
With small decent actions, futile, of course.
He eked out some precarious order
In terse astringent prose, sinews of thought
Bruised in the pugilistic onslaught;
There was a kind of honour in that.
Shadow man stalking the criminal streets,
Switchblade glint in his suffering eyes,
He had witnessed every kind of evil,
Had moved among thugs and racketeers,
Psychopaths and elegant con men,
Treading warily in a world of deception
And treachery, of sudden crazy violence.
Cynical loner in clever disguises,
He revelled in the cunning manhunt,
Tracking his prey from town to town,
Patient, resourceful, excited by danger.
He never believed in any kind of permanence,
Carried his life in a false-bottomed suitcase,
Out there in the real unromantic America
Where the good and the gentle got killed.
Intense eyes staring out suspiciously
From under a soft felt hat,
Slender-fingered gambler’s hands
Playing no one’s game but his own,
He never lied and never faked,
Walking proudly with maverick grace.
He preferred the honesty of silence
To the casual corruption of words,
Sifting truth from lies, trusting no one,
Turning from the random godless world
To alcohol, women and cards.
All was chaos and injustice,
But one brave man alone with his conscience
Could shore up the walls of civilisation
With small decent actions, futile, of course.
He eked out some precarious order
In terse astringent prose, sinews of thought
Bruised in the pugilistic onslaught;
There was a kind of honour in that.
Shadow man stalking the criminal streets,
Switchblade glint in his suffering eyes,
He had witnessed every kind of evil,
Had moved among thugs and racketeers,
Psychopaths and elegant con men,
Treading warily in a world of deception
And treachery, of sudden crazy violence.
Cynical loner in clever disguises,
He revelled in the cunning manhunt,
Tracking his prey from town to town,
Patient, resourceful, excited by danger.
He never believed in any kind of permanence,
Carried his life in a false-bottomed suitcase,
Out there in the real unromantic America
Where the good and the gentle got killed.
The Creaking Chair
In silence
The high sound of my nervous system,
The low sound of my circulation.
The world is all murmurs and alarms in my blood.
A displacement of air,
A periodic vibration.
I dwell among shades.
And weather the body’s long audition,
The séance of noisy spirits.
Feel the earth-hum,
Free oscillations too subtle for the ear;
All is atmosphere.
The echoing drip of a kitchen tap
Expands my mind
To the size of the universe.
In ancient China
A musician plays the ch’in,
Reserving for his subtlest touch
Just the motion of his bloodstream.
The high sound of my nervous system,
The low sound of my circulation.
The world is all murmurs and alarms in my blood.
A displacement of air,
A periodic vibration.
I dwell among shades.
And weather the body’s long audition,
The séance of noisy spirits.
Feel the earth-hum,
Free oscillations too subtle for the ear;
All is atmosphere.
The echoing drip of a kitchen tap
Expands my mind
To the size of the universe.
In ancient China
A musician plays the ch’in,
Reserving for his subtlest touch
Just the motion of his bloodstream.
Las Vegas
Reek of money and cigar smoke,
Ceaseless prestidigitation
Of dealers’ hands,
And baleful eyes watch
From every wall and corner…
Fiery cauldron in the darkness,
Headlights streaming in along the highway
And weird lights in the sky,
And all those nameless bodies
Buried out in the desert…
Early in the morning, exhausted gamblers
Slump over green tables,
Marooned in light-puddles,
Wan dummies in tuxedos and glittering dresses
Sit mummified, playing ghostly baccarat,
And pallid hookers linger on sidewalks,
Lined with gimcrack wedding chapels.
The weary Paiutes trekked across the valley
And pitched their tents here;
They gathered seeds, sweet sage and wild celery,
Camas and caraway,and the bulbs of the sego lily,
And ate, with relish, locusts and rattlesnakes;
They hunted elks and bears in the mountains,
And smeared their bodies with red paint;
They thrived in this desert, and buried their dead
With eagles, under the killing sky.
When the Spaniards arrived, they took one look
And went the long way round, afraid to venture in,
Leaving a blank space on their maps.
Needs, desires; - in the end, who can tell the difference?
Only think the thought and the appetite appears.
You don’t even know you’re alive!
Load your gun with golden bullets
And fire them into the sky;
Here you can lick up the drunkenness of life
Like champagne off a showgirl’s behind.
There you are, standing in the nuclear blast,
Grinning skull gangster with neon skin,
Gambling it all on the dice-throw,
On the turn of the roulette wheel.
Drive the golden spike into the heart of life;
Study the cards at the blackjack table;
Ghosts move through the gilded mirrors
In the hotel of laughing corpses.
The heat is a white tiger on your back.
Time to make a killing and get out.
Bugsy Siegel slumps on the couch
In a Beverley Hills mansion,
Three well-aimed bullets in his handsome face,
One of his eyes shot out.
That was how the movie ended.
As he always said:
“We only kill each other.”
Right up to the end,
He still thought he could win,
Out of luck and out of his mind,
Doublecrossing everyone, even himself,
Blinded by the desert.
He himself always loved to kill,
To hear his victims scream and beg;
He had to be the one to pull the trigger,
The Angel of Death, manicured and suave,
Careful not to get blood on his suit.
This, the kid from Hell’s Kitchen,
Who had dropped waterbombs
On passing cops’ heads,
Snatched purses
And stole from blind men’s cups.
Ceaseless prestidigitation
Of dealers’ hands,
And baleful eyes watch
From every wall and corner…
Fiery cauldron in the darkness,
Headlights streaming in along the highway
And weird lights in the sky,
And all those nameless bodies
Buried out in the desert…
Early in the morning, exhausted gamblers
Slump over green tables,
Marooned in light-puddles,
Wan dummies in tuxedos and glittering dresses
Sit mummified, playing ghostly baccarat,
And pallid hookers linger on sidewalks,
Lined with gimcrack wedding chapels.
The weary Paiutes trekked across the valley
And pitched their tents here;
They gathered seeds, sweet sage and wild celery,
Camas and caraway,and the bulbs of the sego lily,
And ate, with relish, locusts and rattlesnakes;
They hunted elks and bears in the mountains,
And smeared their bodies with red paint;
They thrived in this desert, and buried their dead
With eagles, under the killing sky.
When the Spaniards arrived, they took one look
And went the long way round, afraid to venture in,
Leaving a blank space on their maps.
Needs, desires; - in the end, who can tell the difference?
Only think the thought and the appetite appears.
You don’t even know you’re alive!
Load your gun with golden bullets
And fire them into the sky;
Here you can lick up the drunkenness of life
Like champagne off a showgirl’s behind.
There you are, standing in the nuclear blast,
Grinning skull gangster with neon skin,
Gambling it all on the dice-throw,
On the turn of the roulette wheel.
Drive the golden spike into the heart of life;
Study the cards at the blackjack table;
Ghosts move through the gilded mirrors
In the hotel of laughing corpses.
The heat is a white tiger on your back.
Time to make a killing and get out.
Bugsy Siegel slumps on the couch
In a Beverley Hills mansion,
Three well-aimed bullets in his handsome face,
One of his eyes shot out.
That was how the movie ended.
As he always said:
“We only kill each other.”
Right up to the end,
He still thought he could win,
Out of luck and out of his mind,
Doublecrossing everyone, even himself,
Blinded by the desert.
He himself always loved to kill,
To hear his victims scream and beg;
He had to be the one to pull the trigger,
The Angel of Death, manicured and suave,
Careful not to get blood on his suit.
This, the kid from Hell’s Kitchen,
Who had dropped waterbombs
On passing cops’ heads,
Snatched purses
And stole from blind men’s cups.
Francois Couperin at the Court of Louis XIV
I
Simple at the clavecin, he sits,
Fingers touching love itself…
What precise melancholy
Proceeds from monstrous life!
Young Apollo excels at the masked ball
And the billiard table,
Serene master of the world.
His daydream is the people’s missal.
Letters from Bach used as lids
For jam-pots; sly under his perruque,
The courtier smiles ironically,
Turning a waspish bon mot.
II
And the gallantry of His Majesty,
And the coquetry and deportment of the ladies,
And the frivolities of the fête champêtre,
And the streets’ commotion,
And the soldiers parading,
And the antics of saltimbanques and players,
And the geometric strolls in summer gardens
And the carrolling of hydraulic organs in grottoes…
The spiders of civilization
Toil their webs with finesse,
Fabricating stellar dentelle
For minds to caress.
Now sensibility
Reaches true acuity,
Pressed by self-control.
What desperate sympathies inform the hour,
The hour of man’s undoing?
“Remain gay and lively,”
Said Bussy-Rabutin to Mme de Sévigné,
Both old and counting their ailments,
“Take nothing too seriously
And then you will live another thirty years, at least!
And I will wait for you in Paradise.”
III
After victory, defeat;
After glory, corruption;
The elegant and magnificent
Fall to tenderness at last.
And the wistful hours compose their melodies.
What remains is an atmosphere,
Appeals of a ghost in an empty corridor.
Love, simple love, keep me in your good graces,
Point me the way by moonlight through the woods.
IV
Merry company,
This man you cannot do without:
Black-robed in the corner,
Mouth turned down,
A thousand choice sorrows in his eyes.
V
May we now both please and purify the soul:
Ferocious puissance polishes its claw
In rondeau, chaconne and sarabande.
This age of wonted deaths
Will be rejuvenescence.
We have no climate but the airs and movements of time.
Let sound befriend the lonely
And save of them what it can.
Deny no grace or cadence
To carry you home.
This life, so glad and grave,
Is all devotion.
Restless music fights to a final hush.
God, truth, man:
It is all in the fingering of a phrase.
These falls and rises educate us in poise.
To the noble, the slightest token is illumination.
To be civilized, that is our malady and pride.
Who knows what keeps the funambulist in the air?
Study the sinuosity of the cat,
And render your life as supple.
VI
The suspension of a semiquaver,
The measure of an interval:
From such choices
Is a world composed.
Dumbly he ponders
In a blue room,
Less the Sun King
Than the Man in the Moon.
Simple at the clavecin, he sits,
Fingers touching love itself…
What precise melancholy
Proceeds from monstrous life!
Young Apollo excels at the masked ball
And the billiard table,
Serene master of the world.
His daydream is the people’s missal.
Letters from Bach used as lids
For jam-pots; sly under his perruque,
The courtier smiles ironically,
Turning a waspish bon mot.
II
And the gallantry of His Majesty,
And the coquetry and deportment of the ladies,
And the frivolities of the fête champêtre,
And the streets’ commotion,
And the soldiers parading,
And the antics of saltimbanques and players,
And the geometric strolls in summer gardens
And the carrolling of hydraulic organs in grottoes…
The spiders of civilization
Toil their webs with finesse,
Fabricating stellar dentelle
For minds to caress.
Now sensibility
Reaches true acuity,
Pressed by self-control.
What desperate sympathies inform the hour,
The hour of man’s undoing?
“Remain gay and lively,”
Said Bussy-Rabutin to Mme de Sévigné,
Both old and counting their ailments,
“Take nothing too seriously
And then you will live another thirty years, at least!
And I will wait for you in Paradise.”
III
After victory, defeat;
After glory, corruption;
The elegant and magnificent
Fall to tenderness at last.
And the wistful hours compose their melodies.
What remains is an atmosphere,
Appeals of a ghost in an empty corridor.
Love, simple love, keep me in your good graces,
Point me the way by moonlight through the woods.
IV
Merry company,
This man you cannot do without:
Black-robed in the corner,
Mouth turned down,
A thousand choice sorrows in his eyes.
V
May we now both please and purify the soul:
Ferocious puissance polishes its claw
In rondeau, chaconne and sarabande.
This age of wonted deaths
Will be rejuvenescence.
We have no climate but the airs and movements of time.
Let sound befriend the lonely
And save of them what it can.
Deny no grace or cadence
To carry you home.
This life, so glad and grave,
Is all devotion.
Restless music fights to a final hush.
God, truth, man:
It is all in the fingering of a phrase.
These falls and rises educate us in poise.
To the noble, the slightest token is illumination.
To be civilized, that is our malady and pride.
Who knows what keeps the funambulist in the air?
Study the sinuosity of the cat,
And render your life as supple.
VI
The suspension of a semiquaver,
The measure of an interval:
From such choices
Is a world composed.
Dumbly he ponders
In a blue room,
Less the Sun King
Than the Man in the Moon.
Athene
Athene Polymetis,
Fierce and crafty,
Full of guile and acumen,
She who threw down the flute
And took up the battle-trumpet!
Athene Glaukopis,
Snowy owl on a Palaelithic cave wall
In Provence,
Baleful eyes
That penetrate any soul,
Olive tree leaves in the zephyr,
The voice that says
Now I see…
She knows what is fated
And what can be changed by man;
Only a fool dares act without her counsel.
Without her foresight and discrimination,
Her measure and rule,
No transformation can prosper.
On the ruins of the Acropolis
Bloom feverfew,
The ancient parthenium,
Friend of wombs,
Regulator of menstruation,
Proof against melancholy and migraine.
Energy of air, earth, water, thunder,
Throbbing, pulsating,
Lady Bird,
Lady Snake,
Ivory figurine in red ochre peplos,
Round and pregnant,
Etched with triangles,
Zigzags,
Circles,
Spirals.
The Minoan goddess
Holds high a snake in each hand,
Triumphant.
On the Acropolis
Athene suckles the giant serpent
At her breast.
This is the Age of Kali:
Horror,
Strife,
The losing throw of the dice.
The third hand of the goddess
Gestures “Fear not!’
Power and intellect
Play through the vortex,
Intertwining;
So radiant this flaming,
It can kill.
Sarasvati plays the universe into being
On her vina,
Playing the sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet;
Kali’s garland of skulls
Is the number and notes
Of the Sanskrit letters…
Perseus brings to Athene
The Gorgon’s head
And two phials of her blood,
One drawn from the right arm,
The other from the left.
In the clefts of trees,
In rivers,
The Black Virgin shines,
Queen of the South,
Queen Sibylla,
Goose-footed high priestess,
Enthroned in Toulouse.
Gerbert of Aurillac
Watches the golden fleeces
In the river of his city,
He who will become
Pope Sylvester II
In the year 999.
He had met, in his studies,
A beautiful woman,
Meridiana,
Who offered him her body, wealth and wisdom,
If he would trust Hera,
And so he did;
Thus did he achieve the Magnum Opus,
Introduce Arab numbers to the West,
Invent the clock,
The astrolabe
And the hydraulic organ,
And in his darkened chambers
Conversed with a thaumaturgic talking head.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
Dark bravo and devil-may-care,
Sucking the fire from his cigarette,
Feline Egyptian god face
With opium smoker’s night eyes.
In studio gloom naked bodies
Dance, among African fetishes
And Japanese prints, with the smell
Of sex and danger, whores’ cabaret
Cavorting in the mind’s round.
Nervous chaos of the city,
All sabres and absinthe,
Sensation’s iridium scorching through,
And the summer lovers would escape
To the lakes, swimming and painting
Nude, male and female blending.
The bloody carnival unhinged him,
Panic in the veins, till the moment
When he placed a pistol to his heart,
And settled the question.
Sucking the fire from his cigarette,
Feline Egyptian god face
With opium smoker’s night eyes.
In studio gloom naked bodies
Dance, among African fetishes
And Japanese prints, with the smell
Of sex and danger, whores’ cabaret
Cavorting in the mind’s round.
Nervous chaos of the city,
All sabres and absinthe,
Sensation’s iridium scorching through,
And the summer lovers would escape
To the lakes, swimming and painting
Nude, male and female blending.
The bloody carnival unhinged him,
Panic in the veins, till the moment
When he placed a pistol to his heart,
And settled the question.
Melanesia
Black volcanic soil erupts with banana, manioc and taro…huge papaya hang from high stems…banyan trees cast giant shadows, twisting their roots down in cascades…a flying fox shoots overhead… rooting pigs ravage the ground…
The missionary wakes sweating in the dark, sensing Satan close by; the Fiend has possessed these heathens and set them to do his work,-surely the Last Judgment will not be long now?
Mana is flowing, currents are flowing, through everything, through the air, through objects, through actions, through people, though you, through me, for good and for evil, ancestors speaking,- can you catch it, channel it, make it work?
Spirits howl through the night, and sometimes in hidden banyan groves reveal themselves to the worthy…
Alvaro de Mendaña landed at Guadalcanal, believing he had found Ophir; but when his men paddled ashore to find water the tribesmen slaughtered them, cut them to pieces, cut off heads and limbs, cut out eyes and tongues, broke open their skulls and ate the brains…
The dying man whispers: I shall return by sea and the people watch for a shark’s fin in the lagoon.
The shark caller wins his ancestor’s favour and calls him to shore; to herd schools of fish into the net; to capsize his enemies’ canoes and devour them.
This is the sweet-mouth magic: rub a chicken feather on the special stone and repeat her name four times and after four days she will come to you, follow you everywhere, belong to you…
They wait for John Frum to arrive on his great white ship of precious gifts, from far, far across the ocean…they will wait forever, forever, they will never lose faith…they build wharves and warehouses to receive the plenty; they get drunk on kava and dream of the new age about to begin..
Has a sorcerer stolen my footprint and cursed me? Do invisible hands sow poison in my food? I walk among broken stones, cities of ghosts in the coconut groves. Man and woman danced till the spider made death. Church bells’ sobbing seeps into my bones.
Malinowski writes his diary by lamplight in a hut, head full of sea snakes and Trobriand women: “I watched the muscles of her back, her figure, her legs, and the beauty of her body, so hidden to us whites, fascinated me…I was sorry I was not a savage and could not possess this pretty girl.”
Supine on the bed, staring up into the ceiling fan’s hissing revolutions, I fall into the constellations,and the stars break up, meteors streak across the night sky, islands burn like fireflies, I open the big black Bible of the sea and read from the waves, archipelagos of words…
The missionary wakes sweating in the dark, sensing Satan close by; the Fiend has possessed these heathens and set them to do his work,-surely the Last Judgment will not be long now?
Mana is flowing, currents are flowing, through everything, through the air, through objects, through actions, through people, though you, through me, for good and for evil, ancestors speaking,- can you catch it, channel it, make it work?
Spirits howl through the night, and sometimes in hidden banyan groves reveal themselves to the worthy…
Alvaro de Mendaña landed at Guadalcanal, believing he had found Ophir; but when his men paddled ashore to find water the tribesmen slaughtered them, cut them to pieces, cut off heads and limbs, cut out eyes and tongues, broke open their skulls and ate the brains…
The dying man whispers: I shall return by sea and the people watch for a shark’s fin in the lagoon.
The shark caller wins his ancestor’s favour and calls him to shore; to herd schools of fish into the net; to capsize his enemies’ canoes and devour them.
This is the sweet-mouth magic: rub a chicken feather on the special stone and repeat her name four times and after four days she will come to you, follow you everywhere, belong to you…
They wait for John Frum to arrive on his great white ship of precious gifts, from far, far across the ocean…they will wait forever, forever, they will never lose faith…they build wharves and warehouses to receive the plenty; they get drunk on kava and dream of the new age about to begin..
Has a sorcerer stolen my footprint and cursed me? Do invisible hands sow poison in my food? I walk among broken stones, cities of ghosts in the coconut groves. Man and woman danced till the spider made death. Church bells’ sobbing seeps into my bones.
Malinowski writes his diary by lamplight in a hut, head full of sea snakes and Trobriand women: “I watched the muscles of her back, her figure, her legs, and the beauty of her body, so hidden to us whites, fascinated me…I was sorry I was not a savage and could not possess this pretty girl.”
Supine on the bed, staring up into the ceiling fan’s hissing revolutions, I fall into the constellations,and the stars break up, meteors streak across the night sky, islands burn like fireflies, I open the big black Bible of the sea and read from the waves, archipelagos of words…
Pyramid Text
To discern reality, there is the thing.
What a trick, if you can pull it off.
Would you make yourself a reader of hieroglyphs, a builder of pyramids? You are bold indeed. Or foolhardy. The distinction need not detain us.
The messenger of the gods brought mankind hermeneutics; natural, supernatural, human and divine. Another blessed curse, another fruitful burden.
None of this, of course, will deflect you. To you every warning will be worthless, every counsel of caution insincere.
Each finds his other’s idiom, if he will.
Perhaps you are hoping for the Third Empire of the Holy Spirit, foretold by Joachim of Fiore, when vision will replace this shoddy word-morass, this onanistic efflux of text? Then we shall hear once more the paradisal tongue, which calls all things by their quintessence, and elucidates all mysteries at last. Old Joachim knew a thing or three.
But for now we must make do with Babylonian grammar. So I hand you the rebus and retreat.
Queer commerce Hermes enjoins upon us, pressing his finger to his lips.Sly old dog!
I found this parchment in an attic, you know. Correction: in a secret cubbyhole in my bedroom wall. There it was, like a mermaid’s purse.
Here is a likeness.Yours or mine,who can say? It may in time acquire the powers of a talisman.
I have, at various ominous junctures, desired to call myself a gnostic, a neoplatonist, a Cathar, a druid, a suburban yogi…all slipshod fancy, of course,but perhaps, in my lazy way, I was laying stones across the stream.
I am, in truth, but a small poodle, sniffing at the dog’s bottom of knowledge.
Two suns shine upon this enterprise. We are dealers in fire.
Dissolution and coagulation, distillation and condensation, systole and diastole will guide the process.
Quicksilver and brimstone are the tools to hand.
Quick shadows spider through my mind, and weird voices crying to and fro.
Will you come into the serpent’s circle of Saturn? It is time you must overcome.
The game begins in springtime,under the horns of the Ram,when the corpse decaying in the ground shows disconcerting signs of life.A finger twitches, an eyelid flickers.
Follow the octave –music is the order of your soul.
Take your compass and navigate between the two poles of the Work, the twin pillars of the Temple.
Remember the hermetic pilgrims who trod the Milky Way to Santiago de Compostela, walking the tightrope, surrounded by water and fire, picking up Jewish and Arabic secrets along the way.
I read somewhere the tale of a boy born blind who grew up self-assured and clever; but when he was fifty his sight was restored; he became fascinated by mirrors, and preferred to look at the world in their reflections rather than to see it directly; but to his own face in the mirror he could not become accustomed; he rapidly became self-conscious, lost his nerve and died.
What a trick, if you can pull it off.
Would you make yourself a reader of hieroglyphs, a builder of pyramids? You are bold indeed. Or foolhardy. The distinction need not detain us.
The messenger of the gods brought mankind hermeneutics; natural, supernatural, human and divine. Another blessed curse, another fruitful burden.
None of this, of course, will deflect you. To you every warning will be worthless, every counsel of caution insincere.
Each finds his other’s idiom, if he will.
Perhaps you are hoping for the Third Empire of the Holy Spirit, foretold by Joachim of Fiore, when vision will replace this shoddy word-morass, this onanistic efflux of text? Then we shall hear once more the paradisal tongue, which calls all things by their quintessence, and elucidates all mysteries at last. Old Joachim knew a thing or three.
But for now we must make do with Babylonian grammar. So I hand you the rebus and retreat.
Queer commerce Hermes enjoins upon us, pressing his finger to his lips.Sly old dog!
I found this parchment in an attic, you know. Correction: in a secret cubbyhole in my bedroom wall. There it was, like a mermaid’s purse.
Here is a likeness.Yours or mine,who can say? It may in time acquire the powers of a talisman.
I have, at various ominous junctures, desired to call myself a gnostic, a neoplatonist, a Cathar, a druid, a suburban yogi…all slipshod fancy, of course,but perhaps, in my lazy way, I was laying stones across the stream.
I am, in truth, but a small poodle, sniffing at the dog’s bottom of knowledge.
Two suns shine upon this enterprise. We are dealers in fire.
Dissolution and coagulation, distillation and condensation, systole and diastole will guide the process.
Quicksilver and brimstone are the tools to hand.
Quick shadows spider through my mind, and weird voices crying to and fro.
Will you come into the serpent’s circle of Saturn? It is time you must overcome.
The game begins in springtime,under the horns of the Ram,when the corpse decaying in the ground shows disconcerting signs of life.A finger twitches, an eyelid flickers.
Follow the octave –music is the order of your soul.
Take your compass and navigate between the two poles of the Work, the twin pillars of the Temple.
Remember the hermetic pilgrims who trod the Milky Way to Santiago de Compostela, walking the tightrope, surrounded by water and fire, picking up Jewish and Arabic secrets along the way.
I read somewhere the tale of a boy born blind who grew up self-assured and clever; but when he was fifty his sight was restored; he became fascinated by mirrors, and preferred to look at the world in their reflections rather than to see it directly; but to his own face in the mirror he could not become accustomed; he rapidly became self-conscious, lost his nerve and died.
The Tattooed Lady
Like a pilgrim
Commemorating Loreto,
She bears this talisman,
This amulet on the skin,
At the boundary.
Like a Marquesan
Wearing the gods
Inside-out,
Pricked and stamped
With the stigmata,
Branded
For the purposes of the heart.
She carves her scrimshaw dreams
From the narwhal’s horn
Of plenty,
And the voyage continues
Who knows where…
Like a Thracian maenad
On a lekythos,
With a deer on her arm,
As she takes the sword to Orpheus.
Like a Celtic saint,
Skin-scriptured with graces,
Becoming a folio,
A palimpsest.
The occultist etches himself with sigils
To beweird the world,
Drawing down the planets
With their hands.
The thoughts of the skin
Are deep beyond measure,
Fathoms and fathoms,
South Seas for all.
So welcome the veil,
Honour the hymen,
Like the messmates on Cook’s second voyage,
Who, admiring the warriors
Of Bora Bora,
Banded together and blazoned their bodies
With a star on the left breast,
And dubbed themselves
The Knights of Otaheite.
Like a convict in Van Dieman’s Land
With an anchor on his arm,
Praying for safe return home.
Out of the pain,
The transforming wounds,
She arises,
All self and soul,
Playing with secrets,
Forced to make her own face.
Commemorating Loreto,
She bears this talisman,
This amulet on the skin,
At the boundary.
Like a Marquesan
Wearing the gods
Inside-out,
Pricked and stamped
With the stigmata,
Branded
For the purposes of the heart.
She carves her scrimshaw dreams
From the narwhal’s horn
Of plenty,
And the voyage continues
Who knows where…
Like a Thracian maenad
On a lekythos,
With a deer on her arm,
As she takes the sword to Orpheus.
Like a Celtic saint,
Skin-scriptured with graces,
Becoming a folio,
A palimpsest.
The occultist etches himself with sigils
To beweird the world,
Drawing down the planets
With their hands.
The thoughts of the skin
Are deep beyond measure,
Fathoms and fathoms,
South Seas for all.
So welcome the veil,
Honour the hymen,
Like the messmates on Cook’s second voyage,
Who, admiring the warriors
Of Bora Bora,
Banded together and blazoned their bodies
With a star on the left breast,
And dubbed themselves
The Knights of Otaheite.
Like a convict in Van Dieman’s Land
With an anchor on his arm,
Praying for safe return home.
Out of the pain,
The transforming wounds,
She arises,
All self and soul,
Playing with secrets,
Forced to make her own face.
Spooks
I am a man,
A corpse that speaks.
Well I know the properties of fear,
The mortal meanings throwing shadows on the wall.
This is the land of doubles,
The mirror-maelstrom.
History’s ciphers are mine to employ,
Not always for utter good.
Be as vigilant as you like
To distinguish truth from lie,
But the task will undo you.
How much of me is knowledge, how much instinct,
I cannot say;
By devious twists and violations
I serve the state.
The just and the unjust are one blood.
Why is it that I love only the invisible and the hidden,
That nothing else can thrill me?
Polyglot reality tries out disguises,
Tricky to a fault,
Relishing the chase.
Dying is easy,
But how hard it is to dispose of one’s own body.
And memories, of course, are as bad as bloodstains.
Murders and intrigues we shall call by other names,
Deploying words as engines of war,
Fabulously matter-of-fact.
Be sure, it does not end here,
No, it never ends,
Not as long as desire persists.
Consider this life neither real nor fake,
But something in between.
Wounds are precious,
And what they portend I may in time divine;
I act to postpone my own death,
Hastening others, if I must, to theirs.
Mathematical probabilities hedge me in,
As I wager my way by hazard;
Soon enough the bill will arrive,
The punishment will be delivered.
What I know is so little, so unreliable,
Queer phantasms in the head,
Guilty wishes cloaked as facts.
It is all just whispers in the dark.
Marked faces foreshadow destiny,
Gestures and silhouettes accumulate
And the time comes for another disappearance;
For all the doctors’ boasts, I know
Afflictions which can never be cured,
And syndromes still unnnamed.
A corpse that speaks.
Well I know the properties of fear,
The mortal meanings throwing shadows on the wall.
This is the land of doubles,
The mirror-maelstrom.
History’s ciphers are mine to employ,
Not always for utter good.
Be as vigilant as you like
To distinguish truth from lie,
But the task will undo you.
How much of me is knowledge, how much instinct,
I cannot say;
By devious twists and violations
I serve the state.
The just and the unjust are one blood.
Why is it that I love only the invisible and the hidden,
That nothing else can thrill me?
Polyglot reality tries out disguises,
Tricky to a fault,
Relishing the chase.
Dying is easy,
But how hard it is to dispose of one’s own body.
And memories, of course, are as bad as bloodstains.
Murders and intrigues we shall call by other names,
Deploying words as engines of war,
Fabulously matter-of-fact.
Be sure, it does not end here,
No, it never ends,
Not as long as desire persists.
Consider this life neither real nor fake,
But something in between.
Wounds are precious,
And what they portend I may in time divine;
I act to postpone my own death,
Hastening others, if I must, to theirs.
Mathematical probabilities hedge me in,
As I wager my way by hazard;
Soon enough the bill will arrive,
The punishment will be delivered.
What I know is so little, so unreliable,
Queer phantasms in the head,
Guilty wishes cloaked as facts.
It is all just whispers in the dark.
Marked faces foreshadow destiny,
Gestures and silhouettes accumulate
And the time comes for another disappearance;
For all the doctors’ boasts, I know
Afflictions which can never be cured,
And syndromes still unnnamed.
Nasca
We are builders of mountains,
Walking the lines,
Golden spiders
Weaving water-webs.
From the valleys to the heights,
We climb inside ourselves.
Water flies up out of the ocean
Into the sun,
Carried by the starry llama on his back
Into the Milky Way,
The llama who sups every night from the waves
Then mountains down in storms by day,
Down on the dancing women,
On the thirsty earth.
In October, when waking toads emerge from their holes,
And mate with crazy passion,
The dark toad constellation rises before the dawn sun,
Climbing higher into the heavens with each day.
Spider spiral,
Lizard zigzag,
Show me,
Show me.
Stone rivers of the pampa,
In you I bathe naked,
And swim, swim through the sky.
These words are spoken
By a shrunken trophy head,
With eyes closed
And lips sewn shut with thorns.
Walking the lines,
Golden spiders
Weaving water-webs.
From the valleys to the heights,
We climb inside ourselves.
Water flies up out of the ocean
Into the sun,
Carried by the starry llama on his back
Into the Milky Way,
The llama who sups every night from the waves
Then mountains down in storms by day,
Down on the dancing women,
On the thirsty earth.
In October, when waking toads emerge from their holes,
And mate with crazy passion,
The dark toad constellation rises before the dawn sun,
Climbing higher into the heavens with each day.
Spider spiral,
Lizard zigzag,
Show me,
Show me.
Stone rivers of the pampa,
In you I bathe naked,
And swim, swim through the sky.
These words are spoken
By a shrunken trophy head,
With eyes closed
And lips sewn shut with thorns.
The Body of Eurydice
Where is she,
The absent one
Whose death
Is my birth?
Orpheus at the prow
Sings the cosmogonic hymn
As the Argo lurches out;
A green-gilled sailor,
Hugging his lyre.
Here stands the pure man,
The father of culture,
Offering sacrifice
And salvation,
Guarding the teletae.
To hell with woman,
Mother of suffering,
Lactating the black milk of seasons!
Philosophers, kind death is pleased to teach you what it can,
And be the heavy ballast to your ships.
Who loses and what is lost?
This trance lasts forever
On the mountainside at night,
And the black dog’s mouth
Howls globes of silence.
Pray, do not drink the waters
Of Lethe; nor forget
The light you witnessed in the dark.
Somewhere a woman, invisible,inaudible,
Rules the secret hours and the land
Across the river, the current and the end.
The absent one
Whose death
Is my birth?
Orpheus at the prow
Sings the cosmogonic hymn
As the Argo lurches out;
A green-gilled sailor,
Hugging his lyre.
Here stands the pure man,
The father of culture,
Offering sacrifice
And salvation,
Guarding the teletae.
To hell with woman,
Mother of suffering,
Lactating the black milk of seasons!
Philosophers, kind death is pleased to teach you what it can,
And be the heavy ballast to your ships.
Who loses and what is lost?
This trance lasts forever
On the mountainside at night,
And the black dog’s mouth
Howls globes of silence.
Pray, do not drink the waters
Of Lethe; nor forget
The light you witnessed in the dark.
Somewhere a woman, invisible,inaudible,
Rules the secret hours and the land
Across the river, the current and the end.
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
A bureaucrat! Could anything be more accursed
Than this thankless drudgery blurring the mind
And drying the heart out in respectable monotony ?
Reluctant servant of the Papal Curia,
Alberti counts the hours till he can take his leave
And get back to his architect’s drawing board,
Though knowing all too well that many devious patrons
Hire him only for political advantage,
Thinking of their dealings with the apostolic chancery;
Cunningly they seek his good offices
By playing on his passion for the uses of stone.
What joy and relief to shove aside mean duties
And swim in the skies, envisaging miracles in stone!
His swift pencil etches the impeccable vision,
Then, like an indifferent god, he withdraws,
Leaving to others the vulgarity of construction,
Absolved in advance of their clumsy mistakes.
Wherever magnificent edifices loom,
He is there with sketchbook and measure in hand,
Venerating these shrines to the maker’s mind,
Making all beauty and majesty his compass.
He will talk with artists and artisans of all kinds,
Slyly playing the ignorant, the better to spy out
Their skills and secrets for his own employment.
Cursed from birth, bastard son of illustrious exiles
Banished from the sacred circle of Florence,
He must live as a perpetual stranger,
Forcing him not to desire, not to grieve,
But to treat the whole world as a mere pied-a –terre,
Seeking no nest, no place to mistake for his own.
Yet how can the heart not yearn for its origins,
And the man not crave the child’s home?
Harmony, serenity…the higher we reach for them,
The more thwarted and mocked we become…
Seeking relief now in thought, now in action,
Citizen of the intellect, condemned to the breach,
Alberti teases out his restless anguished solitude,
His very gifts the greatest danger and vexation,
Divided and distracted by his polymathic mind.
Literature and philosophy are the elixir of immortals,
Like the sticky buds opening in spring,
Pure beauty and gladness, the mad exhilaration
Of galloping on horseback over the hills!
At night, he lies awake, barred from sleep
By superhuman visions and unrealised projects,
Designing exquisite buildings in his head,
Every column and cornice elaborated in detail,
And imagining the ideal patron, generous and wise,
Refusing no time and expense to create perfection,
To conquer the ages with monuments to man,
Embodying the soul of stone, noble and austere.
No one knows better than he the pliability of patrons,
How to fascinate, educate and persuade them,
Ridding their minds of unworthy convention,
Exciting them with monuments to majesty and virtue,
As if to say, “Why, this is what you wanted all along…”
In Rimini, he marries the Christian and the pagan
Without contradiction, for the priest is Ideal Form,
And their offspring the synthesis of human knowledge.
SANCTE DICATA TIBI HAEC AEDES ET CONDITA SOLI:
In the Chapel of the Planets the boatman looks back
Over his shoulder, alone in his turbulent crossing,
The far shore barred by dread monsters.
The Sun moves out of Cancer to its zenith,
The doomed ruler’s ephemeral high summer,
And subtle Mercury brandishes his caduceus,
Pointing the way for the souls of the dead.
Roman and Etruscan, mythological and actual,
His promiscuous spirit lusts after any inspiration
To clarify the obscure and purge the corrupt.
Abhorring the dangerous confusion of men’s minds,
He corrects superstition with reason, chaos with order,
For only stone is right and true, outlasting the madness.
This world is all confusion and disappointment,
Where the honest man must struggle to survive.
Was it not so in Ferrara, where he went with high hopes,
Lauding Lionello d’Este as the perfect enlightened patron,
Only to find his state a vipers’ nest of conspiracy
Where menace and violence stifled reason in the womb?
And there he faced failure, deluded in his determination
To marry the classical and the medieval in one,
Left beaten and dejected, only a mere man after all.
Once again, he fled from people and their strife,
Desperate for the countryside to cure his sickness,
To chase the horror away on long days in the saddle,
Leaping over streams with complete control.
Life should be as foursquare as the Palazzo Rucellai,
Sober, strong and compact in pietra forte,
With channels and pilasters to conceal the joints,
And the stone façade crafted with meticulous freedom.
In Rome, he paces the streets with naturalist’s eye,
Piecing together the workings of this vast organism,
And lending his art to the restoration of buildings,
Resolved to resurrect the authentic city order
To stand in rebuke to corruption and unreason.
In marshy Mantua, loud with the croaking of frogs,
Peasant corvees labour for the Gonzagas’ pleasure
To build their glory in stone cemented with blood.
“I have had a dream,” announces Duke Ludovico,
“I must build at once the church of San Sebastiano.”
Here Alberti refines his ideal to its strangest purity,
Austere and perfect beyond the ken of lesser minds,
Standing silent with the bewildered crowd of Gonzagas
Till at last the good Cardinal Francesco speaks,
Scratching his head in undisguised perplexity:
“What is it? A church, a synagogue or a mosque?”
Here Alberti dies, dreaming even on his deathbed
Of one last perfect structure, his own Etruscan temple,
Quintessence of proportion, volume and light,
To vindicate the native tradition at its roots,
But even before the foundations can be laid,
He closes his eyes, entering through its great doors.
Than this thankless drudgery blurring the mind
And drying the heart out in respectable monotony ?
Reluctant servant of the Papal Curia,
Alberti counts the hours till he can take his leave
And get back to his architect’s drawing board,
Though knowing all too well that many devious patrons
Hire him only for political advantage,
Thinking of their dealings with the apostolic chancery;
Cunningly they seek his good offices
By playing on his passion for the uses of stone.
What joy and relief to shove aside mean duties
And swim in the skies, envisaging miracles in stone!
His swift pencil etches the impeccable vision,
Then, like an indifferent god, he withdraws,
Leaving to others the vulgarity of construction,
Absolved in advance of their clumsy mistakes.
Wherever magnificent edifices loom,
He is there with sketchbook and measure in hand,
Venerating these shrines to the maker’s mind,
Making all beauty and majesty his compass.
He will talk with artists and artisans of all kinds,
Slyly playing the ignorant, the better to spy out
Their skills and secrets for his own employment.
Cursed from birth, bastard son of illustrious exiles
Banished from the sacred circle of Florence,
He must live as a perpetual stranger,
Forcing him not to desire, not to grieve,
But to treat the whole world as a mere pied-a –terre,
Seeking no nest, no place to mistake for his own.
Yet how can the heart not yearn for its origins,
And the man not crave the child’s home?
Harmony, serenity…the higher we reach for them,
The more thwarted and mocked we become…
Seeking relief now in thought, now in action,
Citizen of the intellect, condemned to the breach,
Alberti teases out his restless anguished solitude,
His very gifts the greatest danger and vexation,
Divided and distracted by his polymathic mind.
Literature and philosophy are the elixir of immortals,
Like the sticky buds opening in spring,
Pure beauty and gladness, the mad exhilaration
Of galloping on horseback over the hills!
At night, he lies awake, barred from sleep
By superhuman visions and unrealised projects,
Designing exquisite buildings in his head,
Every column and cornice elaborated in detail,
And imagining the ideal patron, generous and wise,
Refusing no time and expense to create perfection,
To conquer the ages with monuments to man,
Embodying the soul of stone, noble and austere.
No one knows better than he the pliability of patrons,
How to fascinate, educate and persuade them,
Ridding their minds of unworthy convention,
Exciting them with monuments to majesty and virtue,
As if to say, “Why, this is what you wanted all along…”
In Rimini, he marries the Christian and the pagan
Without contradiction, for the priest is Ideal Form,
And their offspring the synthesis of human knowledge.
SANCTE DICATA TIBI HAEC AEDES ET CONDITA SOLI:
In the Chapel of the Planets the boatman looks back
Over his shoulder, alone in his turbulent crossing,
The far shore barred by dread monsters.
The Sun moves out of Cancer to its zenith,
The doomed ruler’s ephemeral high summer,
And subtle Mercury brandishes his caduceus,
Pointing the way for the souls of the dead.
Roman and Etruscan, mythological and actual,
His promiscuous spirit lusts after any inspiration
To clarify the obscure and purge the corrupt.
Abhorring the dangerous confusion of men’s minds,
He corrects superstition with reason, chaos with order,
For only stone is right and true, outlasting the madness.
This world is all confusion and disappointment,
Where the honest man must struggle to survive.
Was it not so in Ferrara, where he went with high hopes,
Lauding Lionello d’Este as the perfect enlightened patron,
Only to find his state a vipers’ nest of conspiracy
Where menace and violence stifled reason in the womb?
And there he faced failure, deluded in his determination
To marry the classical and the medieval in one,
Left beaten and dejected, only a mere man after all.
Once again, he fled from people and their strife,
Desperate for the countryside to cure his sickness,
To chase the horror away on long days in the saddle,
Leaping over streams with complete control.
Life should be as foursquare as the Palazzo Rucellai,
Sober, strong and compact in pietra forte,
With channels and pilasters to conceal the joints,
And the stone façade crafted with meticulous freedom.
In Rome, he paces the streets with naturalist’s eye,
Piecing together the workings of this vast organism,
And lending his art to the restoration of buildings,
Resolved to resurrect the authentic city order
To stand in rebuke to corruption and unreason.
In marshy Mantua, loud with the croaking of frogs,
Peasant corvees labour for the Gonzagas’ pleasure
To build their glory in stone cemented with blood.
“I have had a dream,” announces Duke Ludovico,
“I must build at once the church of San Sebastiano.”
Here Alberti refines his ideal to its strangest purity,
Austere and perfect beyond the ken of lesser minds,
Standing silent with the bewildered crowd of Gonzagas
Till at last the good Cardinal Francesco speaks,
Scratching his head in undisguised perplexity:
“What is it? A church, a synagogue or a mosque?”
Here Alberti dies, dreaming even on his deathbed
Of one last perfect structure, his own Etruscan temple,
Quintessence of proportion, volume and light,
To vindicate the native tradition at its roots,
But even before the foundations can be laid,
He closes his eyes, entering through its great doors.
Provence
Cherry orchards of the Tricastin in spring,
White blossom thronging, and vines sullen, shorn;
Purple of lavender plantations;
Wan yellows,oranges and greys of the soil;
Château Lourmarin,ghostly sulphur pyre
Choiring in clairvoyant twilight;
And Bonnieux, abandoned to autumn mist,
Absorbed in pale tangerine sky.
Now the dragonfly summer has come,
Winter’s torrents are dusty river beds;
The almond trees on the Plateau de Valensole
Are dark green splashes against the mauve.
Across the Camargue, entrance to Hades,
Herds of white horses sweep through the swamps,
And a black bull stares towards the horizon,
His heart a gathering thundercloud.
White blossom thronging, and vines sullen, shorn;
Purple of lavender plantations;
Wan yellows,oranges and greys of the soil;
Château Lourmarin,ghostly sulphur pyre
Choiring in clairvoyant twilight;
And Bonnieux, abandoned to autumn mist,
Absorbed in pale tangerine sky.
Now the dragonfly summer has come,
Winter’s torrents are dusty river beds;
The almond trees on the Plateau de Valensole
Are dark green splashes against the mauve.
Across the Camargue, entrance to Hades,
Herds of white horses sweep through the swamps,
And a black bull stares towards the horizon,
His heart a gathering thundercloud.
Renaissance
Beautiful Europe of endeavour,
Inexhaustibly conversing with the past!
The dream will not perish
Of sublimity and order,
These buildings, books and pictures,
These songs will draw us on.
In Ferrara, Ariosto sits in chiaroscuro,
Amphibious diplomat of worlds,
Filling his quill with all the humours,
Nonchalantly soaring on a hippogriff to the moon.
The portico of Corinthian columns
In the Foundling Hospital in Florence:
Mathematics of shadow and light
Interpenetrating, shifting in the mind
To stimulate new designs.
So Brunelleschi made to balance
His life in stone,and will a good world
Into being, against all afflictions.
In the palace on Urbino’s crag,
Castiglione sits writing his treatise,
Adumbrating the mysteries of court,
Where life depends on word and gesture,
On some divine indefinable grace,
Rough politics and brute desire
Disguised as the congress of angels.
Francis I stands, a bearded lady,
With sword upheld,and caduceus
In hand,the King and Queen
Of France,and,amid the forest
Raises Fontainebleau’s gold chalice
To the sun.Among the trees,
Diana fondles her subdued stag,
Fixing the observer with a wink.
On Cellini’s silver salt cellar
Venus and Vulcan, pleasantly weary,
Recline in intellectual equipoise.
Inexhaustibly conversing with the past!
The dream will not perish
Of sublimity and order,
These buildings, books and pictures,
These songs will draw us on.
In Ferrara, Ariosto sits in chiaroscuro,
Amphibious diplomat of worlds,
Filling his quill with all the humours,
Nonchalantly soaring on a hippogriff to the moon.
The portico of Corinthian columns
In the Foundling Hospital in Florence:
Mathematics of shadow and light
Interpenetrating, shifting in the mind
To stimulate new designs.
So Brunelleschi made to balance
His life in stone,and will a good world
Into being, against all afflictions.
In the palace on Urbino’s crag,
Castiglione sits writing his treatise,
Adumbrating the mysteries of court,
Where life depends on word and gesture,
On some divine indefinable grace,
Rough politics and brute desire
Disguised as the congress of angels.
Francis I stands, a bearded lady,
With sword upheld,and caduceus
In hand,the King and Queen
Of France,and,amid the forest
Raises Fontainebleau’s gold chalice
To the sun.Among the trees,
Diana fondles her subdued stag,
Fixing the observer with a wink.
On Cellini’s silver salt cellar
Venus and Vulcan, pleasantly weary,
Recline in intellectual equipoise.
Grignard
Remote control in hand,
I zap from image to image,
Alone in the unreal.
I have no interest, no attention to give.
Overabundance only makes me unhappy.
I see people suffering
Yet cannot believe in their pain.
Still they are selling utopia,
Flogging delusion to the masses,
Sophisticated cretins, ever greedy for a bargain.
Technology is salvation, I am told,
But I, for my sins, do not expect to be saved.
What is this coming out of my computer?
Ectoplasm of nightmares.
My eyes are weak,my mind is weak,
All bored and distracted.
“Do you know what really destroyed the Roman Empire?
It was the pewter in their drinking vessels;
The alcohol in their wine dissolved out the lead
And so they were poisoned, generation after generation…”
All these chemicals are turning me into a woman,
My penis is shrinking,
My tits are getting bigger.
In the pharmacy I browse the razorblades,
As keenly as an art connoisseur;
Single edge, double edge or triple edge,
With or without lubricating strip,
Fixed or moving.
War,conspiracy and menace fire the air with fantasies,
And we call it entertainment
But everyone just wants to kill the pain.
The beauty of our weapons
Exceeds other considerations.
Sit back and watch the show;
The acts of strangers, banal and erotic,
Will be staged for your aesthetic appreciation.
And yes, there will be sex, lots of it,
Fornication and fucking of every variety,
Endless hopeless transactions of the flesh,
Enough to poison you,
Enough to destroy you.
In the airport bookshop my hand reaches
For a self-help manual,
Grimoire of platitudes.
I want to believe in the exponential curve,
But all I see is boom and bust.
Japanese riddles twist the air into lemniscates,
I think I may be a man from Japan.
The fake is so much better than the real;
He will have his penis enlarged
And she will have her breasts enhanced,
And they will live happily ever after.
Religiously, I sit and make Top Ten lists
Of everything, watching stocks rise and fall.
I zap from image to image,
Alone in the unreal.
I have no interest, no attention to give.
Overabundance only makes me unhappy.
I see people suffering
Yet cannot believe in their pain.
Still they are selling utopia,
Flogging delusion to the masses,
Sophisticated cretins, ever greedy for a bargain.
Technology is salvation, I am told,
But I, for my sins, do not expect to be saved.
What is this coming out of my computer?
Ectoplasm of nightmares.
My eyes are weak,my mind is weak,
All bored and distracted.
“Do you know what really destroyed the Roman Empire?
It was the pewter in their drinking vessels;
The alcohol in their wine dissolved out the lead
And so they were poisoned, generation after generation…”
All these chemicals are turning me into a woman,
My penis is shrinking,
My tits are getting bigger.
In the pharmacy I browse the razorblades,
As keenly as an art connoisseur;
Single edge, double edge or triple edge,
With or without lubricating strip,
Fixed or moving.
War,conspiracy and menace fire the air with fantasies,
And we call it entertainment
But everyone just wants to kill the pain.
The beauty of our weapons
Exceeds other considerations.
Sit back and watch the show;
The acts of strangers, banal and erotic,
Will be staged for your aesthetic appreciation.
And yes, there will be sex, lots of it,
Fornication and fucking of every variety,
Endless hopeless transactions of the flesh,
Enough to poison you,
Enough to destroy you.
In the airport bookshop my hand reaches
For a self-help manual,
Grimoire of platitudes.
I want to believe in the exponential curve,
But all I see is boom and bust.
Japanese riddles twist the air into lemniscates,
I think I may be a man from Japan.
The fake is so much better than the real;
He will have his penis enlarged
And she will have her breasts enhanced,
And they will live happily ever after.
Religiously, I sit and make Top Ten lists
Of everything, watching stocks rise and fall.
Looking for Rilke
Useless to look for you in cities and biographies,
You are nowhere, nowhere to be seen.
But I can know you in a moment,
Catch your eye and take your hand,
You, the weightless hypnotist,
Always beyond, yet right here, in the centre,
Everywhere invisible and overwhelming,
The world, entranced, gravitating towards you.
It has to be you,
This emptiness that suffocates and absolves us,
So supple are you, so earnest and intangible,
Pure, fluid, volatile consciousness
Wrestling to the strangest victory
That nonetheless is only a hint.
You are nowhere, nowhere to be seen.
But I can know you in a moment,
Catch your eye and take your hand,
You, the weightless hypnotist,
Always beyond, yet right here, in the centre,
Everywhere invisible and overwhelming,
The world, entranced, gravitating towards you.
It has to be you,
This emptiness that suffocates and absolves us,
So supple are you, so earnest and intangible,
Pure, fluid, volatile consciousness
Wrestling to the strangest victory
That nonetheless is only a hint.
Sinai
Yellow scrub, harsh sand, purple peaks far off across the plain:
Battlefield of millennia, hallowed by countless armies’ blood,
Littered with burned-out tanks and trucks, barbed wire, shell casings, jerry cans.
High on its sandstone plinth stands Serabit, temple of Hathor,
Sanctuaries, pylons, porticoes, altars, steles and walls, still intact,
Untouched since the ancient Egyptians abandoned the turquoise mines
Where Semitic slaves hunched, hacking for their lives..
There, on the rock face, their inscriptions survive,
Primal alphabet, etched in faith and suffering,
The Word made manifest, mothering peoples and worlds.
Phantom white sun through haze and dust,
The gathering khamsin’s harbinger;
Solid heat reeks of death and despair,
Black flintstone glowers to the drifting horizons.
Piles of bleached stones guard the oasis stream,
Graves of Bedouin who ride now in death’s dimension,
Under tamarisk and acacia, where desert larks woo.
Little man, would you learn forbidden things?
The vulture killed and buried for forty days and nights,
Then boiled to the bone, will foretell the future;
The first white bone will summon a rushing genie
To reveal the secrets of nature to his ward.
Isolate in immense night, owl stars countless all around,
You are nothing but a fallen star, all dust and dream.
A flaming meteor streaks suddenly to earth,
And the brute sun shoulders over the world’s brink,
Firing the brush with partridge cackles.
Against the sheer granite at the foot of Mount Sinai,
St Catherine’s monastery is a tiny cut diamond refracting the sky.
Inside, in the airless ossuary, myriads of jumbled skulls and bones
Confabulate in the gloom. Archepiscopal crania
Brood like Celtic totems in niches thick with dust.
A skeleton cowled and resplendent in purple embroidered robe
Sits, propped up on the qui-vive, cocked head shyly questioning,
Finger-bones clutching a staff and rosary,
Feet-bones protruding from under his hem;
The remains of Saint Stephanos, who once dwelled here alone,
Examining each hopeful pilgrim for piety,
His posthumous honour to guard these precious bones.
Battlefield of millennia, hallowed by countless armies’ blood,
Littered with burned-out tanks and trucks, barbed wire, shell casings, jerry cans.
High on its sandstone plinth stands Serabit, temple of Hathor,
Sanctuaries, pylons, porticoes, altars, steles and walls, still intact,
Untouched since the ancient Egyptians abandoned the turquoise mines
Where Semitic slaves hunched, hacking for their lives..
There, on the rock face, their inscriptions survive,
Primal alphabet, etched in faith and suffering,
The Word made manifest, mothering peoples and worlds.
Phantom white sun through haze and dust,
The gathering khamsin’s harbinger;
Solid heat reeks of death and despair,
Black flintstone glowers to the drifting horizons.
Piles of bleached stones guard the oasis stream,
Graves of Bedouin who ride now in death’s dimension,
Under tamarisk and acacia, where desert larks woo.
Little man, would you learn forbidden things?
The vulture killed and buried for forty days and nights,
Then boiled to the bone, will foretell the future;
The first white bone will summon a rushing genie
To reveal the secrets of nature to his ward.
Isolate in immense night, owl stars countless all around,
You are nothing but a fallen star, all dust and dream.
A flaming meteor streaks suddenly to earth,
And the brute sun shoulders over the world’s brink,
Firing the brush with partridge cackles.
Against the sheer granite at the foot of Mount Sinai,
St Catherine’s monastery is a tiny cut diamond refracting the sky.
Inside, in the airless ossuary, myriads of jumbled skulls and bones
Confabulate in the gloom. Archepiscopal crania
Brood like Celtic totems in niches thick with dust.
A skeleton cowled and resplendent in purple embroidered robe
Sits, propped up on the qui-vive, cocked head shyly questioning,
Finger-bones clutching a staff and rosary,
Feet-bones protruding from under his hem;
The remains of Saint Stephanos, who once dwelled here alone,
Examining each hopeful pilgrim for piety,
His posthumous honour to guard these precious bones.
Catullus on Lake Garda
A sleek yacht dallying on iridescent unpredictable waters
That can turn in an instant into high rearing waves
When the ambushing wind swoops down from the Dolomites;
A man among friends, laughing, swapping gossip and bon mots,
Mercurial Catullus holds court in the bathtub of the gods.
Deftly he tacks round in circles under butterfly sail,
Now tender, now vicious, with a sly rascal’s grin,
Tearing at life with sharp teeth and fingernails,
Looking for the cracks in mighty statues.
Taking his pleasures with a sniff of disgust,
He sucks down the oyster with barely a gulp
And tries on new clothes with a yawn and a sneer.
There is nothing more frivolous than seriousness
And nothing pettier than grandeur,
But what is a man if he does not yearn
For the unattainable, the ultimate bliss?
Poetry is folly, but more noble at least
Than the games of politicians and the lies of priests.
Out there on the water he is in his tricky element,
Away for a while from the pompous world’s pretence,
Squinting like an augur into the shifting light,
To shadow the moon day and night with quick guile,
Or perhaps, after all, just to fall in season and be still.
That can turn in an instant into high rearing waves
When the ambushing wind swoops down from the Dolomites;
A man among friends, laughing, swapping gossip and bon mots,
Mercurial Catullus holds court in the bathtub of the gods.
Deftly he tacks round in circles under butterfly sail,
Now tender, now vicious, with a sly rascal’s grin,
Tearing at life with sharp teeth and fingernails,
Looking for the cracks in mighty statues.
Taking his pleasures with a sniff of disgust,
He sucks down the oyster with barely a gulp
And tries on new clothes with a yawn and a sneer.
There is nothing more frivolous than seriousness
And nothing pettier than grandeur,
But what is a man if he does not yearn
For the unattainable, the ultimate bliss?
Poetry is folly, but more noble at least
Than the games of politicians and the lies of priests.
Out there on the water he is in his tricky element,
Away for a while from the pompous world’s pretence,
Squinting like an augur into the shifting light,
To shadow the moon day and night with quick guile,
Or perhaps, after all, just to fall in season and be still.
The Arctic
Across the tundra the caribou are on the move,
Golden plovers’ eggs glow in their nests with eerie light,
Snowy owls drift like smoke at evening.
Sunlight burns like phosphorus on your cheekbones.
Caribou prance across the river, kicking up
Fanfares of crystals across the vesperal sun.
The dustless air is supernaturally clear,
Edges sharp enough to cut your bones.
Slowly you begin to notice the details;
Here and there, spots of brilliant red, orange, green,
Among the monotone browns of the tundra.
Always the sense of impending events
Tantalizes in the vastness.
Occasionally, you stumble on some isolated sign:
Animal tracks, owls’ castings, a patch
Of barren ground willow nibbled by hares…
Sandpipers scatter before you, screaming in Inuit.
In a creek somewhere you might find a mammoth tusk,
Or a cryptic ring of stones, undisturbed,
Laid out by a hunter thousands of years ago
To hold down the edge of his tent.
Enormous eyes of a solitary seal,
Dark brown, glistening in a grey feline head,
Motionless, surfacing in absolute still,
Out at the edge of the world.
Fogs and snow showers come and go.
The head of a polar bear glides across black glass;
Suddenly, in a single majestic motion,
He clambers up onto a floe and shakes
Off a whirlwind halo, then flows away
Into the whiteness, part of the sunlight and ice,
Only the subtlest hints of lemon and apricot yellow,
Of cream buffs and straw whites,
Betraying his fur in the snow.
Plosive gurgling in the silence,
Warm mist, then the sudden white tip
Of a tusk spirals out of the water,
Among the ice floes. A narwhal,
Bemused eyes, tapering grey body,
Marbled skin taking on variegated hues,
From deep sea green to ethereal blue,
Floats peacefully, all strength, grace and knowledge,
Composed and alert in his waking dream.
Beneath the silence the sea is all sounds;
Crackles and moans, booms, barks and yelps,
And the singing of whales in celestial chorus,
All clicks, trills, tones and harmonics,
Whisper of shifting sediment on the sea floor,
Grinding ice floes’ whine and roar.
Snow geese fly against stormy sky,
White against black in the mind.
Colliding with a headwind in unison,
Gently they fall to earth in their thousands
In graceful parabolas, then rise again like smoke,
In great swirling currents, higher and wider
Than the swooning eye can compass.
One curved sweep of ten thousand threads
Through the spaces in an oncoming flock;
Beyond and beyond, vast lattices intermesh
Until the whole sky is a limitless blur.
At night their high-pitched barking swells;
Single cries coalesce into a rousing cheer
That rises, rises, the falls away,
While storm clouds scud across the moon.
Eerie drift and suspension of time;
Rhythms, patterns, the energy coursing through it all;
Silent arrival of a herd of caribou;
Sudden ferocious surge of a placid iceberg;
Pistol-cracks on the river in spring.
In the pure light you can hold the whole story
Of man, like a stone in the hand,
The comings and goings, the breathing in and out…
This place has its own intricate algebra.
Here, death is the mother of all.
Icebergs, monastic creatures of light,
Whose beauty is a kind of terror:
Self-absorbed, they drift in a kef of tints and tones,
Pocked and faceted, abraded and streaked,
Flushed with blues and greens.
At twilight they take on the sun’s dying beauty;
Rose, reddish yellow, watered purple, soft pink.
First sunrise of spring, carmine and red,
Fading to crimsons, yellows and saffrons,
Shining through washes of rose and salmon,
Pale cyan, apricot, indigo.
The weird air conjures coronas and fata morganas;
Beauty and madness merge, singing. Evanescence wins.
We are angels of the aurora borealis,
Rippling translucencies, all dancing colours,
The teasing wonder of the universe at play.
Golden plovers’ eggs glow in their nests with eerie light,
Snowy owls drift like smoke at evening.
Sunlight burns like phosphorus on your cheekbones.
Caribou prance across the river, kicking up
Fanfares of crystals across the vesperal sun.
The dustless air is supernaturally clear,
Edges sharp enough to cut your bones.
Slowly you begin to notice the details;
Here and there, spots of brilliant red, orange, green,
Among the monotone browns of the tundra.
Always the sense of impending events
Tantalizes in the vastness.
Occasionally, you stumble on some isolated sign:
Animal tracks, owls’ castings, a patch
Of barren ground willow nibbled by hares…
Sandpipers scatter before you, screaming in Inuit.
In a creek somewhere you might find a mammoth tusk,
Or a cryptic ring of stones, undisturbed,
Laid out by a hunter thousands of years ago
To hold down the edge of his tent.
Enormous eyes of a solitary seal,
Dark brown, glistening in a grey feline head,
Motionless, surfacing in absolute still,
Out at the edge of the world.
Fogs and snow showers come and go.
The head of a polar bear glides across black glass;
Suddenly, in a single majestic motion,
He clambers up onto a floe and shakes
Off a whirlwind halo, then flows away
Into the whiteness, part of the sunlight and ice,
Only the subtlest hints of lemon and apricot yellow,
Of cream buffs and straw whites,
Betraying his fur in the snow.
Plosive gurgling in the silence,
Warm mist, then the sudden white tip
Of a tusk spirals out of the water,
Among the ice floes. A narwhal,
Bemused eyes, tapering grey body,
Marbled skin taking on variegated hues,
From deep sea green to ethereal blue,
Floats peacefully, all strength, grace and knowledge,
Composed and alert in his waking dream.
Beneath the silence the sea is all sounds;
Crackles and moans, booms, barks and yelps,
And the singing of whales in celestial chorus,
All clicks, trills, tones and harmonics,
Whisper of shifting sediment on the sea floor,
Grinding ice floes’ whine and roar.
Snow geese fly against stormy sky,
White against black in the mind.
Colliding with a headwind in unison,
Gently they fall to earth in their thousands
In graceful parabolas, then rise again like smoke,
In great swirling currents, higher and wider
Than the swooning eye can compass.
One curved sweep of ten thousand threads
Through the spaces in an oncoming flock;
Beyond and beyond, vast lattices intermesh
Until the whole sky is a limitless blur.
At night their high-pitched barking swells;
Single cries coalesce into a rousing cheer
That rises, rises, the falls away,
While storm clouds scud across the moon.
Eerie drift and suspension of time;
Rhythms, patterns, the energy coursing through it all;
Silent arrival of a herd of caribou;
Sudden ferocious surge of a placid iceberg;
Pistol-cracks on the river in spring.
In the pure light you can hold the whole story
Of man, like a stone in the hand,
The comings and goings, the breathing in and out…
This place has its own intricate algebra.
Here, death is the mother of all.
Icebergs, monastic creatures of light,
Whose beauty is a kind of terror:
Self-absorbed, they drift in a kef of tints and tones,
Pocked and faceted, abraded and streaked,
Flushed with blues and greens.
At twilight they take on the sun’s dying beauty;
Rose, reddish yellow, watered purple, soft pink.
First sunrise of spring, carmine and red,
Fading to crimsons, yellows and saffrons,
Shining through washes of rose and salmon,
Pale cyan, apricot, indigo.
The weird air conjures coronas and fata morganas;
Beauty and madness merge, singing. Evanescence wins.
We are angels of the aurora borealis,
Rippling translucencies, all dancing colours,
The teasing wonder of the universe at play.
Vaclav Havel
That wry smile kept its secrets with sly mischief;
Even at the moment of greatest danger,
He would throw in a smoke bomb, a joke,
A man in the crowd, no vaunting Messiah,
Yet somehow untouchable, remote.
He felt an impostor on his newfound throne;
Any moment, surely, They would come for him again,
Strip him bare, throw him back into prison,
Laughing like hyenas at their brilliant trick.
A scruffy nondescript bohemian fellow,
Rumpled and nervous, fiddling with a cigarette,
Noting his thinning hair in the mirror,
His voice a rasping monotone through clenched teeth,
He shyly yoked his staunch heart to the cause.
Surrounded from birth by lies and disguises,
Astronaut of the Unreal, cast adrift in space,
Only the truth could bring him back to earth
And fill his shrivelled lungs with oxygen.
Bemused, he looked life shyly in the eyes,
A lone diver befriending a dolphin in the deep,
Embracing with surprised love, holding on
To a miracle, a moment, a transformation.
Each word on the page cost a lifetime’s effort;
He went to the stage as Jan Huss to the stake,
Offering all for the moment of communion,
Pointing through the walls to freedom.
He saw the true faces behind carnival masks,
The damned souls meeting in awkward dances,
The laughter choking into sobs in the dark.
Man must make his stand here, in the sad heart
Of Europe, rediscover the marrow in the bone,
The meaning of love, responsibility, trust.
Self-doubt was the hound to his fox;
Many times he died and came to life again,
Astonished to find himself invincible.
Slowly realizing the rules of the game,
He turned the tables on despair.
Suddenly all the skulls were laughing,
The skeletons were dancing in streets and squares,
The church bells were ringing, the clocks were striking,
The sun was rising over the bridges.
Raffish Chaplin tripping with jaunty zest,
He opened his loneliness out into space
And watched the birth of galaxies, chuckling.
Lopsided at an angle to the norm,
He revelled in singularity, sneaking through checkpoints,
Tearing up yesterday’s identity card.
Modestly, reluctantly, he assumed the crown
And entered another theatre, unsure of his lines,
Determined to make this new role his own,
No man’s puppet, cutting the strings.
In the end there was the language in his mouth,
The roots of words to be rediscovered,
The bridges to be reconstructed,
The hands reaching out for his hands.
Even at the moment of greatest danger,
He would throw in a smoke bomb, a joke,
A man in the crowd, no vaunting Messiah,
Yet somehow untouchable, remote.
He felt an impostor on his newfound throne;
Any moment, surely, They would come for him again,
Strip him bare, throw him back into prison,
Laughing like hyenas at their brilliant trick.
A scruffy nondescript bohemian fellow,
Rumpled and nervous, fiddling with a cigarette,
Noting his thinning hair in the mirror,
His voice a rasping monotone through clenched teeth,
He shyly yoked his staunch heart to the cause.
Surrounded from birth by lies and disguises,
Astronaut of the Unreal, cast adrift in space,
Only the truth could bring him back to earth
And fill his shrivelled lungs with oxygen.
Bemused, he looked life shyly in the eyes,
A lone diver befriending a dolphin in the deep,
Embracing with surprised love, holding on
To a miracle, a moment, a transformation.
Each word on the page cost a lifetime’s effort;
He went to the stage as Jan Huss to the stake,
Offering all for the moment of communion,
Pointing through the walls to freedom.
He saw the true faces behind carnival masks,
The damned souls meeting in awkward dances,
The laughter choking into sobs in the dark.
Man must make his stand here, in the sad heart
Of Europe, rediscover the marrow in the bone,
The meaning of love, responsibility, trust.
Self-doubt was the hound to his fox;
Many times he died and came to life again,
Astonished to find himself invincible.
Slowly realizing the rules of the game,
He turned the tables on despair.
Suddenly all the skulls were laughing,
The skeletons were dancing in streets and squares,
The church bells were ringing, the clocks were striking,
The sun was rising over the bridges.
Raffish Chaplin tripping with jaunty zest,
He opened his loneliness out into space
And watched the birth of galaxies, chuckling.
Lopsided at an angle to the norm,
He revelled in singularity, sneaking through checkpoints,
Tearing up yesterday’s identity card.
Modestly, reluctantly, he assumed the crown
And entered another theatre, unsure of his lines,
Determined to make this new role his own,
No man’s puppet, cutting the strings.
In the end there was the language in his mouth,
The roots of words to be rediscovered,
The bridges to be reconstructed,
The hands reaching out for his hands.
Serial Killer
Murder is the drug, the ritual, the orgasm;
I stalk the streets, a hunter on the scent,
Driven by some force I cannot comprehend.
I am the grinning skull beneath the mask,
Moving among you, in secret, unsuspected,
Your nemesis, invisible in the crowd.
You, perhaps, are the one I am seeking,
You, perhaps, possess what I most need.
Plotting, stalking, cornering the victim,
Springing the trap with animal relish,
I feast on the agony, the terror,
Then disappear again into your mind.
Send out your dogs, your police, to catch me,
I will taunt them and lead them astray.
My mission is no man’s to hinder,
As God is my witness, my employer,
I live from one werewolf moon to the next,
A travelling player born to the stage,
Rehearsing my fated role over and over.
Time slows; sounds and colours intensify;
Odours excite me; my skin is on fire;
I am changing, melting, it is starting again.
Soon I must consummate this dread lust;
The order is given. I must obey.
Primed for action, I await the signal;
A certain face, a certain voice, a certain air,
That begs to be seduced and conquered,
Longing for my gift, my healing touch.
God wants to see them writhe and plead,
To savour the terrors of hell in their eyes.
He needs their blood to make him stronger,
Their sacrifice to satisfy his pride.
That moment of triumph, when the prey
Goes still in my hands, a perfect work of art;
Revelation ignites me, a pillar of fire,
I am fearless, invincible, whole.
The demons cannot hurt me any more.
All the anguish is turned to bliss.
But no, too soon the fire is all ash,
The angel falls screaming into the abyss.
I am damned, dismembered, alone, no escape.
Can no one reach me, heal me, and love me?
That which I try to kill is killing me,
The pain within, the blank face in the mirror,
That lost unhappy child with no friends,
Who started fires just to watch the flames
And skinned his pets alive for pleasure,
To see what madness throbbed beneath.
Catch me, I beg you, make me confess,
Skin me alive, make me suffer, make me feel,
Exorcize me with your grimoire.
My magic does not work any more.
I cannot breathe here among the dead,
The earth is cracking, the stars imploding…
Reach out, take my hand and save me,
Release me from this bad dream.
I stalk the streets, a hunter on the scent,
Driven by some force I cannot comprehend.
I am the grinning skull beneath the mask,
Moving among you, in secret, unsuspected,
Your nemesis, invisible in the crowd.
You, perhaps, are the one I am seeking,
You, perhaps, possess what I most need.
Plotting, stalking, cornering the victim,
Springing the trap with animal relish,
I feast on the agony, the terror,
Then disappear again into your mind.
Send out your dogs, your police, to catch me,
I will taunt them and lead them astray.
My mission is no man’s to hinder,
As God is my witness, my employer,
I live from one werewolf moon to the next,
A travelling player born to the stage,
Rehearsing my fated role over and over.
Time slows; sounds and colours intensify;
Odours excite me; my skin is on fire;
I am changing, melting, it is starting again.
Soon I must consummate this dread lust;
The order is given. I must obey.
Primed for action, I await the signal;
A certain face, a certain voice, a certain air,
That begs to be seduced and conquered,
Longing for my gift, my healing touch.
God wants to see them writhe and plead,
To savour the terrors of hell in their eyes.
He needs their blood to make him stronger,
Their sacrifice to satisfy his pride.
That moment of triumph, when the prey
Goes still in my hands, a perfect work of art;
Revelation ignites me, a pillar of fire,
I am fearless, invincible, whole.
The demons cannot hurt me any more.
All the anguish is turned to bliss.
But no, too soon the fire is all ash,
The angel falls screaming into the abyss.
I am damned, dismembered, alone, no escape.
Can no one reach me, heal me, and love me?
That which I try to kill is killing me,
The pain within, the blank face in the mirror,
That lost unhappy child with no friends,
Who started fires just to watch the flames
And skinned his pets alive for pleasure,
To see what madness throbbed beneath.
Catch me, I beg you, make me confess,
Skin me alive, make me suffer, make me feel,
Exorcize me with your grimoire.
My magic does not work any more.
I cannot breathe here among the dead,
The earth is cracking, the stars imploding…
Reach out, take my hand and save me,
Release me from this bad dream.
Occitania
In the papal palace in Avignon
I muse on all the sorcery practised here
Among whores, charlatans, libertines and speculators,
The intrigue and debauchery,
The masterful corruption:Pope John XXII, from Cahors,
Owed his election to a magic knife
That enchanted the conclave of cardinals;
Through alchemical expertise
He filled the treasury with gold,
And used magic to protect himself
Against his many enemies,
Forestalling the hands of assassins
As they mixed for him ashes of spiders and toads
Or manufactured diabolical homunculi.
In the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer,
I stand, caught,
Where the artist toiled his last years’ dark web,
Agonized by rheumatoid arthritis,
Yet roiling on, fighting to enforce
His visions, to the end,the very end;
He painted with brushes strapped to those bent crippled hands,
Thrashing out paintings more voluptuous than ever;
Here stands his empty wheelchair,
His empty easel,
And the light of the olive grove.
The Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence,
Every detail designed by Matisse:
An old man using long bamboo poles
To hold his brushes as he hunched in a wheelchair;
The culmination of a life
Consecrated to the search,
The religion of line and light.
On the west wall blooms The Tree of Life,
All blue, green and yellow leaves glowing,
Which the sun slants through
And replicates across the stone altar.
In the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence,
Fifteen embalmed Celtic heads sit in array,
And the sculptures of heads, made to replace
Real trophies that had mouldered away;
These ancestors the Celts would sleep with at night,
Beseeching oracular counsel.
In the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine,
Midway the Triptych of the Annunciation,
The angel Gabriel, winged with owl feathers
As a bird of ill omen, kneels in the porch
Of a Gothic church, decorated with bat and dragon,
While from on high God transmits in a golden breath-stream
A cruciferous foetus, just missing a monkey’s head;
And a slender vase sports noxious belladonna.
In the Vallée des Merveilles,
Beneath Mont Bégo,
I wander, scrying scratched symbols:
Human figures, bulls and serpents,
Circles, spirals, ladders, and chequerboard patterns,
For eight hundred years
People came here and carved on the rocks.
The seven-sided church of Rieux-Minervois,
Virgin star,
Bethel of Sophia:
The central heptagon around the altar-
Four pilasters and three columns-,
Celebrates the marriage
Of foursquare world
And triangular heaven.
Midsummer sunrise fires its line
Through the altar’s prism
And out through a window,
Linking chapels across country.
She to whom the Sufis and troubadours
Sang their devotion
Is here, here still,
Weighing all suits,
To bestow or deny.
I muse on all the sorcery practised here
Among whores, charlatans, libertines and speculators,
The intrigue and debauchery,
The masterful corruption:Pope John XXII, from Cahors,
Owed his election to a magic knife
That enchanted the conclave of cardinals;
Through alchemical expertise
He filled the treasury with gold,
And used magic to protect himself
Against his many enemies,
Forestalling the hands of assassins
As they mixed for him ashes of spiders and toads
Or manufactured diabolical homunculi.
In the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer,
I stand, caught,
Where the artist toiled his last years’ dark web,
Agonized by rheumatoid arthritis,
Yet roiling on, fighting to enforce
His visions, to the end,the very end;
He painted with brushes strapped to those bent crippled hands,
Thrashing out paintings more voluptuous than ever;
Here stands his empty wheelchair,
His empty easel,
And the light of the olive grove.
The Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence,
Every detail designed by Matisse:
An old man using long bamboo poles
To hold his brushes as he hunched in a wheelchair;
The culmination of a life
Consecrated to the search,
The religion of line and light.
On the west wall blooms The Tree of Life,
All blue, green and yellow leaves glowing,
Which the sun slants through
And replicates across the stone altar.
In the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence,
Fifteen embalmed Celtic heads sit in array,
And the sculptures of heads, made to replace
Real trophies that had mouldered away;
These ancestors the Celts would sleep with at night,
Beseeching oracular counsel.
In the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine,
Midway the Triptych of the Annunciation,
The angel Gabriel, winged with owl feathers
As a bird of ill omen, kneels in the porch
Of a Gothic church, decorated with bat and dragon,
While from on high God transmits in a golden breath-stream
A cruciferous foetus, just missing a monkey’s head;
And a slender vase sports noxious belladonna.
In the Vallée des Merveilles,
Beneath Mont Bégo,
I wander, scrying scratched symbols:
Human figures, bulls and serpents,
Circles, spirals, ladders, and chequerboard patterns,
For eight hundred years
People came here and carved on the rocks.
The seven-sided church of Rieux-Minervois,
Virgin star,
Bethel of Sophia:
The central heptagon around the altar-
Four pilasters and three columns-,
Celebrates the marriage
Of foursquare world
And triangular heaven.
Midsummer sunrise fires its line
Through the altar’s prism
And out through a window,
Linking chapels across country.
She to whom the Sufis and troubadours
Sang their devotion
Is here, here still,
Weighing all suits,
To bestow or deny.
The Two Christs
You will read the apocrypha
And understand a little
And begin perhaps to mason
The keystone of the mind’s arch.
Christ hangs upon the tree,
And at the open door,
Under the angel’s calm gaze,
Mary and Elizabeth embrace,
Each moon-bellied
And haloed for doom.
Two fishes in the water
Curve a cathedral’s bent.
Witness the cross of light
In the skull; intersection
Of celestial equator and ecliptic;
Highest threshold of the eye.
In the crosshairs of the sun
Glares the lion’s hide
Of Palestine, where two
Christ-children born together
Body forth the stars.
Souls in streams of bolides
Shoot earthward through
The gates of Cancer
Into sublunar trial.
Crab-clawed Venice
Grips the secrets
Of mariners and glassblowers,
Silvering the mirror
With progenitive death.
Which way points the compass
Of Porphyry’s eye?
Read the heart in letters of Greek fire;
How pale life is even now
Turning into a pharoah’s death mask.
Deny neither the priest
Nor the king,equal in majesty
And rite;the dexter hand holds
The lily, the sinister the sword.
The twin saviour reigns
With Byzantine smile.
Genealogies real and fictional
Stir like seasnakes in the blood;
The unborn and the dead
Share one missal.
Around the wrist
The midwife ties a scarlet thread,
The first sly weft
Of robe and shroud.
At the tip of the sceptre is a star.
The Virgin’s hand
Cradles a radiant wheatear,
Beacon to night ships,
Toiling home.
Leaf and tree, our sins
Feed on the deep dark,
Photosynthesizing
As they fasten on the sun.
Over the manger
Ox and ass stand sentry,
While Mary kneels praying
At her son’s feet,
And Joseph,at his head,
Holds a candle.
On a full moon night
The bull is slaughtered,
A dagger shoved into the neck;
St Luke sits before his easel,
Limning the Messiah in pigments
Scraped from the earth;
Clutching the hem of the goddess
Stands the man with ass’s ears.
Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior
Compass their road
By the seraph star’s needle,
Homing in on the lion throne
Of Solomon,where the Virgin
Sits with babe upon her lap,
In a Renaissance palace.
The Mass attains its climax:
The Egyptian seed-cake consumed
In the god’s honour,
Reviving as the black alluvium
Of the risen Nile.
The peacock unfolds his tail
And the eyes of the blind
Become fountains of light.
Witness the vesica piscis,
Birth passage between worlds,
Mandorla of the adept!
What do the fire-philosophers
Keep under their Phrygian caps?
A spark falls into the water;
A fire starts in the heart.
Up from the dark crypt
The worshippers of Isis
Cary up her wooden statue,
Brow sealed with a cross,
And circumambulate the temple
Sevenfold, hymning her newborn Aeon.
Barefoot in the Temple,
Young Jesus sets his feet
Upon two bright star-swimming fish,
Parting in opposite directions;
See his heels disappearing
Into the clouds!
Unite the two Adams,
The man of heaven
And the man below,
And give the man-woman
Dominion in the peacock garden.
Let us celebrate the age
With water,wine and blood!
The pristine sea still calls.
Warm mother’s milk the twins
Suck from Mary’s breasts.
At the Last Supper, Judas,
Conjuring some diversion,
Steals a fish from the table,
Sneaking it beneath the cloth.
And understand a little
And begin perhaps to mason
The keystone of the mind’s arch.
Christ hangs upon the tree,
And at the open door,
Under the angel’s calm gaze,
Mary and Elizabeth embrace,
Each moon-bellied
And haloed for doom.
Two fishes in the water
Curve a cathedral’s bent.
Witness the cross of light
In the skull; intersection
Of celestial equator and ecliptic;
Highest threshold of the eye.
In the crosshairs of the sun
Glares the lion’s hide
Of Palestine, where two
Christ-children born together
Body forth the stars.
Souls in streams of bolides
Shoot earthward through
The gates of Cancer
Into sublunar trial.
Crab-clawed Venice
Grips the secrets
Of mariners and glassblowers,
Silvering the mirror
With progenitive death.
Which way points the compass
Of Porphyry’s eye?
Read the heart in letters of Greek fire;
How pale life is even now
Turning into a pharoah’s death mask.
Deny neither the priest
Nor the king,equal in majesty
And rite;the dexter hand holds
The lily, the sinister the sword.
The twin saviour reigns
With Byzantine smile.
Genealogies real and fictional
Stir like seasnakes in the blood;
The unborn and the dead
Share one missal.
Around the wrist
The midwife ties a scarlet thread,
The first sly weft
Of robe and shroud.
At the tip of the sceptre is a star.
The Virgin’s hand
Cradles a radiant wheatear,
Beacon to night ships,
Toiling home.
Leaf and tree, our sins
Feed on the deep dark,
Photosynthesizing
As they fasten on the sun.
Over the manger
Ox and ass stand sentry,
While Mary kneels praying
At her son’s feet,
And Joseph,at his head,
Holds a candle.
On a full moon night
The bull is slaughtered,
A dagger shoved into the neck;
St Luke sits before his easel,
Limning the Messiah in pigments
Scraped from the earth;
Clutching the hem of the goddess
Stands the man with ass’s ears.
Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior
Compass their road
By the seraph star’s needle,
Homing in on the lion throne
Of Solomon,where the Virgin
Sits with babe upon her lap,
In a Renaissance palace.
The Mass attains its climax:
The Egyptian seed-cake consumed
In the god’s honour,
Reviving as the black alluvium
Of the risen Nile.
The peacock unfolds his tail
And the eyes of the blind
Become fountains of light.
Witness the vesica piscis,
Birth passage between worlds,
Mandorla of the adept!
What do the fire-philosophers
Keep under their Phrygian caps?
A spark falls into the water;
A fire starts in the heart.
Up from the dark crypt
The worshippers of Isis
Cary up her wooden statue,
Brow sealed with a cross,
And circumambulate the temple
Sevenfold, hymning her newborn Aeon.
Barefoot in the Temple,
Young Jesus sets his feet
Upon two bright star-swimming fish,
Parting in opposite directions;
See his heels disappearing
Into the clouds!
Unite the two Adams,
The man of heaven
And the man below,
And give the man-woman
Dominion in the peacock garden.
Let us celebrate the age
With water,wine and blood!
The pristine sea still calls.
Warm mother’s milk the twins
Suck from Mary’s breasts.
At the Last Supper, Judas,
Conjuring some diversion,
Steals a fish from the table,
Sneaking it beneath the cloth.
Continuity
Life: a history of vacillations…
Sharp tang of onions being peeled in the kitchen
Itches my scalp. On the radio
A requiem Mass groans and soars.
I inhabit the margin, undescribed,
As I seek a place among the living,
Searching the situations vacant
In their eyes.
I am never anything other than in between,
With the daily prose, the repetitions,
Exfoliations, memories, uninterpreted dreams.
A curious business, to be sure.
I improvise, become what writes me.
I decide not to pretend any more
Then go on pretending. Pretence, I venture,
Is my vocation. A jobbing actor, then, like all the rest,
Hoping my art will be appreciated,
My toil justified.
Sitting with an empty teacup,
I call for the right to be banal.
Unredeemed, unredeemable even, I languish,
Sometimes seeing beyond the day’s news.
This pleasure in thinking convinces me
That a masochist I am.
The fact is…the fact?- the fact is…
I parody myself in living,
Perfecting imperfection to the end.
Autumn again, and I fill up spaces
With anything to hand. Things happen
And happen, as they will, sufficient
In themselves, forming patterns, maybe even fates,
Delicate changes rippling on.
I examine the veins in my hands,
Bulging slightly- and a sudden fear
Hits me-what if my heart is already doomed,
Choked by cholesterol and stress?
I am forever treading on memory’s landmines,
Blowing myself to pieces, then reincarnating,
Slightly modified, and not certain of anything
Before or after, anyway.
Hats off to the solipsist,
Fingering worry-beads;
His quarrel is our own.
History stops here, in this domestic destiny,
Played out against headlines and “rhubarb, rhubarb…”.
What now? Ah yes, time for dinner-
Excuse this borborygmus…I get it all the time…
Sharp tang of onions being peeled in the kitchen
Itches my scalp. On the radio
A requiem Mass groans and soars.
I inhabit the margin, undescribed,
As I seek a place among the living,
Searching the situations vacant
In their eyes.
I am never anything other than in between,
With the daily prose, the repetitions,
Exfoliations, memories, uninterpreted dreams.
A curious business, to be sure.
I improvise, become what writes me.
I decide not to pretend any more
Then go on pretending. Pretence, I venture,
Is my vocation. A jobbing actor, then, like all the rest,
Hoping my art will be appreciated,
My toil justified.
Sitting with an empty teacup,
I call for the right to be banal.
Unredeemed, unredeemable even, I languish,
Sometimes seeing beyond the day’s news.
This pleasure in thinking convinces me
That a masochist I am.
The fact is…the fact?- the fact is…
I parody myself in living,
Perfecting imperfection to the end.
Autumn again, and I fill up spaces
With anything to hand. Things happen
And happen, as they will, sufficient
In themselves, forming patterns, maybe even fates,
Delicate changes rippling on.
I examine the veins in my hands,
Bulging slightly- and a sudden fear
Hits me-what if my heart is already doomed,
Choked by cholesterol and stress?
I am forever treading on memory’s landmines,
Blowing myself to pieces, then reincarnating,
Slightly modified, and not certain of anything
Before or after, anyway.
Hats off to the solipsist,
Fingering worry-beads;
His quarrel is our own.
History stops here, in this domestic destiny,
Played out against headlines and “rhubarb, rhubarb…”.
What now? Ah yes, time for dinner-
Excuse this borborygmus…I get it all the time…
Rorschach Test
I lurch through darkness,
Like a sailor in the port of Manila,
Eager to find the spinning basket trick.
And you said you would not move on again…
You said you would settle,
Be normal,
Do as others do.
All kinds of nasty worms are in you,
Weeviling under and through…
I have sat on the steps of cathedrals
In miscellaneous cities,
Pondering and watching the crowds,
All the nameless people I will never meet,
My brothers and sisters.
In ten million years, the scientists say,
Men will become extinct.
Their chromosomes were defective all along.
From the Devonian and Carboniferous oceans
The shark has swum relentlessly on
Through millions of years, voracious, unstoppable,
While other species have perished all around,
On and on he cruises, seeking prey,
Cannily improving his design,
Nostrils tuned to the scent of blood, however minute,
The ampullae of Lorenzini under his snout
Detecting the far-off struggles of a wounded fish
Or the subtle respiration of a crab.
When does the next ship leave?
You know I will be on it,
Leaning off the taffrail, spitting into the wake.
Like a sailor in the port of Manila,
Eager to find the spinning basket trick.
And you said you would not move on again…
You said you would settle,
Be normal,
Do as others do.
All kinds of nasty worms are in you,
Weeviling under and through…
I have sat on the steps of cathedrals
In miscellaneous cities,
Pondering and watching the crowds,
All the nameless people I will never meet,
My brothers and sisters.
In ten million years, the scientists say,
Men will become extinct.
Their chromosomes were defective all along.
From the Devonian and Carboniferous oceans
The shark has swum relentlessly on
Through millions of years, voracious, unstoppable,
While other species have perished all around,
On and on he cruises, seeking prey,
Cannily improving his design,
Nostrils tuned to the scent of blood, however minute,
The ampullae of Lorenzini under his snout
Detecting the far-off struggles of a wounded fish
Or the subtle respiration of a crab.
When does the next ship leave?
You know I will be on it,
Leaning off the taffrail, spitting into the wake.
Probably Not
All this needless beauty wounds me,
Tears me apart.
Between me
And the facts-such a chasm!
The phantoms of the daytime
Do me more harm
Than those of the night.
Entropy is catching up with me,
Physics plots the invisible graph…
(I reserve the right
To discontinue my existence
By any means,
At any time).
Head cocked, attending
The tintinnabulation of the spheres,
I check my hairline in the mirror
And sketch another fantasy world.
Behold the paramecium,
Shooting forward and recoiling,
In a one-dimensional tunnel…
Why maul my soul with wrenching woes,
Cursing and condemning myself
For this, for that,
For the man that I am,
And not someone better, something more?
Someone pass me a trumpet,
And I’ll play a high note
With all the breath I have left.
Tears me apart.
Between me
And the facts-such a chasm!
The phantoms of the daytime
Do me more harm
Than those of the night.
Entropy is catching up with me,
Physics plots the invisible graph…
(I reserve the right
To discontinue my existence
By any means,
At any time).
Head cocked, attending
The tintinnabulation of the spheres,
I check my hairline in the mirror
And sketch another fantasy world.
Behold the paramecium,
Shooting forward and recoiling,
In a one-dimensional tunnel…
Why maul my soul with wrenching woes,
Cursing and condemning myself
For this, for that,
For the man that I am,
And not someone better, something more?
Someone pass me a trumpet,
And I’ll play a high note
With all the breath I have left.
Dead Man's Hand
I’m done
But it takes so long
For the soul to separate
From the body.
I’m done
But it takes so long
For the tongue to realize
And be still.
Never was I one of the glad ones,
The happy-go-lucky, trusting in life,
Willing to be taken for a ride.
Mine are the doubting spider’s eyes,
Staring down the barrel of despair,
To catch its silver bullet between my teeth.
What is time and why does it want to kill me?
What is this godhood so inscrutable and malign?
Here to tell lies and make up stories,
Here to live and think and die,
Here to scheme and plot revenge against my enemies,
Here to scratch my arse and pick my nose,
Here to be here.
Too sensitive, too selfish,
I cringe at life’s slimy innards,
Terrified by everything,
Biting my soul down to the quick.
Happiness?
Is that all you think about?
Take what you want and pay for it,
As the Spanish say.
Here to orchestrate and conduct the celestial choir,
Here to pull tricks and attempt stunts,
Here to discriminate between phenomena,
Here to kick stones around on the beach.
But it takes so long
For the soul to separate
From the body.
I’m done
But it takes so long
For the tongue to realize
And be still.
Never was I one of the glad ones,
The happy-go-lucky, trusting in life,
Willing to be taken for a ride.
Mine are the doubting spider’s eyes,
Staring down the barrel of despair,
To catch its silver bullet between my teeth.
What is time and why does it want to kill me?
What is this godhood so inscrutable and malign?
Here to tell lies and make up stories,
Here to live and think and die,
Here to scheme and plot revenge against my enemies,
Here to scratch my arse and pick my nose,
Here to be here.
Too sensitive, too selfish,
I cringe at life’s slimy innards,
Terrified by everything,
Biting my soul down to the quick.
Happiness?
Is that all you think about?
Take what you want and pay for it,
As the Spanish say.
Here to orchestrate and conduct the celestial choir,
Here to pull tricks and attempt stunts,
Here to discriminate between phenomena,
Here to kick stones around on the beach.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Horned God
In a gust of musk and honeysuckle
And rotting leaves,
The Green Man appears,
Tawny-gold and piercing
His animal eyes,
Tendrils branching and coiling
Out of his mouth.
The Horned God bears the New Year in on his antlers,
The Black Goat with a candle between his horns.
Now is the time between the times,
The seasons’ key turning.
The Godstone and the Hagstone
Stand in nuptial union against the sky.
The white stag wends through the wildwood,
Collared with a silver crown,
Luring the dazzled knight on and on,
Deeper into darkness.
The Celtic sorcerer assumes the Crane Stance,
Standing on one leg with right hand behind his back,
And right eye closed,
Intoning incantations and imprecations
Against his foes.
The Wild Hunt gallops across the heavens,
The witch slips her body’s leash
And flies by night,
Sending forth the fetch
Along ghost roads
To the midnight sabbat,
The hexentanz.
Instantly the Law of Misrule
Turns all upside-down and inside-out,
In infinite regression
Back to the womb of death.
The sun has entered Capricorn
And Saturn is overhead,
Lovers feast on each other,
The ass is offered in sacrifice.
The Christmas Fool, in animal skins,
Dances through the streets
With sword-dancers and morris-men.
The Devil lifts his pitchfork up,
The three tines white, red and black:
Creation, preservation, dissolution.
The red skeleton is rising,
The firewheels are burning, turning,
The black bull’s pizzle pricks the clouds.
Stripped to his crystal bones,
The shaman runs with the laughing stag
Through winter’s testing fire.
Cast a hex-star on the skull
And hearken to its babbling oracles,
The waters of memory’s well.
On stormy nights when thunder and lightning
Eviscerate the sky,
And rough winds rage through the boughs,
The gnarled host of woodwoses
Stampede forth out of the wildwood,
Raging through the oaks and pines,
Raising their eldritch voices
Amid the charivari,
Shaggy with ivy, leaves and moss,
Some mounted on deer and unicorns,
Brandishing leafy staves in their hands,
And at their head rides the Horned Wildman
Mounted on a stag, waving his oak club,
And beside him, on a unicorn,
Dame Wode, his queen.
Horsemen, smiths and shepherds
Assemble at Azazel’s whim,
Venus rises above the horizon,
Forge of the hidden man.
And rotting leaves,
The Green Man appears,
Tawny-gold and piercing
His animal eyes,
Tendrils branching and coiling
Out of his mouth.
The Horned God bears the New Year in on his antlers,
The Black Goat with a candle between his horns.
Now is the time between the times,
The seasons’ key turning.
The Godstone and the Hagstone
Stand in nuptial union against the sky.
The white stag wends through the wildwood,
Collared with a silver crown,
Luring the dazzled knight on and on,
Deeper into darkness.
The Celtic sorcerer assumes the Crane Stance,
Standing on one leg with right hand behind his back,
And right eye closed,
Intoning incantations and imprecations
Against his foes.
The Wild Hunt gallops across the heavens,
The witch slips her body’s leash
And flies by night,
Sending forth the fetch
Along ghost roads
To the midnight sabbat,
The hexentanz.
Instantly the Law of Misrule
Turns all upside-down and inside-out,
In infinite regression
Back to the womb of death.
The sun has entered Capricorn
And Saturn is overhead,
Lovers feast on each other,
The ass is offered in sacrifice.
The Christmas Fool, in animal skins,
Dances through the streets
With sword-dancers and morris-men.
The Devil lifts his pitchfork up,
The three tines white, red and black:
Creation, preservation, dissolution.
The red skeleton is rising,
The firewheels are burning, turning,
The black bull’s pizzle pricks the clouds.
Stripped to his crystal bones,
The shaman runs with the laughing stag
Through winter’s testing fire.
Cast a hex-star on the skull
And hearken to its babbling oracles,
The waters of memory’s well.
On stormy nights when thunder and lightning
Eviscerate the sky,
And rough winds rage through the boughs,
The gnarled host of woodwoses
Stampede forth out of the wildwood,
Raging through the oaks and pines,
Raising their eldritch voices
Amid the charivari,
Shaggy with ivy, leaves and moss,
Some mounted on deer and unicorns,
Brandishing leafy staves in their hands,
And at their head rides the Horned Wildman
Mounted on a stag, waving his oak club,
And beside him, on a unicorn,
Dame Wode, his queen.
Horsemen, smiths and shepherds
Assemble at Azazel’s whim,
Venus rises above the horizon,
Forge of the hidden man.
Celtic Landscapes
Land of the soul, earth I tread in hermeneutic trance,
Where the word roams everywhere, marking out shrines;
I walk the acres and gather them into me,
Communing with their memory and emotions,
Following the ancient tracks and paths of the spirit.
I am the man of the crossroads and the ford,
Will o’the wisp over water, churchyard and marsh,
Floating globe of fire and pillar of light.
See the moves upon the chessboard,
And the geomancer marking out the patterns of cities;
If the land is in order, right order will prevail among men,
Peace and plenty will be assured.
Her gods and goddesses enact their cyclic fates;
I am the man of the wild wood and the sacred grove,
I am the red wolf beneath the moon;
The wind in the hilltop grove is a sea of voices,
Prophesying in arcane tongues and riddles;
I am the man of the apple orchard,
To whom the summer’s juices are most sweet;
Always I have the blackthorn and the rose bush;
My word are the many-branching wood of night and day;
I am the traveller who sleeps in the branches
And dreams what dreams the fairies send.
O, Sacred Triad, immanent in all!
All things are threefold, all in process;
I make the invisible visible and honour the souls of places;
Stones, springs, mountains, islands, trees,
I recognize and salute them;
In them are heaven’s mind, inspiration and healing.
Harmony is of me, through me and for me;
The power of making and singing, binding all as one.
The nurtured earth blossoms; flocks and herds prosper;
Fields and orchards bear fruit; good will thrives between men;
The wind breathes joy into all quarters;
Tides ebb and flow; night and day live in each other;
The gyre lifts all in its thrall.
I, the soul’s astronomer, keep vigil by night;
Dragon’s servant, I cleave to the winding path;
Human and animal, mortal and immortal,
I create myself by thought alone,
Flowing with the cosmos, merging with all things.
The first woman was a rowan, the first man an alder,
And at death we enter the trees once again;
All trees are sacred to me, heaven’s rivers of light,
Conducting the lightning of our veins,
Striving ever upward, and rooting downward,
Praying and singing in the elements.
O to see the tree sprout from the seed
And thrust upward, outward, thrive and expand, leaf and bloom,
Cast its seed on the wind, wethaer the seasons, the years, with courage,
Gather its beautiful death, its climax, into itself,
The very order of the cosmos folded into its shape,
Nature and circumstance conspiring its destiny,
Twisting its character to suit the god within.
I see the oak struck by lightning,
The thunderbolt cutting a spiral through its trunk;
Rocks and stones are manna to my fingers,
I read in them the footprints of heroes and gods;
In my rock-hewn throne on the hilltop,
I contemplate and command,
Charged with visions and annunciations,
Transfigured by the circling stars.
My heart is the womb-stone at the world’s centre,
The axis of the universe and all its worlds,
The hearth where the first fire is lit,
From which all other fires are ignited.
I see the sun shining through ice-crystals,
Diffracted into the cross and circle,
And I roll the sun wheel round the heavens.
I am the rocking-stone of heaven and earth,
That speaks when the wind blows across the moon.
Pilgrim on the way, I build a cairn of prayer-stones
Wherever I stop, on the way to the shining mountain;
I read all arts and sciences in the stones of memory,
And cherish the green stones that save men from drowning.
I draw water from the holy wells,
And sleep by the well of secrets with the night sun,
I am the omniscient fish in the well,
Shimmer of iridescence in the darkness.
The sunrise in my eyes makes my skull the well of heroes.
I hear the singing of birds in the weird cave,
The noises of demons and monsters in the woods;
I feel the earth breathing, and the voices of women
Sound like the voices of the dead.
This music in my veins will surely kill me!
Have you glimpsed the Western Isle in the misty sea?
Sometimes at sunset its dark silhouette appears
In a second horizon above the distant waves,
But before anyone can reach it, it is gone
Where the word roams everywhere, marking out shrines;
I walk the acres and gather them into me,
Communing with their memory and emotions,
Following the ancient tracks and paths of the spirit.
I am the man of the crossroads and the ford,
Will o’the wisp over water, churchyard and marsh,
Floating globe of fire and pillar of light.
See the moves upon the chessboard,
And the geomancer marking out the patterns of cities;
If the land is in order, right order will prevail among men,
Peace and plenty will be assured.
Her gods and goddesses enact their cyclic fates;
I am the man of the wild wood and the sacred grove,
I am the red wolf beneath the moon;
The wind in the hilltop grove is a sea of voices,
Prophesying in arcane tongues and riddles;
I am the man of the apple orchard,
To whom the summer’s juices are most sweet;
Always I have the blackthorn and the rose bush;
My word are the many-branching wood of night and day;
I am the traveller who sleeps in the branches
And dreams what dreams the fairies send.
O, Sacred Triad, immanent in all!
All things are threefold, all in process;
I make the invisible visible and honour the souls of places;
Stones, springs, mountains, islands, trees,
I recognize and salute them;
In them are heaven’s mind, inspiration and healing.
Harmony is of me, through me and for me;
The power of making and singing, binding all as one.
The nurtured earth blossoms; flocks and herds prosper;
Fields and orchards bear fruit; good will thrives between men;
The wind breathes joy into all quarters;
Tides ebb and flow; night and day live in each other;
The gyre lifts all in its thrall.
I, the soul’s astronomer, keep vigil by night;
Dragon’s servant, I cleave to the winding path;
Human and animal, mortal and immortal,
I create myself by thought alone,
Flowing with the cosmos, merging with all things.
The first woman was a rowan, the first man an alder,
And at death we enter the trees once again;
All trees are sacred to me, heaven’s rivers of light,
Conducting the lightning of our veins,
Striving ever upward, and rooting downward,
Praying and singing in the elements.
O to see the tree sprout from the seed
And thrust upward, outward, thrive and expand, leaf and bloom,
Cast its seed on the wind, wethaer the seasons, the years, with courage,
Gather its beautiful death, its climax, into itself,
The very order of the cosmos folded into its shape,
Nature and circumstance conspiring its destiny,
Twisting its character to suit the god within.
I see the oak struck by lightning,
The thunderbolt cutting a spiral through its trunk;
Rocks and stones are manna to my fingers,
I read in them the footprints of heroes and gods;
In my rock-hewn throne on the hilltop,
I contemplate and command,
Charged with visions and annunciations,
Transfigured by the circling stars.
My heart is the womb-stone at the world’s centre,
The axis of the universe and all its worlds,
The hearth where the first fire is lit,
From which all other fires are ignited.
I see the sun shining through ice-crystals,
Diffracted into the cross and circle,
And I roll the sun wheel round the heavens.
I am the rocking-stone of heaven and earth,
That speaks when the wind blows across the moon.
Pilgrim on the way, I build a cairn of prayer-stones
Wherever I stop, on the way to the shining mountain;
I read all arts and sciences in the stones of memory,
And cherish the green stones that save men from drowning.
I draw water from the holy wells,
And sleep by the well of secrets with the night sun,
I am the omniscient fish in the well,
Shimmer of iridescence in the darkness.
The sunrise in my eyes makes my skull the well of heroes.
I hear the singing of birds in the weird cave,
The noises of demons and monsters in the woods;
I feel the earth breathing, and the voices of women
Sound like the voices of the dead.
This music in my veins will surely kill me!
Have you glimpsed the Western Isle in the misty sea?
Sometimes at sunset its dark silhouette appears
In a second horizon above the distant waves,
But before anyone can reach it, it is gone
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