Brittany

Mirages and sunsets of the Bay of Mont-St-Michel…
My secret violence breeds a universe,
Of stars and planets revolving,
Nebulae whirling, meteors jetting,
Black holes and wormholes gorging themselves…
The dolmen of La Roche-aux-Fées:
Its opening aligns with the rising sun of the winter solstice…
In the sacristy of the Abbey of Paimpont
Is a silver arm joined with gold nails
Holding a book encrusted with precious stones,
Containing a finger of St Judicaël.
In the Forest of Brocéliande, in the church
Of Tréhorenteuc, a sparkling mosaic
Shows flaming red and haloed wolfish lions
Surrounding a white hart bearing a cross on its necklace.
By Lake Comper, gazing into its waters,
I think of Merlin conjuring in its depths
A fantastic castle for Viviane, beguiled by her wiles,
And where she dwelled as the Lady of the Lake
And reared the foundling Lancelot as her own.
Will I ever, ever give up the hard demented struggle
To understand the world and myself?
Oh if I could, if I could!
But always, like a half-remembered tune,
Some figment of my past will rise like vomit,
And black conquers white.
Walk across the heather moors above the cliffs to Cap Fréhel,
The cliffs and islets of schist and pink sandstone and porphyry,
With guillemots, gannets and petrels overhead,
And then to the dunes and pines beyond…
The music of my life, I am still trying to hear it, to play it, to sing in tune,
-But do my ears deceive me,
Do they baffle me with distortion and hallucinations,
Wrong notes of an untuned mind?
The Ankou stalks the streets of Morlaix,
Tristan Corbière, black corsair of the sky,
Slashing at shades with his rusty cutlass,
Tormented by love and arthritis.
At the chapel of St-They at the Pointe du Van,
The spirit of the saint,they say,used to rign the bells
To warn ships away from this deadly coast,
Yet still so many ships were wrecked here
In the Bay of the Dead; the voices of the drowned
Seem to rise in the wind; from this headland
They transported dead druids to the isle of Sein,
Passing from one world to the next,
Where dwell nine virgin priestesses in seclusion,
Fomenting tempests, and metamorphosing
Into wild beasts, curing diseases and telling the future.
In Nantes, in the Musée Thomas Dobrée,
I gaze upon the golden reliquary for the heart
Of Anne de Bretagne, last duchess of Brittany,
-What strange tricks history plays
To amuse its twisted mind! -
That she should be revered as a saint,
When in life she was a stubborn self-serving politician,
And a spendthrift wedded to pleasure!
On the isle of Gavriinis:
The signs of the Goddess :
Vulvas carved into rock,
Totems of the Mother’s womb,
The crease in the cowrie and the wheat-grain,
The natural fissure in the rock,
The inward-conducting cleft.
Black granite rises and flows :
The temple walls are swirling vortices,
Whirlwinds of vulvas,
The midwinter rising sun
Penetrates through the low entrance
Deep into the darkness.