Charles Fort

Pay close attention to the patterns
And leave the spaces blank.
I will apply my own scientific method
To the wildness of things.
My intention is to play the game without cheating.
A snippet from a newspaper
Tells me more than Plato or Descartes.

All kinds of things fall from the sky:
Different-coloured rains, yellow, black or red.
Blood.Fish.Frogs.Hailstones the size of cannonballs.
Giant spiderwebs float down and cover the countryside.
Some folks will understand, others go insane.

That day when the boy next door
Told me, grinning, that Santa didn’t exist,
That he had seen his dad putting the presents under the tree.
I could not believe it-
All that splendour untrue!-
Surely he must be lying?
But I thought about it, and thought about it,
And the doubt slowly grew.

I collect and arrange things in order,
And re-order the order,
Adjust it a little,
Then start again.
What need is there of petty invention?
The facts themselves are all too beautiful, too much.
Fiction and truth are equal strangers to me.
It is the patterns, you see, that matter,
The shapes in the sand.

That ghost city on the horizon
That never grows any nearer,
That is where I am headed.
In a few weeks, when Mars is once more in opposition,
We may witness more peculiar events occurring.
Everything, I find, is hyphenated,
Oxymorons from top to bottom.

At the end of each day,
I jot down a plus or minus sign in my diary,
Depending on whether, in my opinion,
Life has been worth living.

I have invented a new board game,
A more accurate representation of war,
The troop movements, manoeuvres, ambuscades and feints.
Why, when I explain the rules,
Does no-one understand?

I speak, but do not believe,
Like a weeping statue of the Virgin Mary
Or an earthquake after a meteor.
Comedian or scientist? Which am I?
Beware the quiet men with watchful eyes;
Some of them have strange ideas.

The Last Khan

Baron Ungern-Sternberg,1885-1921,White Russian General and Last Khan of Mongolia

The blood of the Teutonic Knights
Yells through me-Mongolia’s warrior-king,
Cutting down enemies with the sabre
As I gallop over fiery horizons
In yellow silks,astride a white mare.
No mere man, but the God of War himself,
I live to slaughter the unclean,
Purge the world of the Bolshevik virus
And the evil stench of the Jew!
With a wave of my hand, I can raise
Armies, legions of devils to ride
West against the proletarian scum,
A Golden Horde is mine to command!
I am Genghis Khan reborn,
And all Asia will become my empire,
Under the yellow flags of Lord Buddha,
In this crusading age of Shambhala.
Heaven shall see the monarch restored.

Barechested, hung with bones and charms,
Smeared in filth and blood,
I ride my nightmare like a shaman,
A monk whose worship is the kill.
The angry gods, skull-garlanded,
Trampling corpses in their dance,
Demand tribute in the temple’s gloom,-
Lords, accept the generous sacrifice,
Flayed skins of our foes,
From my bloody hands!
I keep my men about me like wolves,
Packs that feed at my hand alone,
And chase down any quarry for fun,
Tearing flesh down to the bone.
Wretches, traitors, hear the name
Of Great Star Mountain, and tremble!
I bow to no man, true scion of my clan,
(Did not my ancestor, ambassador
To Ivan the Terrible, have his hat
Nailed to his head because he would
Not doff it to the tsar, or any man?)
Since the first fire of consciousness
Ignited in me,I have fought a war
Against the world,my puny inferiors,
The craven, the ignoble,the weak.
Truly, these are the Last Days,
The battle for order and the world,
When the ungrateful peasantry,
Corrupted by their Jewish leaders,
Rise up against their God-given masters.
(What,Jews,rule the world,will you?
Ruin nations and races from within?
The blood of Zion is rising
Amid earthquakes,famines,plagues,
And the sword is whetted for battle,
Angels and demons on horseback clashing!
The toxic seed I shall exterminate;
The snake I shall crush with my boot).

The turn of the swastika
Decides the evolution of men;
My blue eyes are starting to see,
To penetrate and manipulate minds.
The Hidden Masters of the World
Guide my hand,clenching the Cossack blade!
(Sitting alone with my playing cards,
I always draw the ace of hearts.
What,by God, does it mean?
Is the omen good or bad?)
Now the triumphant East will rise
In wrath against the doomed West,
And set the pyre of history ablaze!
It is the time of the wild horses,
The cavalry charge into the cannon
Of time- dust devils of the frontier,
Ride with me through the very gates
Of Hell!-my horse’s ears prick
At the hints and inklings of nature,
My wolfhound teeth rend each moment
Like the tenderest meat.
Break out the vodka-drink
To the white fever,and show us
The visions in the opium cloud.

Rage is my joy, my insurrection:
To cross the endless grasslands-
A sword at my hip,a gun in my belt-
And see no human sign,no excrescence,
Is the highest pleasure,driving oneself
To exhaustion,and beyond,becoming
The land and sky,invincible,
Ragged and scarcely human any more.
Every torture the gods inflict on mortals
In Hell, we shall enact them here on earth,
Scourge the base and wicked without mercy,
With ice and fire and savage beasts,
In these wastes,where every tree is a gallows,
For flayed hides to dangle from.
Joyous war:-epic fruition of man!
In these days the essence of life is uncovered,
The false and mundane annihilated,
The unity beneath screaming out.
Wolves follow hard on our battles,
Feasting on the feet of the dead,
Strung up from branches along the roads.
Sweet beasts,my friends and brethren,
How I admire your simple purpose
And skill,-stay at my sides,I will feed you
On carrion kind unworthy to live.

Out here I need no home,no possessions
Save my opium-pipe,in whose clouds
I scry the shapes of destiny,unfurling
With infinite ease,so clear to me.
What news do the soothsayers bring me?
What prophecies for my troops?
Let the scapulimancer do his work
And the bones set the date of battle.
I know –it is foretold-I shall perish out here
When my time is come,but my victory
Will survive me,-so bury me with my horse,
And be done!

Benin

O, Dahomey,
Spawned from the leopard’s loins,
Your kings have all turned into trees.

Meet me at the mouth
Of the River of Death,
Where the crocodile
Waits in welcome.

The lion sits in the long grass, dreaming;
The leopard hauls his prey up into a tree;
The honeyguide flits above the ratel,
Leading him to a sweet hive.

The male weaver bird selects
A place to build his nest,
At the end of a thin hanging branch,
He strips it of leaves
And then flits back and forth,
Carrying material blade by blade in his beak,
Hanging his nest from the branch end,
Interweaving grassblades into the frame,
And finally when completed
He shows it off to his mate
And if she disapproves she will tear it all apart
And make him start all over again.

Slowly, slowly,
Creeps the chameleon,
Moon-eyed spectre,
White as death.

Every gri-gris at the market tempts me,
The féticheurs’ promises all convince :
A love charm or a travel talisman,
Or a cure for any sickness…
Look: a crucified baboon,
The empty eye sockets
Of a dozen monkey skulls…

The female anopheles comes to feed…
Fever, shivering, headquake …
What are these nightmares?
Despair claws my face,my heart,
Hyena in the dark,
Eyes and ears are in panic,
Heart stops and starts…

In the python temple of Ouidah,
Spirits mount the bodies of the entranced
And dance them to exhaustion,
Speaking through their bones.
They awake in Haiti or Cuba or Brazil,
Among the living dead.
The snake coils and uncoils,
Swallowing its own tail,
The rainbow appears out of the mist,
Flames of running water
Chase behind my eyelids,
This world is a spiral of smoke,
A jackal in the waving savannah grass.

The last road of the slaves-
After they had circumambulated
The Tree of Forgetfulness
And the Tree of Return;
After they had sat in the dark dungeon
For months, till their spirits
Were broken, disorientated and too weak
To struggle or resist
As they were packed into the ships-
Ends at the beach, at the Gate of No Return,
There the slaves, hobbling in shackles,
Emerged, at the edge of the abyss,
Where the Revenants waited to welcome home
The souls of the departed returning one day.

In Abomey
Paths lead through twisted alleyways
Past bright fetish temples
To the palace, and So, the god of thunder, on the wall,
A red ram with lightning shooting from his mouth,
And two axes at his side,
And in the throne room all the kings’ stools
And their personal banners,
With the emblems of their strength and pride;
Thee kings sat on thrones
Adorned with their enemies’ skulls,
And festooned the walls of the city
With the severed heads of enemies,
To relax they had a harem of thousands,
And each night would choose the girls
He wished to spend the night with;
For sport they expanded their kingdom
Through constant war, and sold the prisoners
As slaves to the Europeans;
Occasionally they would perform
A human sacrifice, in times of crisis,
By throwing the victim off the city walls
Where the mob below would finish him off
With rocks and clubs, then the blood
Would be smeared on the city walls.
Proudly he reviewed his army,
Especially his regiment of Amazons,
Half-naked, the Amazons muster for war,
Drilling with rifles and bows,
A regiment of thousands,
The most ferocious and skilled warriors,
The king’s own bodyguard,
Striking fear into the bravest men…

In the Djêho Temple-
Built by King Glélé to house his dead father’s spirit,
With the blood of forty-one slaves,
Golden powder, pulverized velvet,
Silk, pearls and alcohol,-
The sacrificial knife is raised,
Ready to honour the gods.

Of all the kings of Dahomey
The thirteenth, Adandozon, is held in abomination
By his people, as a madman and traitor,
They dread to even speak his name
Lest his evil spirit be conjured up,
For he loved to castrate men and feed them
To hyenas, and slit open the bellies
Of pregnant women to use their foetuses
In black magic, and worst of all he wanted
To end the slave trade, and cease
The duty of unending war.

At the crossroads stands Legba the trickster,
With huge proud phallus ever-ready,
Smirking at the prospect of some fun.

The diviner casts the Fa stones,
Scries how they fall;
The Father of Mysteries
Listens to the air.

I see the first men and women
Descending to earth from the branches of the iroko tree,
Here, where the chicken’s throat is cut.

Out into the crowd
The Egungun is escorted,
Bright-robed and horned,
In seashell mask,
And speaks high-pitched
In inhuman voice,
The counsel of the gods
To lowly men,
Beware, his touch is death,
Seek not his eyes
Behind the veil,
They are death.

Hitchcock's Blondes

The love of beauty makes men cruel.
The self is never sated,
Feasting on fancies and precisions,
And from suffering conjures new worlds.
The lover’s and the strangler’s hands
Work the material into motion,
Torturing sensual pride until it breaks.
Some vital irrelevance will start the hare
And set emotions hunting,
Across tangled country, in hard weather,
Triumph of the English winter.
Shades of dread arraign the hours:
Separation is the hallowed rite
That weds the priest to silent grief.
No friend but the darkness,
He nominates demons and waits
For the next possession, eager
To study its miraculous stigmata.

Turkmenistan

In a drop of water
All the suns of the universe
Burn;
Barchans of the Kara Kum,
Flat clay desert and gnarled saxaul trees...
The sun makes Zoroastrians
Of us all.

If the stone rotates
On the pilgrim’s fingers
No sin has been committed.
From the conical oven
A round loaf is born,
A new sun.

Purge the air with burning yuzaerlik,
Over a girl’s breast
Hangs the triangular silver tumar,
Charged with Koranic text.

Weave the seasons into your carpet,
Weave the elements and lay it out
For anyone to sit upon,
Human on the earth.

At the Ak Ishan shrine
Pilgrims peer into the well
For a glimpse of the moon,
Their wishes’ grail.

Like a goldencoated Ahal Tekke,
Lean, longlimbed and indefatigable,
The heart crosses great distances
And does not give up.

Materials for a Life

This glass of water in my hand:
Still. So still.
No. Pandemonium.
Armageddon of atoms.

Between two mirrors,
I watch the reflections
Recede into infinity,
Each image a Russian doll
Of riddles.

I is I,
The only thing that matters,
The myself itself,
Me me me.
Symbol of symbols,
Figure-of-eight.

Words, associations, episodes.
God and goblin,
I believe and disbelieve,
Sovereign-stupid.

Bolivia

Mountains of the divine potato-
Smelting-furnace of coups d’états!
We are mining the future
In the altitudes of Indian eyes.

Ice-beguiled by Mount Illimani,
I survey the shanty slopes of La Paz,
Ramshackle lives not to be extinguished
Without some true commemoration.
In the Witches’ Market I buy paraphernalia
For appeasing unkind spirits,
Something to keep life at bay,
Where bowler-hatted Aymara women
Stand behind the stalls,
Babies strapped to their backs.
Mandrake roots of language
I pull from the air;
Spanish,Quechua,Aymara.
In the museum,I look upon
The mask whose wearer once had
To dance till he dropped dead
To guard the year from drought and disease.
Weird beauties, elongated skulls
Of the ancients, trepanned
To let the gods in, and exalted
Like mountaintops!

At Tiwanaku Viracocha stands
Above the Puerta del Sol,
Haloed with the puma sun,
Snakes and condors at his beck,
As he strides forth with staff
To climb the mountains of man.
The blood of the beheaded
Pours into the earth at his feet.
The lightning-struck man
Releases rain from his hands.

South through the open door
Of a Potosí church, look
Towards the devil’s cone,
Cerro Rico, bleeding red
And yellow,-these stones
Are mortared with the blood
Of slaves who mined
The Mountain of hell,-
Their souls corralled
And flogged into obedience
As their poisoned bodies
Fell into the earth.
The hands that dug silver
Carved suns and moons and sirens
Next to Christ and his saints
On these walls, and the Virgin,
Triangular Andean peak,
Reigns over all.
And here, over the doorway,
Is an archangel in the garb
Of a Spanish soldier,
Armed with sword and shield.
These streets are narrow
And crushing as the mineshafts
And corridors of the mountain,
History’s mercury destroying
The newborn’s blood.
All must pay tribute
To the leering Devil, king of the mines,
His engorged cock raised
In brazen salute,
Greedy for booze and coca.

The winged toad and the puma-headed bird
Roam the underworld of monsters
Where the horned devil reigns,
Back and red design
On a mountain woman’s shawl.
On a church pulpit:
A portrait of Francisco de Aguirre,
Rich mine owner who renounced
His life of power and vice
To become a priest;
He holds his heart in his hand,
Surrendering it to Christ,
While stepping on prostrate Cupid,
Ignoring the calls of erstwhile friends
Eager to lure him back to debauchery.

Across a sheer rockface
Thousands of dinosaur footprints,
Laid down in the Cretaceous era,
On a flat mudbed covered by shallow water
Then covered by volcanic ash;
Predators chased down and killed
By legions of scavengers.

On the outskirts of Vallegrande
Lies the pit where his executioners
Laid the corpse of Che Guevara;
In these low scrubby mountains
He chose his proper end,
Stopped at last, a man who never knew
When to stop,
Surrounded by enemies,
Abandoned by friends,
Ignominy transformed into tragedy,
A dog’s death into martyrdom.

The Jesuit mission church at San Javier
Built by forest hands that had never known stone:
Domus Dei et Porta Coeli,
Baroque plaster facade
And in the courtyard the belltower
Supported by massive carved tree trunks,
Inside the church the retablo
Shows St Peter crucified upside-down
Surrounded by black-robed Jesuits
Being martyred by native warriors,
While other tribesmen are led off
From a burning mission
By armed European slavers;
Priests play piano and violin
Along with a Chiquitano choir,
While others teach the Indians
To write in the sand.

The Critic

Sad contrarian, each day is a history of reading,
A study of the roots of words.

Whenever I see a spider just have to kill it.
It cannot be allowed to share my space.
Big or small, it has to go.

With each day, each year,
The plucking of nasal hairs
Occupies more and more of my time.
The world, as usual, is in a most unsatisfactory state.

My life’s fugue,
Carousel of themes,
Roundel of out-of-tune voices.
Wherever I turn,
The insufficiency of literature confronts me.
I remain however, hungry for the next text.

According to the Romans,
The Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son.
The Byzantines, on the other hand,
Maintained that its only author was the Father.
I, however, cannot sleep,
For thinking about the lost library of Alexandria.

Another book absorbed into me,
The sudden aura of fate and death
Transfixes like a medieval miracle,
A halo round the sun.

A walk in the woods will cure most ills
For a bachelor betrothed to words,
Constantly postponing the marriage.

Virgil the Grammarian,
Mad Irishman from Toulouse,
Describes how the rhetoricians Galbungus and Terrentius
Debated for fourteen days and nights
The supreme question,
The vocative of “ego”.

I, more than anyone,
Would wish to find the key to my symbols,
The symbols of a life.
Or will the whole damn thing
Turn out in the end
To be an allegory instead?

What is the style of my existence,
The hidden authority that selects and informs?

This document counts its half-life,
Biding its time,
With Prester John’s letter,
And the Donation of Constantine.