Lúghnasadh

To the hero, called to the Land

Of the Ever-Young, comes the Goddess,

Smiling, untouchable, offering

The jewelled and musical apple branch.


I turn to the East and sing to the sun,

Beloved light that marries darkness,

Each nurturing the other’s seed;

Let darkness turn light inward

To fertilize the womb.


Now for the fruits of the year,

The hidden harvest

When the lion’s claw

Draws blood in heaven’s name.

Now for the games,

The funeral games,

To hallow the furrows

With exultation’s fire.


Lightning, strike me,

Impale me on the sky,

Skill my hands

With tricky craft

To shape the world’s dreams.


When Lúgh arrives in Tara,

To claim his place among the Tuatha Dé Danann,

He announces:

“I am a poet from the Land of Apples,

Rich in swans and yews.”


Come, thunderstorms and rain!

Purge the air and refresh the earth,

That the sun’s fierce heat has seared

And withered with excess.

After fire, water:

Naked riders race their horses

Across the river, swimming them low

To stagger up clean

And shining on the far side.


The Janus head

Facing two ways

Stands on the hilltop

Where the people gather

To celebrate the god.

And the young men

Clash their staves

In sacred battle.


The chieftain, facing the rising sun,

Cuts the first sheaf with his sickle

Then holds it up to the heavens,

Turning three times deosil on his heels,

Chanting the paean.


Amid dancing and singing,

The Fairy Queen sits

On her stone throne, accepting

Flower garlands from the boys.

And at the hilltop fair

Poets recite their latest verses,

Musicians play and sing,

Craftsmen sell their handiwork.


I am a keen spear that pours forth battle:

Now is the turning,

The darkness regaining,

As the baleful Sun, jealous of lost power,

Rages, oppresses,

And must be checked.

Whoever holds the burning spear

Holds the joy of victory;

Lúgh of the Long Arm

Launches his thunderbolt

Into the sky’s heart.

See, the moon is waxing,

And, coming from afar,

The menacing shape

Of the Spear, whose target

Is your heart, my heart.

Performance

Outrageous oxymoron, the body!

Desire and disgust as one,

Wonder and danger.

Is it here that all my confusion begins?

Inside and outside,

No connection.

This monstrous unknown

Hoards infinite enchantment.

I am driven by furies

To scry images of bodies,

Mystery and destiny

Made flesh.

(The Esquiline Venus,

Smoothed and simplified,

All blemishes denied,

The cold poise of death).


Skills and guises disintegrate

When lust ramps on its prey;

Banal, we cry, alive yet dying,

Full of reversals and pains.

These small stakes we place

On the whirling roulette wheel…


Photographer, predator,

I smell the chemical thrill

Of images, inexhaustible puzzles

To baffle and beguile,

Moments real and unreal.

There is no guarantee but hell.


Offering the artist

Her nudity,

The model,

Watched and worshipped,

Forgets her fears

Of old age and death,

Mesmerized for a while

And mesmerizing.


Pierre Bonnard’s iridescent nudes,

Nervous mass of scribbled wishes,

Endless approximations

Only giving to take away,

Dreams of effortless felicity,

A painted surface after all.

Only as it crystallizes

Does the image, recalcitrant

And bizarre, mock the maker

With the revelation

That once again his powers

Have failed him,

Led him- as he so boldly tries

His limits- astray.

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.

Black Devotions

The age of saviours,

The age of barbarians:

Vows are made,

Demons are invoked.


Mystify the blood,

Romanticize murder,

Elegise terror,

Exalt apocalypse.


Who are these intruders,

Vile faceless tribes-

Well-poisoners, cattle-rustlers-

Who would steal our fire?


Glove and jackboot,

Hidden eyes:

The black skull grimaces

A killing joke.


Black magic,

Left-handed tantra:

The idiots make cruelty

Their alchemy.


Philosophers and thugs

Join hands and march,

Singing the hymns

Of the clenched fist.


Uncanny and unholy

The killers recite

Their liturgy of blood

For darkling moons.


They speak of evil powers,

Dark forces, secret rites,

And the brute hand falls

With absolute simplicity.


The raised hand flashes

A death’s head ring,

Striking black lightning

Into bedazzled eyes.


In praise of the wolf

The outcasts gather

To turn fear and hatred

Into fabulous worlds.

Goya

Black eyes,

Silver bullets.

I am the werewolf

You kill in dreams,

The witch

In your gloomy woods.

Spain,

Black nun, laughing witch,

Maiden, mother, whore,

Are these poisons to your taste?

Are these bitters sweet enough?

Even now the bull runs onto the sword.

This is my pride:

To pass through the nun’s veil of night,

To wander among the howling dead,

And return to the living

Crying: All this I have seen with my own eyes…

A hero? A martyr?

No, I am neither.

Nor do I wish to be.

Of heaven I know nothing,

Of hell all too much.

Agony and insult are my bedfellows,

Mockeries of mockeries

Distress my knelling head.

All this means less, so much less, to me

Than the smell of an orange

Or the light on watered silk,

The sweep of a woman’s buttocks.

Sword in hand,

In my bullfighter’s jacket,

I attack the canvas,

Ripping a hole

For the sky to shine through.

Alchemy

Consider these signs:

That which dissolves is spirit,

That which coagulates is body.

A spirit can enter a body

To attenuate and clarify.


Sulphur and mercury,

Two substances with one essence,

The serpent with wings

And the serpent without,

One holding in his mouth

The other’s tail.


Sophic fire

Penetrates and destroys all things,

Transmutes the feculent

Into perfect spirit.


O water, true spirit,

Illuminating and sweet,

Bitter and obscure,

Strengthen us until the day of death.


In the caverns of metals

Is hidden the bright stone,

A mind sublime,

An open sea.

The king and queen

Bathe together in the fountain.


How many times

The philosopher’s ship

Is dashed against the capharean rock,

Wrecked and lost forever!


White is from black,

Purity from corruption.

The vulture and the toad

Are magisters both.


Purge yourself

With degrees of fire,

See true whiteness

Shining like a sword.


The green lion may devour

The sun, but you bide

With stars and seasons,

Coming into your own.

A Shaker Chair

This chair stands light and slender, yet strong,

Balanced by an angel’s hand,

It could dance like a ballerina.

The hands that made this

Knew the feel of rightness,

Fashioning a prayer

For the world.

When they danced

Their bodies trembled as He came,

The Holy Spirit fired their cells

With frenzy, made their eyes

Start from their sockets.

On polished pine floors

They moved as one,

In perfect unison,

With graceful steps

And voices raised in song,

Gathering and sharing blessings.

They worked as if

They had a thousand years to live,

And as if they were to die that very day.

Hitler: A Soliloquy

After the war

There will be such rejoicing!

I love to drive

On our autobahns:

They give me the sense

Of vast open spaces.

Our autobahns

Will abolish all frontiers

In the New Europe.

The Crimea-

For us Germans

That will be our Riviera.

When I meet children

I think of them

As my own;

They all belong to me.

What India was for England,

Russia will be for us!

If only I could make the German people

Understand what this space

Means for our future!

Our colonists will live

On handsome spacious farms

And the governors

Will rule from palaces,

The Slavs are a race of slaves

Who need a master,

And once a year

We shall lead

A troop of Kirghizes

Though the capital of the Reich

To awe them with the majesty

Of our imperial city!

As for the Swiss,

We can use them, at best,

As hotel keepers.

Rome, Florence, Siena, Ravenna,

How I dream of them!

My dearest wish

Would be to be able

To wander about in Italy

As an unknown painter

Free, utterly free!

Men dispossess one another

And it is always the stronger

Who triumphs;

Is that not the law of nature,

The most reasonable order of things?

If we did not respect this law,

If we did not impose our will,

Nature would devour us

Without mercy.

It was with such joy and idealism

That I set out for the front

In 1914,

Then I saw men falling

All around me

In thousands,

And I learnt that life

Is a cruel simple struggle,

Its sole object

To preserve the species.

I would prefer

Not to see any one suffer,

Not to do harm to anyone,

But when I realize the species

Is in danger

Then sentiment yields

To the coldest reason.

This is war

For the possession

Of the great spaces.

What a task awaits us!

We have a hundred years

Of joyful satisfaction before us!

At night in the Berghof

I lie awake for hours,

Contemplating the mountains

Lit up by the moon,

And brightness enters my soul,

My imagination is set free,

I am so far above petty things!

When I hear Wagner

I hear the rhythms of eternity;

One day, surely,

Science will discover

In the music of Wagner

The secret order of the world.

Suddenly

I am a boy again,

Shooting rats

In the backyard

With an airgun.

Mother,

Where are you?

The Jew killed you,

He burned you

With quicklime

And ate your heart.

You were so beautiful in death,

I kissed your face,

A little girl again.

The Great Plains

The sun is coming up

Over the plains, the greenbrown prairies,

You can drive and drive forever

And see nothing but flat brown fields

With the wind charging through…

Buffalo cloudshadows ripple across the land…

Cottonwoods lean odd angled in the valleys,

Over the water where big carp rise

In the dark riffles of evening

And stars shudder in the indigo.

O, the names of rivers! -

The Cimarron, the Red, the Brazos, the Purgatoire,

The Trinity, the Big Sandy, the Canadian, the Arkansas, the Smoky Hill,

The Solomon, the Republican, the Arikaree, the Frenchman,

The Little Blue, the Big Blue, the South Platte, the North Platte,

The Laramie, the Loup, the Niobrara, the White Earth,

The Owl, the Cheyenne, the Cannonball, the Grand,

The Heart, the Knife, the Yellowstone,

The Missouri and the Little Missouri,

The Tongue, the Powder, the Musselshell, the Bighorn,

The Judith, the Marias, the Milk.

I dream of the empty villages of the Mandan and the Hidatsa,

The earth lodges collapsed and vanished,

Leaving smallpox scars.

When the buffalos were slaughtered by the white men

They lay so thick on the ground that you

Could walk for miles on their bodies

And the bones were used to make fertilizer and china.

Bonnie and Clyde drove far and hard across these plains,

Running a thousand miles at a stretch, just for fun,

Kidnapping, robbing, killing, outrunning the law,

With their pet white rabbit on the backseat of the automobile,

And when they stopped Clyde would play his saxophone,

While bonnie read true-romance magazines

And painted her toenails pink and dyed her hair red

To match her shoes and dresses.

All these abandoned farms adrift in the fields:

When all their enterprise had come to nothing

The owners just walked away and left them,

Among the dinosaur bones and prehistoric tools.

Out here you can cry like a coyote,

Where dust devils spin across the horizon

And lightning streaks upward and down in the distance,

Thunderstorms wander barefoot over the earth;

And you can gallop into the earth and sky,

Shouting at the heavens with ridiculous joy

While tumbleweed rolls and bounces in the wind,

Flies through the air, piles up against fences…

Amalfi

Perpendicular Amalfi, enthroned above anfractuous coast-exquisite as life itself!

From here to launch oneself into space-and vanish in the aquamarine! Here the heart’s republic votes for happiness; fountains leap with dolphin joy; sunlight adores the piazza. Just smell the oleanders on the strutting promenade!

The pedestalled cathedral’s confection blesses the air with sugar and spice and beneath the altar the miraculous body of St Andrew floats like a phantom ship, haloed with corposants.

Night falls like a whisper; we sail by the stars, beguiled by the Golden Fleece.

The Tigris Lands

Mounds of buried villages float in valley mist,

Listless horizon disintegrates to dust,

Autumn stubble blows absentmindedly over undulations,

Whose barley once enriched the Assyrians,

And sheep flock from dawn to dusk.

Look before sunrise across the Tigris lands

Towards the Hakkiori mountains erupting, uncoiling,

Beneath an orange rim their amethyst veils,

Shot through with flashing tremors.

Lily-coloured cumuli, involved as conches,

Meditate in the sharp clean heavens,

Fortress bastions float in the distance...

World begins to heave, groan and sunder,

Fire-mists writhing above the ranges,

And from chaos the Tigris and the Western Habur

Coil out toward the sun, wandering apart,

Where wind and water lay the rock bare.


Clairvoyant-white, streaked with scintillation, Lake Van

Breathes ethereal light, in which the sky’s attention

Transmit instantaneously to the heart,

And the planets at night leap from their stations,

Stars’ slow dying spreads sheen across the lake.


Nightfall in the Zab Valley, flaming crags

Close in, summits in dark conflagration,

As the mountain masses crumble away,

Pleating in shale-slumps in the abyss,

Baseless and shifting as a madman’s mind.

The sun spins silk webs across the precipices,

Gaunt lacework trembling in the light.

The Zab defile, vortex of mist and crags,

Winds fathomless as prophetic dreams,

As you leave and cross the watershed

Through steep pastures smoked with blue thistles,

And sup at a cold spring where hoopoes

Flop in the hollows, and partridges lead

Their brood across the boulders.


To contemplate the world from horseback,

Knowing that silence is truthfulness,

Jogging through a vale of wild pears and vines,

Under cobalt morning sky!-

And so, at the watershed, the land breaks

Westward, Judi Dagh’s long promontory

Flickers, and, there, a the remote tip

Of a ravine, stands the simple chapel

Marking Noah’s emergence from the Ark.

Momentous as a kingfisher’s wing,

The Tigris curves through warm light air,

Elysian plains rise, rich grasses flaring,

Dark soil primed with red moons.

On The South Downs

Wed the land, and learn it by heart;

In this life and flesh you are now,

As the sun winds.

Live the hills and meadows and rivers,

The weather changing its mind.

See your life with a skylark’s eye.

Through the gateway of trees

I cross the threshold:

Between the pillars

Of left and right,

Mother and father,

Night and day.

A graveyard yew I touch

With hand and mind,

And greet the souls of the departed.

Like a pig feasting

On delicious mast,

I hail the Lady of the Woods-

Druids’ book,

Grey and lovely beech tree!

Like a blackbird on my shoulder,

Time sings of rise and fall,

Of in and out.

Back to the trackways

Of our forefathers,

Walking, moving

As nomads of loving attention,

Crossing fields and woods,

Climbing over stiles,

Communing at moots, toots and tumps,

Let us go...

Drink from the sun’s amber chalice,

And walk with the trees...

Curves of the earth,

All queenly shoulders, thighs and buttocks,

This chalk world was made

From the steaming sea,

As the coccoliths died and sank

To the floor, they created chalk,

Combining with sponges, fish,

Sea-urchins, sea-lilies and ammonites,

All hefted up out of the brew,

The giantess’s body

Which our feet cling to.

These solid green clouds...

As an Irish bard would retreat

Into a black room

And lie with a stone on his chest,

To meditate and dream

Beyond his body,

So I take to the dragon-paths...

The red wyvern and the white

Divide this land,

And life, the adder,

Reserves its precious venom

For the worthy.

From the north you come upon him:

The Long Man of Wilmington,

Standing tall over the fields,

Holding his staves open

As a doorway between worlds;

His body crossed by sheep paths

At crown,

Throat,

Solar plexus

And perineum;

The powers of the earth

He grasps in his hands,

King and queen

Of the seasons;

We are the wounded,

Where the holy enters time,

As the seed

Spears the ovum

And a soul ascends.

Why should I look

To the wisdom of far lands

When this country’s tree

Has roots and branches

Enough to climb

For a thousand lifetimes?

Giants of the earth and sky,

Through me flows

The same fierce glory

That fires your striding limbs,

And consecrates me

Poet, warrior and priest!

Pagan torches burned on

To the last in this goblin realm,

Where wolf and bear

Clawed off the missionary,

Wish hounds chase the souls

Of the damned overhead,

And the phantasmal dord

Sounds in the woods.

Languedoc

Blinding afternoons-red field, green vineyards-

Where passion’s stiletto pierces the heart;

Granite-shattering savagery weathers the land,

Lolloping like a hunchback on the run.


La navette albigeoise: crushed almonds infused

With orange blossom and the strangeness of history,

Whose violence time refines to proud beauty.

Restless, I savour the taste on my tongue,

A stranger to the Cathar sky,

While Albi glowers in dour evening light,

Cathedral-fortress crimsoned with sacrifice.

Inside, the naked dead, reborn from their graves,

Arise exalted on the tide of Judgment Day,

Beneath them the damned, dragged down by demons,

The proud, the envious, the miserly, the angry,

The greedy, the self-indulgent, all dragged down.



The wolfish sun prowls through plane tree arcades

And hypnotized towns, all crumbling plaster

And faded green shutters guarding sly secrets.

Tawny stone bridges still stand, awaiting

Crusaders at the gallop, fallen angels in armour,

Sent to wreak the False God’s wrath.

Earth, scorched and martyred by swords of light!

Slaughterers’ psalms gallop on the air

And the mind clenches in noon’s rigor mortis.


Witness the cathedral cloisters in Elne:

White marble columns, each unique in design,

Fluted or twisted or carved like a pine-trunk,

Replete with detail, etched by human hands,

And saturated with millennial sunlight,

Surfaces matured to mellow cream hue,

Becoming subtle rose or sulphurous yellow.


Land of wraiths where the wind intones in Occitan:

The fierce walls of Aïgues-Morte rise undaunted

From dismal marsh flats pocked with dead lagoons

While, across the Camargue’s sunflower meadows,

Willows wisely bend before the wind’s tirade,

Leaves smelted to molten silver mass.

Solemnly the sun sets over Mende cathedral,

The rose window’s glow still alive in the twilight,

Signal flare to guide the stray soul home.


The Cevennes ridges metamorphose into the distance:

Here and there, among stark rocks, rowanberries

Speckle the blue haze with druidic red.

How long can a man survive, flayed to the bone

By faith and depair, his course uncertain,

Heaven a distant mocking mirage?

Philosophers

They walk alone, apart, unheard,

Wanting to believe that this is their hour,

That the solid world has need of abstraction,

That pretty girls worship clever men.

Theirs are the politics of the invisible,

Querulous notes in society’s margin,

A life of adventure, trafficking in diamonds and spices.

The mind, after all, is a brothel of sensations,

And these unlikely rakes are addicts, connoisseurs,

Nescience and omniscience equal pleasures of the whip.


Behold the man, noble silhouette against a bookcase,

That eats, sleeps, shits, fucks, interrogates the mirror,

Phenomenon among phenomena.

All this, and the love of ellipses,

Of hunting the unicorn

And drawing circles in the sand!


These campus deities, teasing worlds into being,

Stare glumly into their teacups, consulting the leaves,

And secretly dream themselves handsome conquerors,

Apostles, angels, cleverer than ecstasy or death.

Numbers

I see the One,

Brahma,

The deus absconditus,

The aleph,

The Ain Sof;

I see the Two,

The I and Thou,

The systole and diastole,

Male and female,

The mysterium tremendum and the mysterium fascinans,

The Bismillah,

Yin and yang,

Ahura Mazda and Ahriman,

Yesod and Shekhinah,

Siva and Shakti,

The rain-making twins,

The vita contemplativa and the vita activa;

I see the Three,

The beginning, the middle and the end,

The three wishes,

The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,

Anu, Enlil and Ea,

Isis, Osiris and Horus,

The three worlds of Midgard, Asgard and Niflheim,

The three primary colours,

The three aspects of Hekate,

The three gods Brahma, Vishnu and Siva,

The three Moiras,

Tamas, rajas and sattva,

The three gates of the Temple of the Grail,

The three ways of Manichaeism,

Acids, bases and salts,

Mass, power and velocity,

Spirit, soul and body,

The three degrees of the Sufi soul,

The soul that incites to evil,

The blaming soul

And the soul at peace,

The three tunes Al-Farabi played on his lute,

Islam, iman and ihsan,

Haram, halal and mushabbih,

The tripartite sayings of the Sufis,

The Tripitaka,

Tres faciunt collegium,

The Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman,

The trident,

The triple thunderbolt,

The triptych,

The triangle,

The trivium,

Shadrach, Meshach and Abendigo,

The three sons of Adam,

The three Magi,

The Third Reich,

The Third Rome,

The ternary histories of Joachim of Fiore and Ibn Khaldun,

The threefold blowing of the shofar,

The note that ascends to heaven,

The note that breaks it

And the note that cleaves it,

The lucky three-coloured cat,

Shanti shanti shanti,

Wallahi, billahi, tallahi,

The three lions on the England football shirt,

The three brothers in the fairy-tale,

The riddle posed three times,

The tintal rhythm of Indian music,

The waltz;

I see the Four,

The four phases of the moon,

The four cardinal points,

The cross,

The square,

The Tetragrammaton,

The four animals of Ezekiel’s vision,

The four arms of Shiva,

The four Gospels,

The four rivers of Paradise,

The four humours,

The four seasons,

The four Righteous Ones of Islam,

Shari’a, tariqa, haqiqa, m’arifa,

The four ages of the world,

Atsilut, beriah, yetsirah, asiyah,

Artha, kama, dharma, moksha,

The four Hindu castes,

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

On their steeds white, red, black and sallow;

I see the Five,

The five senses,

The pentagondodecahedron,

The starfish,

Ishtar,

Venus,

The pentagram,

The epagomeneia,

The lustrum,

The five Chinese elements,

The five Ancient Ones of China,

The five-headed Hanuman,

The five sacred objects of the Sikhs,

The Hand of Fatima,

The Pentateuch,

The quintets of the Persian poets,

The quinta essentia,

The five wounds of Christ,

The five Pillars of Islam,

The five archangels of the Ismailis,

A perfume called Chanel No.5;

I see the Six,

The six days of Creation,

The Crucifixion of Christ at the sixth hour of the sixth day,

The Amesha Spentas,

The hexagram,

The six-winged seraphim,

The hexagonal snowflake and beehive;

I see the Seven,

The seven days,

The seven seas,

The trivium and quadrivium,

The seven ages of man,

The seven storeys of the Babylonian ziggurat,

The seven veils of the statue of Mary

In the shrine of Venus Eryeina in Sicily

That are lifted but once a year,

The seven stars of the Pleiades,

The seven halls of the Ancient Egyptian netherworld,

The seven steps of Solomon’s Temple,

The menorah,

The Seventh Seal,

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,

The seven deadly sins,

The seven sacraments,

The seven joys and seven sorrows of Mary,

The seven strings of Apollo’s lyre,

The seven tones in an octave,

The seven hills of Rome,

The septemviratus of ancient Rome,

The seven gates of the Mithraic mysteries,

The seven branches of the World Tree,

The seven circumambulations of the Kaaba,

The seven styles of Persian calligraphy,

The Seven Sleepers,

The seven chakras,

The seven lata’if,

The seven saints of Marrakech,

The seven voyages of Sindbad,

The seven imams of the Ismailis,

The seven flames of Agni,

The seven Seals of Solomon,

The seven distillations of alchemy,

The seven-headed hydra,

The seven birthplaces of Homer;

I see the Eight,

The eight paradises of Islam,

The eight-pointed star of Ishtar,

The day of circumcision,

The day of the Resurrection,

The eight-petalled lotus,

The eight Immortals of China,

The eight-legged steed of Odin, Sleipnir;

I see the Nine,

The nine years of the siege of Troy,

The ninth hour, when Christ died,

The nine orders of angels,

The nine-storeyed pagodas of China,

The nine skies of the Mongol shamans,

The nine Muses,

The nine steps leading to the Heavenly City,

The nine rivers of the Mayan underworld,

The nine days and nights Odin hung on the tree,

The nine Valkyries,

The nine meanders of the River Styx,

The feast of Apollo in Delphi every ninth year;

I see the Ten,

The tetraktys,

The Ten Commandments,

The ten books of the Rig Veda,

The ten sefirot of the Kabbalah,

The ten generations between Adam and Noah,

The ten archangels of the Ismailis,

The tenth of Muharram in Karbala;

I see the Eleven,

The men of the football team,

The Rhineland Carnival’s beginning;

I see the Twelve,

The signs of the zodiac,

The twelve apostles,

The twelve days of Christmas,

The twelve imams of the Shia;

I see the Thirteen,

The thirteenth disciple,

The thirteen infernal hierarchies,

The magic square of Mars,

The thirteen heavens of ancient Mexico;

I see the Fourteen,

The fourteen days to full moon,

The fourteen parts of the dismembered Osiris,

The fourteen innocent saints of the Shia,

The fourteen sun letters and fourteen moon letters of the Arabic alphabet,

I see the Fifteen,

The fifteen gates of Nineveh,

The fifteen priests of ancient Rome

Permitted to consult the Sibylline Books,

The fifteen mysteries of the Virgin Mary;

I see the Sixteen,

The sixteen signs of beauty in India,

The sixteen incantations when preparing soma,

The sixteen classical Arabic meters;

I see the Seventeen,

The seventeenth day of the seventh month

When Noah landed on Ararat,

The seventeen syllables of the hexameter,

The seventeen letters of the greatest name of Allah,

I see the Twenty-Two,

The letters of the Hebrew alphabet,

The twenty-two connections of the sefirot,

The arcane of the tarot,

The prayers of the Avesta;

I see the Thirty-two,

The cards in a pack of cards,

The pieces on a chessboard,

The paths of wisdom in the Kabbalah,

The points of the compass;

I see the Forty,

The forty days’ of the Pleiades’ disappearance,

The forty aspects of Saturn, star of Judah,

The years of the Israelites in the desert,

The days of Moses on Mount Sinai,

The hours of Christ in the tomb,

The years of the Mahdi on earth,

The number of the Prophet Muhammad,

The days of the Sufi’s retreat;

I see the Sixty-four,

The sixty-four arts of the Kamasutra,

The sixty-four pleasures of Shiva,

The squares of the chessboard,

The hexagrams of the I Ching;

I see the Seventy-two,

The seventy-two names of Yahweh,

The seventy-two disciples of Christ,

The seventy-two saints of China,

The seventy-two Cathar bishops,

The seventy-two Muslim sects,

The seventy-two chapels in the Temple of the Grail.

Electronic Gnostic

To voyage beyond the map…

That I always dreamed of,

A young lad lying on his back

In the grass, growing an angel’s wings…


The conjuror’s smile:

Pick a card.

Here I am,

A hermenaut,

A spook.

My labour

Is the opus contra naturum.


Humming and groaning

With mystical ecstasies

And erotic frenzy

My computer

Burns its incense…

(Electricity:

Ethereal fire of the Rosicrucians,

Elixir of the World Soul...)

Mother always said

Never dabble in the occult

Yet here I am, sending out mischievous embassies of spirits

Into the wishful air.


Hephaestus limps round his smithy,

Hammering out the great bronze shield for Achilles,

Aided by comely handmaids of hammered gold

Resembling real living girls.

Skilfully, he adorns the work

With intricate scenes of battle, harvest and celebration

That magically come to life in the mind…



Crafty Hermes, be my guide,

Induct me into your mysteries,

Meet me at the crossroads,

Where I traffic in dreams,

Teach me new tricks.

Con man, inventor, merchant, magus, thief,

Wielding the caduceus’s double helix,

Happening on lucky finds

With exquisite serendipity.


O, Alexandria,

Your patron god Sarapis

A syncretic eclectic hybrid;

City where Heron built divine engines,

Singing statues, automata, and gadgets.

His magic theatre

That rolled out before the audience,

Executed a miniature three-dimensional performance

Of a Dionysian mystery rite-

Flames leapt, thunder crashed,

And tiny Bacchantes whirled

In frenzy round the god, -

Then exited under its own steam.

For the temples Heron

Made mechanical singing birds,

Invisible trumpet blasts,

Mirrors that conjured spooks,

Magical doors.


Ah, memory theatre,

Carnival of spirits,

Masquerade of ghosts!

Hieroglyphs, bring down the heavens,

Bring down the heavens here!

By ciphers, signs and sigils

I invoke the angels,

Jealous of their algorithmic powers.



What allegory am I now living out,

Unconscious of the meanings,

Barely glimpsing the symbols

That point my next move?



Trithemius of Würzburg,

That prodigious scholar,

Who took over the monastery of Sponheim

At the age of twenty-three,

And built upon a magnificent library,

Full of occult texts,

And wrote his Steganographia,

Revealed to him in a dream...

Beneath the spells' compendium

Are cryptographic miracles,

And a complex system of astrological magic,

Using numerology, wax images and esoteric alphabets

To invoke and communicate with astral intelligences;

A means to acquire universal knowledge,

To “know everything happening in the world.”



I roll my soul’s dice

In the game of chance.

What say the archons?

Electromagnetic romance:

I fornicate with phantoms,

Stormed by succubi.

What is this quickening

That dizzies my being,

This blur of transformations?

Will I attain the Heavenly City

Or tumble into the Abyss?

Arias of the Castrati

Geldings, eunuchs, capons, nature’s rejects:

So they were scorned by the very public

Which thundered,wept , and cheered for more,

“Evivva il coltellino!” quaking the opera house.

Most sang not for kings and cardinals,

But to please some sweaty lecherous parish priest;

Busked for pennies in the streets,

Turned to prostitution to get by,

Ended, all too often, in suicide.

Taken like animals in the trap,

Doctored and flogged into beauty,

They served both splendour and cruelty,

Vestals of a cold bewitching flame.

To be the greatest of the divas,more magnificent

Than any mere female! Incomparable virtuosity

Had been beaten into their skins,

Outsoaring and outstranging all.

Philistine time soon rendered them pariahs,

Huge round-bodied effeminate freaks,

More shunned than loved, till the finale,

One last impossible note, no curtain calls.

Hadrian's Wall

Britannia.Pretani.Land of the Tattoed.

A rare exotic asset held at cost,

The barbarians always out there,

Wily,resolute and bold,

Hidden in the hazy weather,

Beyond the wall...

The grizzled legionaries stare out

From their posts,

Into the Brigantes’ hunting ground.

The very trees and hills are in revolt.



“Wretched little Britons,” the centaurs

Came dashing out of the fog,

On nimble little ponies, turning

And wheeling with supernatural ease,

Horse and rider one body,one mind.



On either side the war-gods’ shrines

Steam with sacrifice

The Romans,for their part,

Thank their patrons for gifts received;

The Celts, more wary and propitiatory,

Make offerings in advance.



Across Northumberland moors and valleys

The young Roman commander and his cohorts

Gallop their horses to hounds, exulting.

No finer sport is to be had anywhere in the Empire!

At a lucky spot he erects an altar

To Silvanus the invincible,lord of the woods,

For granting him a titanic boar

Of exceptional spirit and quality,

Which so many before him had failed to bag.

Cernunnos watches all from the trees.



The invaders’ coins shine like new moons,

Fairy-horses galloping from hand to hand.

Farting soldiers wipe their arses with moss in the latrines.

The barracks whores are quickly given nicknames.



In far-off Rome, the Emperor frets

That his famous regiments will be ruined

By dice games, drinking and the pox.

Without frontiers, without limits,

There could be no civilisation.

Let wolves and bears retreat

From the straight stones of Rome!

The Wine Drinker

A glass of wine completes my philosophy.

Man’s truest friend, proof against reality.

From beneficent illusions,

I compose a symposium.

This is no selfish appetite,

But an offering to the earth,

As the Arab makes with his hookah.

I will die under the aegis of Dionysus

Like Alexander the Great...

Sacred names of terroir and grape

Flavour the spirit’s inquiries

Through languid underworld quests.

What wisdom may I find here

In these notes and tones?

Autumn’s elixir promises eternal life:

Earth’s Eucharist that a seasoned heart

Will meditate upon,and,in the exchange,

Learn to give.To right disorder.

Sipping blessings,I begin to worship

The deep world from whose mystery

I occur.Chivalrous as a Duke of Burgundy,

In love with the Golden Fleece,

I pledge my dreams to the vine.

The world is what is left behind:

Process and transformation are my loves,

Face to face with the self in the glass,

The painful redeemer, the sinner judged.

Time, too devious and precise

For even the cleverest to dupe or avoid,

Returns a lost and weeping child

To that far-off First Communion.

Manaus

On market ice a pirarucu lies,

Six feet long, two hundred pounds,

Spawned in the seas of Gondwanaland,

A weird giant,magnificent and hideous.


The black waters of the Rio Negro

And the yellow Solimões

Meet but do not merge,

Flowing side by side,distinct,

Joined in mystery.


Pâté de foie gras from France

And biscuits shipped in from Boston.

Waldemar Scholz, strolling in his gardens

With his pet lion,

Sends his laundry to Paris

To ensure a proper crease in the equatorial air.

Meanwhile his slaves die inelegantly

As the rubber bleeds its white lines

Through the heart.


In the dolphin-breath morning haze

A little boat pilots out into muddy bayou;

Silence so thick you can roll it like tobacco between your fingers;

Madness moves in the water.


From the orchestra of the Teatro Amazonas

Gaze masks of Western avatars:

Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Verdi.

Gilt and velvet,

And the chill of ghosts.

Outside,in the square,

A snake writhes across the sidewalk

Veronese's "Allegory of Wisdom and Strength"

I

Venice, 1576.All summer the sun beats down

On the paving stones, and the city is eerily empty

And quiet. Black gondolas zigzag across

The lagoon to the lazaretto on San Erasmo,

Bringing victims from the plague-ridden city.

While discoloured festering bodies pile up

On the streets, Paolo Veronese, in his studio,

Bony faced and darkbearded, stern of mien,

Among ledgerbooks, terracotta busts and torsos,

Wax model hands, and shelves of pigment jars,

White lead, lac and massicot, smalt and cendre,

Minium, indigo, verdigris and ultramarine,-

Examines his skin in the mnring light

For the telltale stigmata,-will he live

To complete this new creation?-then begins

A grand new canvas, his hand at first hesitant

Then gathering confidence, force and speed,

Commissioned by Rudolf II of Prague himself,

So craving the mythological and the erotic,

The monumental and the minute.


O, Venice of watered silk, taffeta and brocade!

Gentlewomen linger all day in dressmakers’ shops,

Fingering satins, velevets, damasks and laces.

In tapestried palazzos, while acrobats and clowns

Sport for their pleasure, rich guests feast to the sound

Of fife and flute, and dance capellos and torcias,

And sup vernaccia and matricali flavoured

With perfumes, spiked with drugs.

Among glowing aquariums and sugar statuettes

Of the Popes, and even cutlery moulded

Out of confectionery, and the toothpick gold…

Sumptuous world that Veronese made his own!

The folds in brocade, the gold filigree of pitchers,

Sheen of pink and green on velvet gowns

All attract his prying eye and yearning hand…

Alchemist in search of the ultimate tincture,

He mixes sulphur and mercury in a crucible,

Distilling cinnabar; copper dissolved in vinegar

Crystallize verdigris; each precious pigment

Materializes, unique to its moment and mood.


II


In the Hradčany Palace, on Prague’s height,

Rudolf II, bulbous eyes in his ponderous head;

Wanders round his cabinet of curiosities,

Bewitched by the unicorn’s horn, his mind

All writhing mercurial serpents and toads,

In love with the Kabbalah of difficult art,

Ostentatious surprise made artifice supreme…

All the world’s freaks and weird toys

Cannot sate his appetite for the obscure,

Feasting on automata and flying machines...

I am damned and possessed by the Devil!-


And so, by my life’s wizardry, to square


The circle and discover the elixir!


All the secrets of nature shall be mine…

Ever more reclusive and secretive, Rdolf

Lives on hidden codes and wild flights,

The ominous end of century bearing down

On his spirit,-the heavens are in turmoil,

And numerologists trace the panic in dates

As a nova streaks across the night sky.



Rudolf dead, the Swedes storm the city

And, marauding through the corridors

Of Hradčany, marvel at the treasures,

Walls line with paintings, chabers crammed

With wondrous sculptures and artefacts.

Penetrating deeper into the castle, soe troops

Come to the Spanish Wing, where hundreds

Of the finest pictures hang, among them

Veronese’s “Allegory of Wisdom and Strength”.

Greedily the plunderers steal the works

To bring back in tribute to their queen,

Waiting impatiently back in Stockholm.



III


In Stockholm Castle, Queen Christina paces

To and fro in her chambers, avoiding

He own unlovely image in the mirror,

(Before her birth, the astrologer had predicted

A boy, and, when she emerged from he mother,

Hirsute ad in a caul, the king was told

He had a son. Even when the error was discovered

No one dared tell His Majesty the truth,

Till eventually his sister carried the infant

To him and he saw for himself, and smiled

As he held Christina in his arms-

“Well, she ought to be clever. See how easily

She deceived us all!”From that day on,

She was raised as a boy, and seldom spoke

To women, disdaining her own sex,

-Ugly Christina, cerebral and witty,

Sterling virago and king amongst kings!



The booty from Prague arrives in crates

Just as the Queen is dreaming of the south,

Her heart set on Italy and incomparable Rome.

That winter, also comes the great Descartes,

Dressed as a courtier with lace-trimmed gloves,

Eager and expecting of the celebrated queen,

All too soon disappointed in her intellect,

Finding her besotted with trivial sophistry,

While she, for her part, inatntly dislikes shim

For his ugliness and arrogance,-

How dare he disdain and contradict her!

Henceforth she scornfully neglects him,

While the arctic winter attacks his lungs

And rapidly lays him on his deathbed.



Irked by her office, Christina abdicates

And heads south, with her treasures,

Head shorn and wearing men’s garb,

Short corpulent lopsided steatopygus troll,

Big nosed and bigmouthed, with fierce blue eyes,

Whiskery double chin and manly voice…

In the Rome of morbid ecstasies and icons,

She dwells among jasmine pergolas,

Regretting lost splendours and times,

For Raphael and his ilk are no more.

As she hosts the sacra conversazione

Of scholars and artists, her paintings

Gaze down from the walls, and bless

The noble strivings of abject souls.


IV


Crimson and mirrored, ornate apartments

Of the Palais Royal in Paris, home

To Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, man of talents

Forever fighting boredom, the deadliest foe,

With the habits of scholar, soldier, and roué,

Regent without office at court, an outsider,

Taking low women as mistresses, defying

Church and society with cynical wit.

At Mass, while all around read prayerbooks

He studies a volume of Rabelais,

And, at home, conducts elite orgies,

Exploring all possible sexual combinations,

With contests to see which woman

Excels in genital pulchritude.

Here hangs “Wisdom and Strength”,

And, as the picture ages, a pentimento

Shows thorugh, painted-over billowing

Of cloth, that haunts and disfigures,

As the browning canvas exudes

A mellow golden glow…

When Philippe dies, his son Louis,

Reared as a trainee roué,

Dismisses his mistresses, cancels his orgies

And turns to religion with a vengeance;

He slashes and mutilates some

Of his precious erotic paintings

And retreats to an abbey to live

As an ascetic, sleeping on straw,

And distributng alms to the needy,

Refusing even to attend his mother’s funeral

On the grounds that “there is no such thing as death.”

Traces of Byzantium

I

Venice in winter, air crisp and cold;

Garbage boats and water hearses

Ply the canals; I lose my way

In the tiny streets, only to emerge

In some secret square, confronted

By a special beauty. (In the Accademia

Sits the last official gift of Byzantium

To the Venetian Republic;

A reliquary containing a fragment

Of the True Cross, presented

By Cardinal Bessarion in 1463.

In Constantinople the Venetians

Had made their fortunes, trading

Salt and slaves for gold and silks,

Russian sables and Indian spices.

In time, they came to see their partners

As rivals, ever greedier for their loot,

And the Byzantines began to fear

These suave piratical merchants

Whose privileges exceeded their own;

And in 1204, Doge Enrico Dandolo

Sent a fleet of Crusaders to storm

And sack the City on the Bosphorus

And bring back the plunder to adorn

His palaces and churches).

Shivering in mist from the lagoon,

I walk to the Fondamenta Nuove

To catch the boat for Torcello;

Through the mist looms the isle

Of the dead, whose unloved bones

Are dug up every twelve years

And thrown into a common pit.

Desolate Torcello: the black pods

Of the jacaranda trees rattle

Along the canal.Inside the cathedral,

The Last Judgment of Greek mosaicists

Glimmers;all marble,mother-of-pearl

And enamel; catching the glow

Of lamps and candles, fabulous beasts

Devouring lost souls, hands and feet

In their beaks, while angels sound

The Horrid Horn and a siren perches

On a rock while the damned swim

In the sea around; angels with poles

Force the damned down into the flames,

Even a Byzantine emperor and empress,

As sport for blue devils, and worms writhe

In the eye sockets of grinning skulls.



Byzantium no more, Atlantis no more...

Realms of the Romaioi,

Preservers of Europe for a thousand years,

Who worshipped God with opulence,

Under the eyes of the saints in icons,

Knowing that Christ by his beauty

Overcame the world, and that man

Must mediate the seen and the unseen....

In Ravenna, fog is swirling in from the sea,

And a biting wind blows it around me,

As I enter San Vitale, the harmony

Of light and shadow all-subsuming;

Out of the walls come Justinian

And Theodora,-made by artisans

Despatched from Constantinople itself-

He, the son of a Macedonian peasant,

She, daughter of a Cypriot bear tamer,

Surrounded by their adoring retinue.

Accompanied by her ladies and eunuchs,

Theodora, once a prostitute, now haloed,

Holds a chalice for the Mass,

In her crown and jewelled cloak

Broidered with the three Magi;

Justinian, God’s viceroy on earth,

In his purple cloak trimmed with gold silk,

Carries the paten, while his prelates

Hold high the cross and jewelled Bible.


II

April in Serbia: white blossom

Of bird cherry and wild pear,

And fierce joy of šlivovica;

Inside the monastery church at Manasija,

Towering among orchards,

The are beautiful Morava frescoes,

Among them a portrait of the founder,

In robes embroidered

With the doubleheaded Byzantine eagle

The Despot Stephen Lazarević Visoki,

Son of Prince Lazar, the martyr of Kosovo,

Where the Serbs lost their lands

To the Turks, and retreated

To the northern mountains.

Subtler than his father, Stephen

Played the diplomat with skill,

And survived to die in his bed;

Here he surrounded himself

With scholars and befriended hermits,

Looking out from his high tower,

As he sought in religion solace

For the doom he saw coming

To his realm, for any moment

The Turks might launch their onslaught;

And, in the end, he was forced

To cede even his beloved Manija

To the enemy, when all hope was gone.



In a beech-covered valley, with snow

On the hills beyond, Kalenić monastery

Offers sweet refuge from the world;

In the fresco of the Wedding at Cana,

The groom pricks his bride’s finger

To drink her blood with his wine

In token of fidelity; and the guests

Dine with forks, a luxury of Constantinople

Almost unknown outside Venice,

For the Serbs had been importing

Byzantine refinements for years,

As the Nemanja kings created a realm

Vast in extent ad grand in ambition;

But when these frescoes were painted

The kingdom was in dire peril

As the Turks advanced ever closer

With each day, not to be denied.

The artists worked as one in pairs,

Applying a base of white lime and straw,

Then three coats of plaster, incised

With a cartoon, and the third coat

They painted while still wet,

So the plaster absorbed the pigments

Of cobalt, ochre, haematite, terre-verte,

Carbon, chalk, lapis lazuli and gold.



Through the Ibar valley, its barren rocks

Towering over the swift twisting river,

The high road winds through

A narrow pine valley and alpine pastures,

To Studenica monastery, founded

In a wilderness of wolves and bears

By Stephen Nemanja, to be his mausoleum,

For he wish his bones to have a holy rest,

And here he was brought home from Mt Athos

After his death there as an anchorite,

“My child,” he had begged his son Sava,

“Do this please for me. Dress me in that habit

Which is to be my shroud, and prepare me,

For laying gin my grave, as is the custom.

Strew rushes on the earth for me to lie upon.

Then place a stone beneath my head

So that I may lie there until the Lord

Comes to take me hence.”

Above his simple tomb stands

A fresco, showing the sainted king,

In monk’s habit, offering up a model

Of his church to Christ and the Virgin.

His relics are said to fill the church

With the odour of violets,

And in the evening it hums like a beehive

With the chanting of vespers...



Sopoćani monastery, high

In the mountains, was built

As a Nemanja mausoleum

By King Uroš the First,

Who deposed his own brother

To steal the throne, and, in time,

Was himself deposed by his son.

These frescoes were commissioned

By Uroš from Byzantine artists of the exiled

Imperial Court at Nicaea.-

Superb frescoes, of wondrous grace,

Faces majestic and serene,

Whether joyful or sad, imbued

With mystical devotion, fashioned

With delicate and subdued palette.

On the north wall of the narthex,

A fresco depicts the interment

Of King Uroš’s mother, lying

On a bier, while an angel clasps a baby

That represents her soul,

While Christ and the Virgin approach;

Uroš himself leans over his mother,

His two sons beside him,

And a courtier, looking on, holds

A precious handkerchief to his eyes,

A luxury which the painter

Must have spied at the court in Nicaea.


Blackbirds brought the evil tidings

To the ears of Lazar’s widow,

That the Prince, whose nobility

And skill had united and preserved

His doomed nation for a time

And raised a great army

To repel Sultan Murad’s invasion,

Had fallen to the enemy,

Beheaded as vile infidels,

And thereafter for centuries

The Serbs would be enslaved,

Enfeoffed as serfs, their sons

Abducted as Janissaries to the Ottomans,

Taxed and persecuted, massacred

And impaled, without pity.


I imagine myself as Bishop Liudprand,

Tenth-century diplomat from Cremona,

At his audience with Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus

At the Great Palace in Constantinople;

“I was led into the Emperor’s presence

By two eunuchs and prostrated myself.

Before the Emperor’s throne

Stood a tree made of gilded bronze,

Its branches filled with birds

All mad of gilded bronze,

Each singing according to its species;

So marvellously fashioned was this throne

That one moment it was on the ground

And the next had risen high into the air;

Suddenly the Emperor had changed

His robes, and was sitting somewhere

Up near the ceiling, looking down at me;

How this was done I cannot imagine;

Huge, it was guarded by gold lions

Beating the ground with their tails

And roaring horribly, with quivering tongues”.


The monastery of Visoki Dečani,

Its white marble walls gleam

Amid primrose-covered banks

And chestnut woods full of violets and hellebores;

Founded by King Stephen Uroš III Dečanski

And his treacherous son Dušan

Who one day would murder him;

In 1214 Stephen was goaded into revolt

Against his own father, King Milutin,

By his stepmother, and was easily defeated;

His father had him blinded and banished

To Constantinple; in fact, the blinding

Had been bungled, but for seven years

Wily Stephen pretended to be blind,

Until his father’s death, when he ascended

The throne and, before his people,

Suddenly, miraculously regained his sight;

As king, he was ferocious and ruthless,

But fell under the influence of his wife,

The Byzantine princess, Maria Palaeologina,

Who made him so excessively Greek

In his tastes and style, that the nobility

Turned against him, and his son Dušan

Usurped him and, in a castle dungeon

Strangled his father to death with his own hands.

Inside the church here at Visoki Dečani,

Where Stephens’s body lies entombed,

Is covered from roof to floor with frescoes

Commissioned by Dušan, praying

By such offerings to God to expiate

His great sin and atone for his guilt;

Again and again, appears the figure

Of Onuphrius, wild old hermit

Of the Egyptian desert, white beard

And hair down to his feet,

Who subsisted for seventy years

On palm leaves and roots.

On the southern wall, father and son

Hold a model of the church between them,

And all around members of their dynasty

Are painted, amid archangels clad

In Byzantine arms and armour, some

With long Western swords, but others

Equipped with Turkish lances and bows.

Dušan made himself mightiest of his line,-

A handsome giant, in whose black eyes

Burned terrifying rages and wild laughter-

And dreamed of claiming the Byzantine crown,

But in 1355, while preparing his campaign

To seize Constantinople, he was stricken

With fever and died, having built dozens of churches

To atone for his father’s murder,

And kept the most splendid Byzantine court

At Skopje, as if he were already Emperor.


Built by King Milutin, the church of Gračanica,

Is subtly composed of grey and ochre stone,

In the frescoes Milutin is shown

With long white beard, in Imperial regalia,

And, with him, hs fourth wife, young Simonida,

Encrusted with emeralds, rubies and pearls,

A great gold halo behind her head.

Milutin was a conqueror, murderer and lecher,

Who byzantine his subjects still more,

Ordering his court with byzantine etiquette

And Imperial titles, and phrasing his decrees

In the manner of chrysobuls.

He lusted hotly after women, yet treated them ill,

Ice-cold in discarding them or using them

As political instruments to suit shis needs.

He wed Simonida when she was but five

And he an old man of fifty, and rendered her barren

By cruelly forcing himself upon her

When she was still a child. So jealous was he

Of his young bride that he had a secret staircase

Built inside one of the columns in the church

So Simonida could hear the liturgy,

Hidden from courtiers’ ogling eyes.

She came to hate her tyrannical husband

Ad stirred up trouble between him and his son

So that Prince Stephen rebelled against him.


III

Green hills of oak and walnut trees

And mountains lit with yellow sage;

Golden orioles fly agasinst the sea’s blue;

Sitting at a taverna table, I see

A thin scabby mongrel amble up

And sit beside me, begging for food.

In a dim church in the Peloponnese,

Women light candles, and place them

Before icons which they adorn with roses;

Through the open Holy Door, silhouetted

Against a sunbeam from the window,

The priest in green stands consecrating

The bread and wine at an altar, his voice

Deep and resonant with devotion;

He raises the ripidion and fans the elements

As the Holy Ghost descends, wings beating,

And the air is heavy with incense,

Candlesmoke and rose-scent,

The priest pierces the loaf with a knife,

As the centurion pierced Christ’s side

With his lance, as he hung on the Cross,

Cutting pieces for the saints and apostles

And the dead, then mixes the wine

With cold water, as the water flowed

Out with the blood from Christ’s side;

Then he covers the whole with a veil.


High against the snowy mountain peaks,

Amid dark cypresses, Mistra sits on its hill,

A nest of silkworms in heaven’s height;

Surrounded by valerian, purple vetch,

Pink hawksbeard, convolvulus, Tears of the Virgin,

And, clinging to the palaces and churches

The blue trumpets of campanula,

In the steep narrow wynds,

Where mansions, monasteries and citadels

Lie deserted,(Even as the rest of the Empire collapsed

And was lost to foreign powers,

Here, the last brilliant Palaeologi stood fast,

And reversed decline, conquering new lands,

Ruling as Despots over a splendid state,

Drawing scholars, architects and artists from afar).

Gemistos Plethon, would stroll to and fro

With his students in the square

Outside the Despot’s palace, lecturing on Plato;

Continually he would send memoranda

To the Emperor, arguing that, ony by reforming

According to the ideas in Plato’s Republic

Could the Eastern Empire save itself.

In the pavement of the Metropolis

Is a stone slab carve with the double eagle,

Where Constantine XI Palaeologus was crowned

And proclaimed King and Emperor of the Romans,

Though he ruled but the tiniest remnant

Of the magnificent empire of old;

And when he sailed away to Constantinople,

The Thirteenth Apostle knew in his heart

That he would be the last ruler of the East;

Four years later he died fighting to the last

On the walls of his sacked capital,

His mutilated body only recognised later

By the royal red buskins on his feet.

News

Tell me what happened

In the world I never lived in.

Did people fall in love, get married,have kids?

Did governments rise and fall?

I was too busy to notice,

An angler on the riverbank,

Watching the float,

Waiting till it bobbed.

Barbados

Bougainvillea’s pink crumpled stars

Supernova all around,

Retinal detonations flaunting ethereal fire...

Wild windwards and calm leewards

Are my interdependent extremes.

How can I learn the orchids’ dialect?

Golden masqueraders of Crop Over,

Parading under the stilt-walking sun!

A Seventh Day Adventist,baptised

In the sea,I come all white-drenched

And hungry,prayer-fires in my hands

To worship the naked brown bodies

Of the drowning and soon-to-be drowned.

Calypso birds of paradise,take the pirates’

Scattered gold and blow it to the winds,

On lifetimes of nonchalant splendour!

The earth is an effigy set on fire.

Love, we shall be swimming horses,

Weightless and tameless in the blue...

Teacher,preacher,policeman of desire,

The girl from summer’s edge comes,

Proffering breadfruit,her smile reefed

With secrets,holed with limestone caves.

The Spanish Dead

A grassy gully just west of Granada

With the breeze in the pines

And a spring bubbling close by;

Lorca hides under the ground where he was shot,

Side by side with a one-legged schoolteacher

And two trade unionists.


In the Convent of the Royal Discalced Carmelites

It lies, the tiny linen-wrapped corpse of a baby,

Labelled as one of the innocents

Liquidated by Herod.


Seven thousand bones and wisps of hair

In Philip II’s Escorial,

Twelve skeletons and forty-four skulls.

The black spider’s insurance policy

That did not keep his Armada from sinking.


Day by day on his deathbed

Generalissimo Franco looks across

At St Teresa’s desiccated forearm

Brought to his bedside,

Praying for mercy and relief.

.
Bodies,bodies,hundreds of thousands

Of bodies in the ground,

People whose religion

Was life, the light, the smell of bread,

A well-timed joke.

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

The smell of money was always on his hands,

The stink of capital, the sewer he lived in,

The frock-coated squire riding to hounds

Or quaffing champagne in elegant salons;

He would eat up ideas as greedily

As lobster salad, thrill to practical philosophy

As much as a feline mistress’s touch.


The world’s trade passed through him,

From Dixieland cotton plantations

To Lancashire mills,from the slum streets

Of Manchester to India’s hillsides.

He could smell insurrection on the cobbles,

Hear the battle on the barricades;

Science would demand an Aztec hecatomb.


Trim,groomed and vain as a cavalryman,

He grasped the word “freedom” in his hands,

As devotedly as a barber his scissors

Or a servant his master’s Chinese vase.

Never would he lose the North Sea breeze

And the sun-shot waves,exultant voyage

Of a youth pursuing the Golden Fleece!


The faithful brother,ever close at hand,

He shook with the shuttles’ apocalyptic din,

Read the grotesque facts under the skin;

How could others not stand appalled

At the bankruptcy and waste inherent

In their industrial paradise? The Inquisitor

Took up the chair in his darkened court.

Nepal

I am here to read the Fibonacci series

In an ammonite from the Tethys Sea,

Here to feel continents’ clash and quake,

Tectonic cataclysms’ Saivite play.



Moraine-milk streams from glacial snouts

Over rock-breasts,carving and scouring

With invincible gravity to the Ganges,

Pressed down by geological aeons.



Blue lotus of the Primordial Isle,

Vanished,or invisible, your aroma

Still carries on the Himalayan wind

To delirious climbers, fools for God.



Dawn river ghat: weeping sons

Circumambulate three times father’s corpse

Then set the butter lamp on his face

As the priest’s torch touches the pyre

And the howling sun surges over the peaks,

Painting all bodies with music and ash.



Some dark original shadows me,

The yeti painted on a monastery mural,

An inexplicable footprint in the snow.

Demons glower behind every rock.



High on a stupa,the Buddha’s eyes

Hypnotize the cardinal directions;

Potent as rhododendron honey,

The air teems with hallucinations.



Temple bells call out across the valley

Through craggy clouds,lunatic echoes

Dizzy as terraces’ elephant wrinkles,

Or strung-out prayer flags’ wuthering.

New Year in Laos

Time has no will.Leave it alone,and it is slow,

Executing nothing, never starting or finishing anything,

Incessantly shapechanging, becoming something other,

For no reason or purpose , no deadline at all

It is the theatre of the shadow puppets,

The Sanskrit verses of the sea.

Landlocked souls yearn for that wild shore.



On the wall reliefs of a wat.

Gold dancing lovers embrace, fingers curled

Into mudras, faces blissful,oblivious,eyes closed,

Stupa-helmets antennae angled to the gods,

Thirty-two guardian spirits within.

I could stare forever into a Buddha’s face,

His skull becoming mine.



A ball of sticky rice in the hand:

Civilisation’s last word. A fat happy syllable.

I climb the naga steps of the temple,

Lifted by the garuda-winged eaves.

April full moon’s waters want to drown you

In memory,wash you up on some shore

Where life can begin anew.