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.
Friday, May 18, 2007
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…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)