Poetry and science
Unite in this skin
Revolution now
Can I change the world
Through my body
As the world changes me?
From evil and perversion
I learn wisdom
And transform death
Into endless life
Awaken the dead
And bring them back!
Between pain and pleasure
Reason and delirium,
We live
Strong sensations
I must feel-
And overcome
I must mark myself
With visions
To sustain me
For the journey
Mutilate and deform
Amphibian of worlds
I invent new deaths
For myself
Just for the beauty
Of surviving
Not myself,
Not myself at all
This body is given to me
For exploration and play
For fearless voyaging
I come to pierce the world’s clitoris
With my mind
To dance the Sun Dance
Like a Sioux brave
There is no centre but the edge
Accumulating magical force
Electricity through the wires
Contort
Constrict
Deprive
Encumber
Burn
Penetrate
Suspend
The sadhu stretches his penis
With weights
Or tucks it up inside his body
Aroused all the time
On the verge of orgasm all the time
Yet never coming
Honour the penis
Pierced with ampallang
Dydoe
Apadravya
Or Prince Albert
Torching the world
With joy
Laughing skull
Fill the world with mirth
I tattoo myself
With sorcerous armour
Parallel universes
In each molecule of ink
The Mayan nobleman
Pierces his penis with stingray spine
Offering sacrifice of blood
In a world of almighty puns
And the Vision Serpent coils up
Out of the smoke
Scarify me
Let each cut
Be a blood-key
To open a door in the sky
These are my signs
My flights
Night pilot of metaphors
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Falls dead
The assassin’s bullet
Passing through the head
Of a snake tattooed
On his right hip
Queen Isabella of Bavaria
Comes with dress
Open to the navel
Nipples rouged and exposed
And pierced with gold chains
And diamonds
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Kubrick in the Dark
Perfection in this lifetime
In an image
A single frame
Line and motion and colour
In highest harmony
The meticulous and compassionate research of humanity
In all its permutations
May yield the occasional insight
Not to be despised
Each day
I move though the world
Stumbling on
And selecting angles
Using all kinds of devices
And chance circumstances
As viewfinders
To compose
Satisfying images
And scenes
Amid furious transience
I scrabble for control
Fighting a war
I can never win
Continually refining
My peculiar violence
In an image
A single frame
Line and motion and colour
In highest harmony
The meticulous and compassionate research of humanity
In all its permutations
May yield the occasional insight
Not to be despised
Each day
I move though the world
Stumbling on
And selecting angles
Using all kinds of devices
And chance circumstances
As viewfinders
To compose
Satisfying images
And scenes
Amid furious transience
I scrabble for control
Fighting a war
I can never win
Continually refining
My peculiar violence
Marcel Duchamp Plays Chess With The Cosmos
Erotic chimeras of the mind, mythical and mundane, perform your peculiar arcana for the delectation of the adept. What sport-all this metaphysical farce! Play for your life, with all the mad indifference of a Pierrot.Death delivers puns of infinite complexity into your mouth.
How to live without repeating oneself? Experiment by experiment,with sly simulations of science.The dry chuckle and the sly snigger will penetrate even steel.This is life: half-masterpiece, half-hoax.The mage and the charlatan are brothers, equally busy.
None can excel me in mockery; the master of ceremonies, expert in cruel research. Possibilities’ hieroglyphs materialize in the air, desires content to remain permanently unfulfilled.
Crossings-out, revisions,corrections,unfinished and unfinishable thoughts:these are the chameleons on the glass.King and Queen divide the chessboard according to their whims, as the pieces exult in their doomed manoeuvres, rich in strategies and gambits.
Guarded and watchful,the child contrives his own candour,inventing new names for things.The allpowerful idea stakes out territories with ruthless joy.
What acrobatics freedom extorts from us,what ferocious exigencies!Fabulous negation fearlessly remakes the world, as the passionate and the dispassionate pursue their equal goals.The hidden physics of the least thing serves to entertain the droll connoisseur.Call it erotic comedy, this delicate pursuit of the indelicate.The beau cavalier extends a wry smile,and sardonically insinuates himself into the event.Perfecting an absolute neutrality.He keeps his life, what little there is of it, in an old trunk under the bed; a few photos, a few cryptic notes.
How to live without repeating oneself? Experiment by experiment,with sly simulations of science.The dry chuckle and the sly snigger will penetrate even steel.This is life: half-masterpiece, half-hoax.The mage and the charlatan are brothers, equally busy.
None can excel me in mockery; the master of ceremonies, expert in cruel research. Possibilities’ hieroglyphs materialize in the air, desires content to remain permanently unfulfilled.
Crossings-out, revisions,corrections,unfinished and unfinishable thoughts:these are the chameleons on the glass.King and Queen divide the chessboard according to their whims, as the pieces exult in their doomed manoeuvres, rich in strategies and gambits.
Guarded and watchful,the child contrives his own candour,inventing new names for things.The allpowerful idea stakes out territories with ruthless joy.
What acrobatics freedom extorts from us,what ferocious exigencies!Fabulous negation fearlessly remakes the world, as the passionate and the dispassionate pursue their equal goals.The hidden physics of the least thing serves to entertain the droll connoisseur.Call it erotic comedy, this delicate pursuit of the indelicate.The beau cavalier extends a wry smile,and sardonically insinuates himself into the event.Perfecting an absolute neutrality.He keeps his life, what little there is of it, in an old trunk under the bed; a few photos, a few cryptic notes.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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.
The Travel Writer
Where he was was not where he thought he was,
And not where he belonged, where he wanted to be;
Unhappy among the ignorant, the unenlightened,
He craved the most arduous journey, the strictest ordeal,
The true initiation into the kerygma,
The secret gospel of the hooded saint within.
The Other was his twinland, his origin and destination,
Where arrival and departure were as one,
And looking was a kind of death and resurrection,
The starburst of freedom in the eye of God.
He became the Adam of semantics, the namer of things,
The bridegroom in white linen at the altar,
And the hierophant in the secret shrine’s gloom,
Lighting the final candle to witness the revelation;
Jealous of the earth he trod, he hallowed his own footsteps,
Denouncing rivals as fools and impostors
To whom the true religion was forever denied,
While he, the ghost beside the empty sarcophagus,
Had come so far only to read his first footstep’s glyph.
Was adventure not the brother of understanding?
Was hardship not the witness of truth?
It was time to write his own story in blood,
To imagine himself as he had always yearned to be,
To sacrifice coarse flesh to the astral body,
And wend to the centre by the spiral of days.
His life became the lost hours’ rebellion,
The stranger’s sermon at the waterfall in the oasis,
The desert horseman’s gallop into the dying sun;
In his clenched fist he brought home a pebble
To show the foreigners at his native hearth,
A phoenix feather snatched from the whispering air.
The fatherland was sick with nameless disease,
But he might be the cure, the unicorn’s horn
Applied to the wound, if he could find himself first,
If he could find the crystal castle and be admitted;
His ancestors would teach him forgotten wisdom,
And stand him at the circle’s centre once again,
Where up and down and inside and out were one.
Thought and action were the bread and wine
Of the Holy Mass, the transubstantiation of time,
As restless passion carried him outwards and on,
Ever seeking the strange, the undiscovered,
In danger of losing his compass and coming adrift,
Lost beyond his despairing mother’s sobbing call;
Only he who had squared the circle would survive,
And make his old age the throne and sceptre
Of the perfect man, the hero crowned for his endeavours,
Uniting mind and body, art and science, life and death.
Dream and contemplation were his guides beyond,
As he learned the methods of memory to roam at will
In the infinite, living whole centuries in an instant,
Revisiting past incarnations in distant space and time,
To purge lingering evils and turn matter into spirit.
Now there was no safety in the senses, no illusion,
But signs and symbols of the divine, in every quarter,
And beyond the mountains, on the scented isle of birds,
The golden child on the seashore laughed and sang
And not where he belonged, where he wanted to be;
Unhappy among the ignorant, the unenlightened,
He craved the most arduous journey, the strictest ordeal,
The true initiation into the kerygma,
The secret gospel of the hooded saint within.
The Other was his twinland, his origin and destination,
Where arrival and departure were as one,
And looking was a kind of death and resurrection,
The starburst of freedom in the eye of God.
He became the Adam of semantics, the namer of things,
The bridegroom in white linen at the altar,
And the hierophant in the secret shrine’s gloom,
Lighting the final candle to witness the revelation;
Jealous of the earth he trod, he hallowed his own footsteps,
Denouncing rivals as fools and impostors
To whom the true religion was forever denied,
While he, the ghost beside the empty sarcophagus,
Had come so far only to read his first footstep’s glyph.
Was adventure not the brother of understanding?
Was hardship not the witness of truth?
It was time to write his own story in blood,
To imagine himself as he had always yearned to be,
To sacrifice coarse flesh to the astral body,
And wend to the centre by the spiral of days.
His life became the lost hours’ rebellion,
The stranger’s sermon at the waterfall in the oasis,
The desert horseman’s gallop into the dying sun;
In his clenched fist he brought home a pebble
To show the foreigners at his native hearth,
A phoenix feather snatched from the whispering air.
The fatherland was sick with nameless disease,
But he might be the cure, the unicorn’s horn
Applied to the wound, if he could find himself first,
If he could find the crystal castle and be admitted;
His ancestors would teach him forgotten wisdom,
And stand him at the circle’s centre once again,
Where up and down and inside and out were one.
Thought and action were the bread and wine
Of the Holy Mass, the transubstantiation of time,
As restless passion carried him outwards and on,
Ever seeking the strange, the undiscovered,
In danger of losing his compass and coming adrift,
Lost beyond his despairing mother’s sobbing call;
Only he who had squared the circle would survive,
And make his old age the throne and sceptre
Of the perfect man, the hero crowned for his endeavours,
Uniting mind and body, art and science, life and death.
Dream and contemplation were his guides beyond,
As he learned the methods of memory to roam at will
In the infinite, living whole centuries in an instant,
Revisiting past incarnations in distant space and time,
To purge lingering evils and turn matter into spirit.
Now there was no safety in the senses, no illusion,
But signs and symbols of the divine, in every quarter,
And beyond the mountains, on the scented isle of birds,
The golden child on the seashore laughed and sang
MacBeth at Loch Leven
None but a cuddy would covet such a mare’s nest
As this accursed country, this well-laid wolf trap!
Come, lying bards, and praise your matchless king,
This handsome red war-hound, puissant and proud!
There’s no glory in all this, that much I understand,
Only blood, bitter black, and raven-ravished bones.
Ah, prince’s truth makes the winter earth bloom;
Giddy orchards sing with fruit; gyring corn-spires
Adore the bright welkin ; cows’ udders overflow;
Streams teem with glittering ; women’s wombs
Bear fair sons and daughters to the crowing sun.
What lures me back so often to this sainted water?
Rome itself could not so calm my angered soul,
Nor mend the world, and marry heaven and earth.
Fierce August tracks me with a lion’s purpose,
Raking the air with golden claws, drawing blood
From sullen moments, alone in an isle of bone,
Seasoned for the kill, wise to weird and weal.
This God-graced sanctuary is a place of healing,
Equal to any pain, a hermit’s cloister, angels’ nest
And promise of swan-winged bliss, beyond care.
Since I sat upon the Stone of Destiny at Scone,
And pledged myself, heaven-wed with the crown,
Enthroned on Moot Hill, in a castle of clouds,
What boons have I ill-used, and suffered from?
Still the bard is singing in my ear my pedigree
Of ancient kings, from the womb of Scota sprung,
Reminding me of honour and duty, and the boasts
Of battles won, and evil exorcised by the just hand.
Here, to this Culdee isle, I come to pay due honour
To eremitic virtue, and the life of contemplation,
Whereas I myself have lived by fire and sword,
Destroying what I could not understand or appease;
This monastery I endow, trading money for prayer,
Begging holy indulgence for my sins, that God
Might forgive any error, and bless my bones withal.
Many a time I have envied these monks their way,
Their solitude and silence, enwombed in waters,
Far from the world’s affray, the wicked scheming
Of men, bent on boundless selfishness and greed,
Yet I, though I kneel beneath the high cross, cannot
Renounce the world, nor my ambitions within it.
O,beloved Moray, doom-bound behind the Mounth,
Will you that bore and shaped me be also my grave,
When time and fate turn against their ill-starred son?
Your rich earth ,I think, will soon fill my mouth,
And your stones hold me down, in the darkness;
Here I run like the wild boar, hunted from birth,
Whose tombstone will be a birch, a pillar of fire.
For what was I named “son of life”,” righteous man”,
If not to stand among the saved, at Judgment Day?
My deeds,then,must be heaven’s will fulfilled.
Still, in dreams, I see my father fall before me, run
To ground, torn to pieces by the hounds, clutching
At my body, as if I were life itself, the high tower
That all men quest for; no greater warrior ever lived,
Than he, who reared me as his lion-cub, to fulfil
A high king’s part ;hell-spawn they were, my cousins,
Who slew him , usurped my throne, and forced me
To flee my own kingdom like some devilish curse;
Revenge was all I dreamed of in those sere years,
And when at last I licked their blood from my fingers
I rejoiced in God’s justice, come home in triumph.
Proven in war and intrigue, was I not the true elect?
The path I took had long been marked out for me
In blood, from generations past, jealous of their dues,
And when a false king won the throne of Scotland,
I saw my perfect right to undo wry fate’s mistake,
And take his place, poor Duncan, neither warrior
Nor statesman, whose weak hands let slip the crown
As if relieved, as the August sun attained its zenith
And fell, bleeding fogs across the shadowed land;
I saw in his eyes as I killed him some strange sign,
Whose doubtful meaning has troubled me ever since.
In Loch Leven’s waves I see visions and dreams,
This pilgrimage holier than that I made to Rome,
Where I scattered silver coins to the scrabbling mob,
And prayed at high altars, beseeching the Creator
For absolution, and though priests and cardinals
Danced attendance upon me, I knew no revelation,
And felt no contentment, smelling the fox’s reek.
Have I, perhaps, already hanged myself, like a fool,
By letting enemies live, not destroying them at once,
Too eager to show myself magnanimous and wise,
When true wisdom is in cruelty, in murder and rapine?
August is the death of kings; I fear this sere season,
When the scythe sweeps, and lays brown fields bare;
War cries roil the air, and all around is blossom’s rout;
Sunset shines through the sockets of a horse’s skull.
As this accursed country, this well-laid wolf trap!
Come, lying bards, and praise your matchless king,
This handsome red war-hound, puissant and proud!
There’s no glory in all this, that much I understand,
Only blood, bitter black, and raven-ravished bones.
Ah, prince’s truth makes the winter earth bloom;
Giddy orchards sing with fruit; gyring corn-spires
Adore the bright welkin ; cows’ udders overflow;
Streams teem with glittering ; women’s wombs
Bear fair sons and daughters to the crowing sun.
What lures me back so often to this sainted water?
Rome itself could not so calm my angered soul,
Nor mend the world, and marry heaven and earth.
Fierce August tracks me with a lion’s purpose,
Raking the air with golden claws, drawing blood
From sullen moments, alone in an isle of bone,
Seasoned for the kill, wise to weird and weal.
This God-graced sanctuary is a place of healing,
Equal to any pain, a hermit’s cloister, angels’ nest
And promise of swan-winged bliss, beyond care.
Since I sat upon the Stone of Destiny at Scone,
And pledged myself, heaven-wed with the crown,
Enthroned on Moot Hill, in a castle of clouds,
What boons have I ill-used, and suffered from?
Still the bard is singing in my ear my pedigree
Of ancient kings, from the womb of Scota sprung,
Reminding me of honour and duty, and the boasts
Of battles won, and evil exorcised by the just hand.
Here, to this Culdee isle, I come to pay due honour
To eremitic virtue, and the life of contemplation,
Whereas I myself have lived by fire and sword,
Destroying what I could not understand or appease;
This monastery I endow, trading money for prayer,
Begging holy indulgence for my sins, that God
Might forgive any error, and bless my bones withal.
Many a time I have envied these monks their way,
Their solitude and silence, enwombed in waters,
Far from the world’s affray, the wicked scheming
Of men, bent on boundless selfishness and greed,
Yet I, though I kneel beneath the high cross, cannot
Renounce the world, nor my ambitions within it.
O,beloved Moray, doom-bound behind the Mounth,
Will you that bore and shaped me be also my grave,
When time and fate turn against their ill-starred son?
Your rich earth ,I think, will soon fill my mouth,
And your stones hold me down, in the darkness;
Here I run like the wild boar, hunted from birth,
Whose tombstone will be a birch, a pillar of fire.
For what was I named “son of life”,” righteous man”,
If not to stand among the saved, at Judgment Day?
My deeds,then,must be heaven’s will fulfilled.
Still, in dreams, I see my father fall before me, run
To ground, torn to pieces by the hounds, clutching
At my body, as if I were life itself, the high tower
That all men quest for; no greater warrior ever lived,
Than he, who reared me as his lion-cub, to fulfil
A high king’s part ;hell-spawn they were, my cousins,
Who slew him , usurped my throne, and forced me
To flee my own kingdom like some devilish curse;
Revenge was all I dreamed of in those sere years,
And when at last I licked their blood from my fingers
I rejoiced in God’s justice, come home in triumph.
Proven in war and intrigue, was I not the true elect?
The path I took had long been marked out for me
In blood, from generations past, jealous of their dues,
And when a false king won the throne of Scotland,
I saw my perfect right to undo wry fate’s mistake,
And take his place, poor Duncan, neither warrior
Nor statesman, whose weak hands let slip the crown
As if relieved, as the August sun attained its zenith
And fell, bleeding fogs across the shadowed land;
I saw in his eyes as I killed him some strange sign,
Whose doubtful meaning has troubled me ever since.
In Loch Leven’s waves I see visions and dreams,
This pilgrimage holier than that I made to Rome,
Where I scattered silver coins to the scrabbling mob,
And prayed at high altars, beseeching the Creator
For absolution, and though priests and cardinals
Danced attendance upon me, I knew no revelation,
And felt no contentment, smelling the fox’s reek.
Have I, perhaps, already hanged myself, like a fool,
By letting enemies live, not destroying them at once,
Too eager to show myself magnanimous and wise,
When true wisdom is in cruelty, in murder and rapine?
August is the death of kings; I fear this sere season,
When the scythe sweeps, and lays brown fields bare;
War cries roil the air, and all around is blossom’s rout;
Sunset shines through the sockets of a horse’s skull.
The Electronic Lounge
Always the search for rituals,
Groynes against the drifting sands,
Mirrors reflecting back death:
Here, in my cave, I paint the walls
With deer and bison, and ,beating the drum,
Sharpen my arrows for the hunt.
Airs and perfumes tease the senses,
Harmonics infiltrate the mind,
Tints and tones ineffable, exquisite,
Omens absorbed into the skin.
Whale-songs echo through the ocean,
Javanese music filters through the rain,
Reverberations of the gamelan,
Of South Seas sailors beached in dream.
In the gardens of the water castle
A dancer moves at the flute’s command,
Seahorse lilting over coral.
Perhaps the world has already ended,
And nobody noticed, just carried on.
Weightlessness is the game,
Picking up sounds from radios and satellites,
Egyptologist of the soul,
Deciphering hieroglyphs in the night.
We are in the realm of spooks:
The rock gong resounds in the still,
The voice in the spider’s egg whispers,
The African mask booms and hums.
Koi carp in a Japanese garden,
I turn restless circles in my pond,
With the chanting of the sutra,
With the blowing of conch shells.
Minute is the sound of the water chime:
Through the bamboo listening pole
Hear the pure sparse bell tones of random drips
Ringing in their underground chamber.
Your mind is walking on rice paper,
Making not the slightest tear.
Sea sounds are interstellar dust storm,
The sound of mosses and lichens thinking,
Chinese calligraphy emerging from the white.
I fly like a bat through confusion,
Sounding the cavernous depths,
And the lutist’s strict fingers compose
A crane dancing in a deserted garden.
Walking on the singing sands,
Seduced by green reflective sea,
You are the vanishing nightingale,
The Mozart of the Amazon.
Eerie hoots of gibbons, echoing across river gorges,
Gregorian chant rising in the cathedral,
Reverberations in the railway station,
Fill the lunar desert of a mercury drop.
Groynes against the drifting sands,
Mirrors reflecting back death:
Here, in my cave, I paint the walls
With deer and bison, and ,beating the drum,
Sharpen my arrows for the hunt.
Airs and perfumes tease the senses,
Harmonics infiltrate the mind,
Tints and tones ineffable, exquisite,
Omens absorbed into the skin.
Whale-songs echo through the ocean,
Javanese music filters through the rain,
Reverberations of the gamelan,
Of South Seas sailors beached in dream.
In the gardens of the water castle
A dancer moves at the flute’s command,
Seahorse lilting over coral.
Perhaps the world has already ended,
And nobody noticed, just carried on.
Weightlessness is the game,
Picking up sounds from radios and satellites,
Egyptologist of the soul,
Deciphering hieroglyphs in the night.
We are in the realm of spooks:
The rock gong resounds in the still,
The voice in the spider’s egg whispers,
The African mask booms and hums.
Koi carp in a Japanese garden,
I turn restless circles in my pond,
With the chanting of the sutra,
With the blowing of conch shells.
Minute is the sound of the water chime:
Through the bamboo listening pole
Hear the pure sparse bell tones of random drips
Ringing in their underground chamber.
Your mind is walking on rice paper,
Making not the slightest tear.
Sea sounds are interstellar dust storm,
The sound of mosses and lichens thinking,
Chinese calligraphy emerging from the white.
I fly like a bat through confusion,
Sounding the cavernous depths,
And the lutist’s strict fingers compose
A crane dancing in a deserted garden.
Walking on the singing sands,
Seduced by green reflective sea,
You are the vanishing nightingale,
The Mozart of the Amazon.
Eerie hoots of gibbons, echoing across river gorges,
Gregorian chant rising in the cathedral,
Reverberations in the railway station,
Fill the lunar desert of a mercury drop.
Trieste
Here is the watchtower of my soul,
Besieged between harsh mountains and sea;
The limestone oracle riddles in underground streams,
In my bandit head, in sleep’s quarantine.
Here I can refine and perfect my solitude,
Slavonic sky’s remittance-man.
What passions and terrors are my burden to sing ?
Hazy bay hallucinations beguile me,
Archduke of rain-drenched thoughts,
Continental drifter ever distant and distracted,
But not lacking in a certain grace and guile.
I like to loiter on the margin of things,
Strolling these streets while ridiculous history
Prances and pratfalls in its circus ring, elsewhere.
On a steep stone staircase I pause and look back
Over the autumnal city, crepuscular and quiet,
As a ferry siren sounds across the water
And the white castle rises alone in my mind.
Call me the plagiarist, the thief of memories,
Stealing into foreign bodies, other lives,
Making their imperial pretences my own,
Figments of the vortex, the continuum.
The dialect of the air is sibilant slur,
And, far away in Mexico, hapless Maximilian
Writes ordering two thousand nightingales
To be sent to him from his beloved Miramar.
Ah, to make happiness your life’s ambition,
Is that not the surest promise of grief?
Better to trust in uncertainty, and wander on.
At night, with the lights of the fishing-boats
In the bay, stilling the heart for a while,
One holds the ancient questions close and dear,
As if, indeed, they were all one truly had.
Winter’s bastard, the bora saws my bones
And grinds my teeth, blackening my blood
With fantastic afflictions, that only suicide
Might purge,- I sit like a poisonous toad
In the undergrowth, as cracked bells toll in my head.
Tall, skinny and myopic, in buttoned tweed suit
And straw hat, smelling of booze, tapping the ground
With his cane, James Joyce strolls the streets,
Dreaming up masterpieces and get-rich-quick schemes,
Dropping into churches, pubs and brothels,
Staggering sozzled through the night streets
To his favourite brothels, La Chiave d’Oro
And Il Metro Cubo, praising God in the synagogue
Of the word, in the exile of his restless eye.
Besieged between harsh mountains and sea;
The limestone oracle riddles in underground streams,
In my bandit head, in sleep’s quarantine.
Here I can refine and perfect my solitude,
Slavonic sky’s remittance-man.
What passions and terrors are my burden to sing ?
Hazy bay hallucinations beguile me,
Archduke of rain-drenched thoughts,
Continental drifter ever distant and distracted,
But not lacking in a certain grace and guile.
I like to loiter on the margin of things,
Strolling these streets while ridiculous history
Prances and pratfalls in its circus ring, elsewhere.
On a steep stone staircase I pause and look back
Over the autumnal city, crepuscular and quiet,
As a ferry siren sounds across the water
And the white castle rises alone in my mind.
Call me the plagiarist, the thief of memories,
Stealing into foreign bodies, other lives,
Making their imperial pretences my own,
Figments of the vortex, the continuum.
The dialect of the air is sibilant slur,
And, far away in Mexico, hapless Maximilian
Writes ordering two thousand nightingales
To be sent to him from his beloved Miramar.
Ah, to make happiness your life’s ambition,
Is that not the surest promise of grief?
Better to trust in uncertainty, and wander on.
At night, with the lights of the fishing-boats
In the bay, stilling the heart for a while,
One holds the ancient questions close and dear,
As if, indeed, they were all one truly had.
Winter’s bastard, the bora saws my bones
And grinds my teeth, blackening my blood
With fantastic afflictions, that only suicide
Might purge,- I sit like a poisonous toad
In the undergrowth, as cracked bells toll in my head.
Tall, skinny and myopic, in buttoned tweed suit
And straw hat, smelling of booze, tapping the ground
With his cane, James Joyce strolls the streets,
Dreaming up masterpieces and get-rich-quick schemes,
Dropping into churches, pubs and brothels,
Staggering sozzled through the night streets
To his favourite brothels, La Chiave d’Oro
And Il Metro Cubo, praising God in the synagogue
Of the word, in the exile of his restless eye.
The Art of the Third Reich
“You artists live in great and happy times. Above you the most powerful and understanding patron. The Führer loves artists because he is himself one. Under his blessed hand a Renaissance has begun. Oh, century of artists! What a joy to be part of it!”
Dr.Joseph Goebbels
To fulfil the noble mission they perfected the lie,
Gave their souls in tribute to the state for resurrection,
Hearty farmers, happy workers, soldiers armed for the ultimate crusade,
Once again feeling the ancient gods in their blood.
In a paradise of thatched rooves and folk dances
Proud naked bodies reached out to the swastika sun,
Glad for a while to be relieved of freedom,
Bewildered lives justified, their thinking done for them,
The promise of greatness to make good every sin.
They would exorcize the demons with flaming swords,
Offer sacrifice at their ancestors’ altars,
Purify the earth and air, purge their homes of evil.
Clean beauty would banish the scrofulous imaginings
Of aliens and degenerates infected with foreign ideas,
Money-lust and machine-life, Babylonian corruption.
In the squares of small towns never visited by theatre
Jackbooted actors erected stages under the sacred flag,
Performing the mystery plays of the God-King.
The Enchanter conjured pageants, autobahns, arenas;
Every event was grand opera, ecstasy for the masses,
Chaos ordered by architecture, with flesh for stone,
Each petty life commanded to become a monument.
Immaculate kitsch adorned executioners’ offices,
Art that asked no questions and did as it was told,
Marching in uniform, expressionless, in step,
A kef of frozen gestures and vacant calm.
The tight-lipped mouth said “purity”,”harmony”,”truth”,
Then bared its teeth in a masterful cinematic smirk,
Biting the silver bullet of so many clever lies,
Spelling eventual death to the werewolf’s heart.
They crowded the galleries with classical male nudes,
Olympian conquerors immune to suffering, striking forced poses,
Stunned by their own inhuman perfection.
Their women were all flawless, smooth-skinned and ripe,
Hallowed mothers of the Master Race, vestal whores,
Their bellies the barrows of Teutonic kings.
Massive ashlars uplifted by will to crush all opposition
Conjured imaginary cities of austere majesty,
Blank cathedrals of power, built by rote,
Obliterating every small human gesture’s challenge.
Plutonic in his necropolis, the Master of Ceremonies
Dictated the obligatory virtues of culture;
The smallest artefact must embody the whole,
The ideal family clustered around the Father,
Technically perfect, the detail obsessive, minute.
Wagnerian puppets, they strutted brave in costume,
Making the Bavarian Alps their son et lumiere;
Playing with toy soldiers in the nursery,
They fended off Mongolian hordes in the dark.
Throwing giant shadows with the sun at its zenith,
They exulted in their destiny, their genius supreme,
Till the chisel slipped, carving the face of God,
And the wolves raced out of the fairy-tale forest.
Their castles collapsed. Their rhetoric choked on bones.
Reality wrung the swan-like neck of style.
Floral still-life turned into dead soldiers’ boots.
Crucified on their T-squares, the future’s architects
Arranged their smug delusions into a final pose,
Their glamorous uniforms the booty of collectors,
Their antique dream shipped to the auction-house.
Dr.Joseph Goebbels
To fulfil the noble mission they perfected the lie,
Gave their souls in tribute to the state for resurrection,
Hearty farmers, happy workers, soldiers armed for the ultimate crusade,
Once again feeling the ancient gods in their blood.
In a paradise of thatched rooves and folk dances
Proud naked bodies reached out to the swastika sun,
Glad for a while to be relieved of freedom,
Bewildered lives justified, their thinking done for them,
The promise of greatness to make good every sin.
They would exorcize the demons with flaming swords,
Offer sacrifice at their ancestors’ altars,
Purify the earth and air, purge their homes of evil.
Clean beauty would banish the scrofulous imaginings
Of aliens and degenerates infected with foreign ideas,
Money-lust and machine-life, Babylonian corruption.
In the squares of small towns never visited by theatre
Jackbooted actors erected stages under the sacred flag,
Performing the mystery plays of the God-King.
The Enchanter conjured pageants, autobahns, arenas;
Every event was grand opera, ecstasy for the masses,
Chaos ordered by architecture, with flesh for stone,
Each petty life commanded to become a monument.
Immaculate kitsch adorned executioners’ offices,
Art that asked no questions and did as it was told,
Marching in uniform, expressionless, in step,
A kef of frozen gestures and vacant calm.
The tight-lipped mouth said “purity”,”harmony”,”truth”,
Then bared its teeth in a masterful cinematic smirk,
Biting the silver bullet of so many clever lies,
Spelling eventual death to the werewolf’s heart.
They crowded the galleries with classical male nudes,
Olympian conquerors immune to suffering, striking forced poses,
Stunned by their own inhuman perfection.
Their women were all flawless, smooth-skinned and ripe,
Hallowed mothers of the Master Race, vestal whores,
Their bellies the barrows of Teutonic kings.
Massive ashlars uplifted by will to crush all opposition
Conjured imaginary cities of austere majesty,
Blank cathedrals of power, built by rote,
Obliterating every small human gesture’s challenge.
Plutonic in his necropolis, the Master of Ceremonies
Dictated the obligatory virtues of culture;
The smallest artefact must embody the whole,
The ideal family clustered around the Father,
Technically perfect, the detail obsessive, minute.
Wagnerian puppets, they strutted brave in costume,
Making the Bavarian Alps their son et lumiere;
Playing with toy soldiers in the nursery,
They fended off Mongolian hordes in the dark.
Throwing giant shadows with the sun at its zenith,
They exulted in their destiny, their genius supreme,
Till the chisel slipped, carving the face of God,
And the wolves raced out of the fairy-tale forest.
Their castles collapsed. Their rhetoric choked on bones.
Reality wrung the swan-like neck of style.
Floral still-life turned into dead soldiers’ boots.
Crucified on their T-squares, the future’s architects
Arranged their smug delusions into a final pose,
Their glamorous uniforms the booty of collectors,
Their antique dream shipped to the auction-house.
Otto Dix
After the war each night was the same;
Shocked awake, shaking, in a cold sweat.
His smile was barbed wire, his speech bullet-holes,
Everywhere he looked, he saw grotesques.
“Attack” was his watchword, his salvation;
Battlefield priest in soldier’s hairshirt, he confronted
The ludicrous world, ramshackle ghost train,
Nursery of the stupid bourgeois, strutting his mediocrity.
Skinny dandy in sharp suits, with slick blond hair,
Arrogantly cruising bars, charming seducer,
Dancing passionate tangos with hungry women,
He made the circus and the brothel his own,
Phantom of the fairground, pointing an accusing finger,
Harsh laughter turning the forbidden inside out.
He relished the gargoyles’ solemn self-regard,
The devils who thought they were angels,
The dead who thought they were alive.
Always the outcasts were his special love,
Horror and comedy his twin companions,
His painter’s smock a surgeon’s gown
As he probed the bloody mess with forensic compassion.
Surfaces were beautiful for what they concealed;
That monstrous energy beyond human judgment,
Endlessly creating and destroying with abandon.
His fierce eye exulted in each sensual detail,
Crying “Yes” in the face of death and destruction,
Drawn to the beast beneath the civilized veneer.
He had to see with his own eyes, to verify
The ugliness and extremity, the orgasm of war,
Foraging and fighting on the mind’s front line,
Funambulist treading fine above the abyss,
Between contradictions, turning fear into grace,
Kasper Hauser in the city, a black shining crow.
Shocked awake, shaking, in a cold sweat.
His smile was barbed wire, his speech bullet-holes,
Everywhere he looked, he saw grotesques.
“Attack” was his watchword, his salvation;
Battlefield priest in soldier’s hairshirt, he confronted
The ludicrous world, ramshackle ghost train,
Nursery of the stupid bourgeois, strutting his mediocrity.
Skinny dandy in sharp suits, with slick blond hair,
Arrogantly cruising bars, charming seducer,
Dancing passionate tangos with hungry women,
He made the circus and the brothel his own,
Phantom of the fairground, pointing an accusing finger,
Harsh laughter turning the forbidden inside out.
He relished the gargoyles’ solemn self-regard,
The devils who thought they were angels,
The dead who thought they were alive.
Always the outcasts were his special love,
Horror and comedy his twin companions,
His painter’s smock a surgeon’s gown
As he probed the bloody mess with forensic compassion.
Surfaces were beautiful for what they concealed;
That monstrous energy beyond human judgment,
Endlessly creating and destroying with abandon.
His fierce eye exulted in each sensual detail,
Crying “Yes” in the face of death and destruction,
Drawn to the beast beneath the civilized veneer.
He had to see with his own eyes, to verify
The ugliness and extremity, the orgasm of war,
Foraging and fighting on the mind’s front line,
Funambulist treading fine above the abyss,
Between contradictions, turning fear into grace,
Kasper Hauser in the city, a black shining crow.
Judas Iscariot
The twisted old olive tree calls me
To come with a noose for my neck,
To close the circle at last.
I who was born on a stormy night
So long ago in Kerioth,
Among the hills where lightning shrieked,
Will dangle now from a wrathful cloud.
The Day of Judgment has come.
Silver burns a hole in my palm.
A vixen cries mockingly in the field.
My mind is blank, I understand nothing,
Nothing now can save me from myself.
Lord, Master, I loved you as a brother!
Would that I could kiss you again,
And you would know my faith.
Was this my fate ordained by God?
Was it for this monstrous purpose I was born?
To be the very lowest of the damned?
I shall never see Jerusalem uplifted,
My face will not be among the blessed;
O, let the fires consume me all in all,
And leave not a single foul speck!
Lord, I only wished to serve you,
To herald the Coming, unshackle the enslaved,
That all might cry allelulia to the heavens,
A nation once more, proud and whole.
What voice guided me, God or the Devil?
Now sentence is passed, without reprieve,
This barren acre bought with blood
Will be my grave, unvisited, except by the wind
That scourges this earth to the bone.
To come with a noose for my neck,
To close the circle at last.
I who was born on a stormy night
So long ago in Kerioth,
Among the hills where lightning shrieked,
Will dangle now from a wrathful cloud.
The Day of Judgment has come.
Silver burns a hole in my palm.
A vixen cries mockingly in the field.
My mind is blank, I understand nothing,
Nothing now can save me from myself.
Lord, Master, I loved you as a brother!
Would that I could kiss you again,
And you would know my faith.
Was this my fate ordained by God?
Was it for this monstrous purpose I was born?
To be the very lowest of the damned?
I shall never see Jerusalem uplifted,
My face will not be among the blessed;
O, let the fires consume me all in all,
And leave not a single foul speck!
Lord, I only wished to serve you,
To herald the Coming, unshackle the enslaved,
That all might cry allelulia to the heavens,
A nation once more, proud and whole.
What voice guided me, God or the Devil?
Now sentence is passed, without reprieve,
This barren acre bought with blood
Will be my grave, unvisited, except by the wind
That scourges this earth to the bone.
The Yanomami
Cold shadows of thunderclouds over the forest,
Forest and river blur together all grey
In the sizzling rain that sweeps in torrents,
Purging the overheated earth.
Red howler monkeys pierce the dawn mist with shrieking,
Baritone clarions carrying across the treetops.
White butterflies dance like stars
Over the black river’s flood.
Silver sunlight on the leaves.
The earth is a blackened pot over a murmuring fire.
Bitter manioc venomed with prussic acid,
Black honeycomb oozing delight;
Light and darkness battle in the forest,
Maggots breed in the monkey’s corpse.
The monkey, the anteater, the lizard
Are our brothers, our shadows on the move.
The storyteller lives inside his story,
Becoming all the characters, speaking in their voices,
Enacting their fates with his own breath.
In the time when people were animals
The Alligator discovered fire
And tried to keep it for himself alone.
While everyone else ate their meat raw
He cooked his food in secret,
Keeping the precious flames hidden in his mouth.
But one day two hummingbirds
Flew down and circled round him,
Round and round so merrily
That the Alligator laughed with delight;
Instantly the hummingbirds darted in
And snatched the embers from inside his jaws,
Then flew off at once to bring this gift to man.
A lone man dances in the rain, arms outstretched,
Singing and shrieking, running through the forest,
Sudden laughter bursting from his mouth,
His mad head rocking, his body shaking.
He runs in circles, then falls on his back
And his wide eyes watch the rain falling
As he giggles with delight.
We breathe the dream-stuff into our brains;
Weightless, we ascend and fly,
Leaping from branch to branch in the forest
To sing our own song in the sky.
Silently, music appears in our mouths
And fills the emptiness.
The white men bring evil spirits;
They dig up disease from the earth.
The shouting sky begins to crack;
All must fall and die.
Birth and death incessant,
Germination and decay;
New leaves of bright lime or dark red
Unfurl at the tip of every branch,
The first green fruits hang from the palms.
Purple flowers open for bees to pollinate,
Flocks of parrots cry across the brown river,
Honey is sweet in the comb,
Catfish dawdle in the shallows.
A lone figure dances in the clearing in the moonlight,
A shadow turning and jumping,
Waving his arms with shouts and groans,
Snatching flaming logs from the fire
And hurling them through the air;
Sparks fly in the darkness
As he fights the invisible one.
Rain falls,
And the water is people,
Immense dreams falling, drenching the earth.
Forest and river blur together all grey
In the sizzling rain that sweeps in torrents,
Purging the overheated earth.
Red howler monkeys pierce the dawn mist with shrieking,
Baritone clarions carrying across the treetops.
White butterflies dance like stars
Over the black river’s flood.
Silver sunlight on the leaves.
The earth is a blackened pot over a murmuring fire.
Bitter manioc venomed with prussic acid,
Black honeycomb oozing delight;
Light and darkness battle in the forest,
Maggots breed in the monkey’s corpse.
The monkey, the anteater, the lizard
Are our brothers, our shadows on the move.
The storyteller lives inside his story,
Becoming all the characters, speaking in their voices,
Enacting their fates with his own breath.
In the time when people were animals
The Alligator discovered fire
And tried to keep it for himself alone.
While everyone else ate their meat raw
He cooked his food in secret,
Keeping the precious flames hidden in his mouth.
But one day two hummingbirds
Flew down and circled round him,
Round and round so merrily
That the Alligator laughed with delight;
Instantly the hummingbirds darted in
And snatched the embers from inside his jaws,
Then flew off at once to bring this gift to man.
A lone man dances in the rain, arms outstretched,
Singing and shrieking, running through the forest,
Sudden laughter bursting from his mouth,
His mad head rocking, his body shaking.
He runs in circles, then falls on his back
And his wide eyes watch the rain falling
As he giggles with delight.
We breathe the dream-stuff into our brains;
Weightless, we ascend and fly,
Leaping from branch to branch in the forest
To sing our own song in the sky.
Silently, music appears in our mouths
And fills the emptiness.
The white men bring evil spirits;
They dig up disease from the earth.
The shouting sky begins to crack;
All must fall and die.
Birth and death incessant,
Germination and decay;
New leaves of bright lime or dark red
Unfurl at the tip of every branch,
The first green fruits hang from the palms.
Purple flowers open for bees to pollinate,
Flocks of parrots cry across the brown river,
Honey is sweet in the comb,
Catfish dawdle in the shallows.
A lone figure dances in the clearing in the moonlight,
A shadow turning and jumping,
Waving his arms with shouts and groans,
Snatching flaming logs from the fire
And hurling them through the air;
Sparks fly in the darkness
As he fights the invisible one.
Rain falls,
And the water is people,
Immense dreams falling, drenching the earth.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1960)
In everything there was the end of things,
And the sacred lake glittering all summer,
Until he was too tired and bitter to care;
He spent his life staring down the barrel of a gun,
Cursed by some beautiful hunter’s moon,
Little Huck Finn crying “’Fraid of nothing!”
The hunter’s ritual, the fly fisher’s poise,
Made him the horned god on the hoof,
He dreamed that he had Cheyenne blood,
Blessed by the dark sun of the dead.
The drab suburban days wielded a razor,
The beast was already tracking him;
A cruel traitor lived in the dutiful son,
And a femme fatale in the brother’s skin.
The young ambulanceman picked up the limbs
Of shattered bodies, male and female confused,
Headless corpses, strung-out intestines,
Just hunks of meat in a butcher’s shop;
Soon he too would die and feel his soul
Leave the body, so easily, with stars bursting
Overhead, and drifting downward in a dream;
That was when his second life began.
Love was in the leave-taking, the failure,
Biting the bullet with a crooked smile,
Valorous in the lost cause, double-crossed,
Turning back, afraid, to the company of men.
Who was he fighting, in the end, but himself?
To play against the odds: that was the game.
Parisian safari filled his copybooks with wildlife;
He painted his own Cézannes in café corners,
Shadowboxed the future, walking in the rain;
History went to ground in cheap rooms,
Observing its own reflection in a cracked mirror;
Truth attained the deep authority of dream.
He had the knack, and no end of good luck,
Until his luck ran out; then the matador’s sword
Went in between the shoulders, piercing the heart;
He used up everything, and got used up.
Memory’s rat trap snapped up a world,
And chewed its bones with sly exactitude;
The brave man and the coward both knew
Their sinfulness, behind the brag and bluster,
Each an impostor, a double, on manoeuvres.
He wanted it back: that old sense of immortality,
As he played Russian roulette with the days,
Algebraic gambler, spooked, and losing his mind.
And the sacred lake glittering all summer,
Until he was too tired and bitter to care;
He spent his life staring down the barrel of a gun,
Cursed by some beautiful hunter’s moon,
Little Huck Finn crying “’Fraid of nothing!”
The hunter’s ritual, the fly fisher’s poise,
Made him the horned god on the hoof,
He dreamed that he had Cheyenne blood,
Blessed by the dark sun of the dead.
The drab suburban days wielded a razor,
The beast was already tracking him;
A cruel traitor lived in the dutiful son,
And a femme fatale in the brother’s skin.
The young ambulanceman picked up the limbs
Of shattered bodies, male and female confused,
Headless corpses, strung-out intestines,
Just hunks of meat in a butcher’s shop;
Soon he too would die and feel his soul
Leave the body, so easily, with stars bursting
Overhead, and drifting downward in a dream;
That was when his second life began.
Love was in the leave-taking, the failure,
Biting the bullet with a crooked smile,
Valorous in the lost cause, double-crossed,
Turning back, afraid, to the company of men.
Who was he fighting, in the end, but himself?
To play against the odds: that was the game.
Parisian safari filled his copybooks with wildlife;
He painted his own Cézannes in café corners,
Shadowboxed the future, walking in the rain;
History went to ground in cheap rooms,
Observing its own reflection in a cracked mirror;
Truth attained the deep authority of dream.
He had the knack, and no end of good luck,
Until his luck ran out; then the matador’s sword
Went in between the shoulders, piercing the heart;
He used up everything, and got used up.
Memory’s rat trap snapped up a world,
And chewed its bones with sly exactitude;
The brave man and the coward both knew
Their sinfulness, behind the brag and bluster,
Each an impostor, a double, on manoeuvres.
He wanted it back: that old sense of immortality,
As he played Russian roulette with the days,
Algebraic gambler, spooked, and losing his mind.
Lazio
Something of the Etruscans is in us,
The music of their flutes in hunting and lovemaking,
The splendour of their tombs;
Or so I feel, running my hand over you,
Trying to grasp you before you disappear,
Reciting talismanic words:
Travertine, serpentine, porphyry, peperino.
Fantastical Tarquin with the heart of a wolf,
I want to paint you, to sculpt you, sublime,
To fashion your totem in terracotta,
And bring the hills to fruition.
You make me a builder of roads and bridges,
A god from the east, come into his temple,
The king of the golden grove at Nemi,
Awaiting the usurper’s approach.
The blood of the white bull flows
Into the furrows of speech,
A serpent steals up from underground
To lick the quicksilver sweet.
Oh, popes and Caesars, make your plans,
But take care in whom you trust!
As for me, just give me a bottle of wine,
And a plate of pappardelle al cinghiale.
Woman, I love your Etruscan smile,
Bringing out of Asia Minor
Thalassocracy and divination,
And, for me, this strange vocation,
Haruspex inspecting the sheep’s liver,
Observing the flight of birds.
Bronze she-wolf suckling gods and men,
Come with mirrors and perfume burners,
And we who saddle griffons
Will honour you with gold filigree.
The winged horses of Tarquinia
Shall draw your golden chariot;
And leopards attend your feasting,
Dancers cavort in your tomb.
See, the dead go to their new life
With masks and laughing jewels,
Making death seem nothing more
Than a painted ostrich egg;
Vanths and caronti escort the procession
Of souls to the underworld,
And from the waters of volcanic lakes
The drowned arise on horseback.
The music of their flutes in hunting and lovemaking,
The splendour of their tombs;
Or so I feel, running my hand over you,
Trying to grasp you before you disappear,
Reciting talismanic words:
Travertine, serpentine, porphyry, peperino.
Fantastical Tarquin with the heart of a wolf,
I want to paint you, to sculpt you, sublime,
To fashion your totem in terracotta,
And bring the hills to fruition.
You make me a builder of roads and bridges,
A god from the east, come into his temple,
The king of the golden grove at Nemi,
Awaiting the usurper’s approach.
The blood of the white bull flows
Into the furrows of speech,
A serpent steals up from underground
To lick the quicksilver sweet.
Oh, popes and Caesars, make your plans,
But take care in whom you trust!
As for me, just give me a bottle of wine,
And a plate of pappardelle al cinghiale.
Woman, I love your Etruscan smile,
Bringing out of Asia Minor
Thalassocracy and divination,
And, for me, this strange vocation,
Haruspex inspecting the sheep’s liver,
Observing the flight of birds.
Bronze she-wolf suckling gods and men,
Come with mirrors and perfume burners,
And we who saddle griffons
Will honour you with gold filigree.
The winged horses of Tarquinia
Shall draw your golden chariot;
And leopards attend your feasting,
Dancers cavort in your tomb.
See, the dead go to their new life
With masks and laughing jewels,
Making death seem nothing more
Than a painted ostrich egg;
Vanths and caronti escort the procession
Of souls to the underworld,
And from the waters of volcanic lakes
The drowned arise on horseback.
Serge Gainsbourg ( 1928 -1991)
Regarde cette cigarette. Bien sûr ça me ronge les poumons. Qu’est-ce qui peut me donner un climax physiologique pareil qui se renouvelle toutes les cinq seconds, toutes les cinq minutes ?
Serge Gainsbourg
Out of the shtetl of a childhood refrain,
Out of the jeering broken mouths of whores,
Out of the sky’s golden piano,
He stumbled, spitting black tobacco dreams,
Branded with the sun’s yellow star.
Attack me, kill me, do your worst,
But I will sing the fury of a man…
Why is this one saved and this one damned ?
God has such a crooked smile…
Alone in the Russia of a girl’s thighs,
He could see Greek statues and dazzling seas,
And hear the old music prancing
Across the warm sands as the timid little urchin
Looked up from play, humming his delight,
And beheld a goddess hovering before him,
Shimmering with sunlight and sea-breeze…
Nothing on earth can destroy me,
The universe is music, and music is love…
That was his museum of memories,
A tiny house with a black front door,
All black inside, impeccable, serene,
Everything in its place, under control,
And no mirrors anywhere,
A vampire shrinking from his own reflection;
Black walls, black ceiling, black marble floors,
Black furniture, black piano, black front door,
And a black uniformed valet to answer the door;
No messy daylight was allowed to enter,
He removed all the glass from the windows
And installed tiny panes of bubbled crystal
That let no light in at all.
How could he, with such disorder in his head,
Tolerate the slightest disorder around him,
That would be madness…
His prancing ear punned on women’s bodies,
And clowned in the circus ring,
As the green wolf ran through the Russian taiga,
Howling at fairy-tale moons;
Bring on the next adventure !
Instead of killing ourselves,
We shall revel in the mess !
Drunkards, lovers, mummers, jesters,
We shall inherit the earth…
Nothing is forbidden,
And the joy is to shock, to disturb, to amuse…
Savage pride twisted its blade deep inside him,
As he shrank from the mirror like a vampire,
Hating his naked body,
“Come back when you’re old enough !” the whores used to shout,
And so he picked the ugliest old whore he could find
To lose his cherry to,
On a grubby mattress in a grubby room,
So disgusted that he could not even come…
When he played in bars and nightclubs he was so terrified,
So unable to remember the words of his own songs,
That he would write them down on paper,
And when his hands shook too much he would roll the paper up
Into a little ball and chuck it at the audience
And they, the chic and soigné, would applaud,
Thinking it part of his act…
Out of his mouth came the cruelty of lovers,
The simplicity of sinners,
The sadness of men;
There are no rules, only possibilities,
No taboos, only truth.
Fantastic scandal of life off the leash,
Words on a spree, jumping the barriers,
Exulting in their own bravado !
There he was, Parmigianino’s Cupid-Jesus,
Holding up a red rose to his sexy mother…
He stuck his nose and tongue into everything,
Smelling and tasting the fecund shit…
I will cut you with my hooligan knife,
Make you bleed the waters of life…
Bleary bandido of fame,
Rumpled as a whore’s bedsheets,
He newspapered over the cracks in the sky,
And crawled like a gecko over giant women’s breasts,
Trapped in their glass horizons…
He was the gargoyle bursting out from the tower,
Spurting water from his screaming maw,
Pissing on the heads below…
Black coffee nights, by the light of a cigarette,
He worked his heart out, fast as a car crash,
A saturnine imp two thousand years old,
Sticking his tongue out at the stupid world,
Licking beauty’s arsehole with relish,
Playing with his own caca.
I can do whatever I want,
Just you try and stop me!
Life was a big red balloon, bought on the street corner,
Slipping out of his grasp,
Soaring away over the rooftops…
The air was a dizzy America of sounds,
The world’s bazaar, inexhaustible and free;
Liberty was his laughing perversion,
Turning somersaults and swinging from the trees.
His wry lips bit on dark jokes and cruel wit,
And caressed the Whore Goddess,
Spinning puns like plates on sticks…
Tradition was the Madonna and the Whore;
He could light tall candles before her,
Then turn her round and screw her up the arse…
Bloodshot daylight writhed in agony,
Sweating second chances,
While evil moons stuck pins in the voodoo doll.
Everybody loved him now :
When he tottered down the street, leaning on a cane,
People came up to him, young and old,
Just to smile and say hello,
Scrying in his purblind eyes…
He died in his sleep, alone, in the middle of a dream,
Stretched out on his bed, hands clenched into infantile fists,
Conjuror of a logical conclusion,
His face like an African mask.
This is the joy they call despair,
The cigarette’s Zoroastrian fire…
He had thought that death would somehow overlook him,
Preserve him as a stately ruin :
Surely that was not too much to ask ?
Serge Gainsbourg
Out of the shtetl of a childhood refrain,
Out of the jeering broken mouths of whores,
Out of the sky’s golden piano,
He stumbled, spitting black tobacco dreams,
Branded with the sun’s yellow star.
Attack me, kill me, do your worst,
But I will sing the fury of a man…
Why is this one saved and this one damned ?
God has such a crooked smile…
Alone in the Russia of a girl’s thighs,
He could see Greek statues and dazzling seas,
And hear the old music prancing
Across the warm sands as the timid little urchin
Looked up from play, humming his delight,
And beheld a goddess hovering before him,
Shimmering with sunlight and sea-breeze…
Nothing on earth can destroy me,
The universe is music, and music is love…
That was his museum of memories,
A tiny house with a black front door,
All black inside, impeccable, serene,
Everything in its place, under control,
And no mirrors anywhere,
A vampire shrinking from his own reflection;
Black walls, black ceiling, black marble floors,
Black furniture, black piano, black front door,
And a black uniformed valet to answer the door;
No messy daylight was allowed to enter,
He removed all the glass from the windows
And installed tiny panes of bubbled crystal
That let no light in at all.
How could he, with such disorder in his head,
Tolerate the slightest disorder around him,
That would be madness…
His prancing ear punned on women’s bodies,
And clowned in the circus ring,
As the green wolf ran through the Russian taiga,
Howling at fairy-tale moons;
Bring on the next adventure !
Instead of killing ourselves,
We shall revel in the mess !
Drunkards, lovers, mummers, jesters,
We shall inherit the earth…
Nothing is forbidden,
And the joy is to shock, to disturb, to amuse…
Savage pride twisted its blade deep inside him,
As he shrank from the mirror like a vampire,
Hating his naked body,
“Come back when you’re old enough !” the whores used to shout,
And so he picked the ugliest old whore he could find
To lose his cherry to,
On a grubby mattress in a grubby room,
So disgusted that he could not even come…
When he played in bars and nightclubs he was so terrified,
So unable to remember the words of his own songs,
That he would write them down on paper,
And when his hands shook too much he would roll the paper up
Into a little ball and chuck it at the audience
And they, the chic and soigné, would applaud,
Thinking it part of his act…
Out of his mouth came the cruelty of lovers,
The simplicity of sinners,
The sadness of men;
There are no rules, only possibilities,
No taboos, only truth.
Fantastic scandal of life off the leash,
Words on a spree, jumping the barriers,
Exulting in their own bravado !
There he was, Parmigianino’s Cupid-Jesus,
Holding up a red rose to his sexy mother…
He stuck his nose and tongue into everything,
Smelling and tasting the fecund shit…
I will cut you with my hooligan knife,
Make you bleed the waters of life…
Bleary bandido of fame,
Rumpled as a whore’s bedsheets,
He newspapered over the cracks in the sky,
And crawled like a gecko over giant women’s breasts,
Trapped in their glass horizons…
He was the gargoyle bursting out from the tower,
Spurting water from his screaming maw,
Pissing on the heads below…
Black coffee nights, by the light of a cigarette,
He worked his heart out, fast as a car crash,
A saturnine imp two thousand years old,
Sticking his tongue out at the stupid world,
Licking beauty’s arsehole with relish,
Playing with his own caca.
I can do whatever I want,
Just you try and stop me!
Life was a big red balloon, bought on the street corner,
Slipping out of his grasp,
Soaring away over the rooftops…
The air was a dizzy America of sounds,
The world’s bazaar, inexhaustible and free;
Liberty was his laughing perversion,
Turning somersaults and swinging from the trees.
His wry lips bit on dark jokes and cruel wit,
And caressed the Whore Goddess,
Spinning puns like plates on sticks…
Tradition was the Madonna and the Whore;
He could light tall candles before her,
Then turn her round and screw her up the arse…
Bloodshot daylight writhed in agony,
Sweating second chances,
While evil moons stuck pins in the voodoo doll.
Everybody loved him now :
When he tottered down the street, leaning on a cane,
People came up to him, young and old,
Just to smile and say hello,
Scrying in his purblind eyes…
He died in his sleep, alone, in the middle of a dream,
Stretched out on his bed, hands clenched into infantile fists,
Conjuror of a logical conclusion,
His face like an African mask.
This is the joy they call despair,
The cigarette’s Zoroastrian fire…
He had thought that death would somehow overlook him,
Preserve him as a stately ruin :
Surely that was not too much to ask ?
Die Blaue Stunde
September
And the slow drift
Towards destruction,
Leaf-lilt and sky-tilt,
Longing beyond description…
Memory’s mulch
Will make a pretty bonfire.
And, after all, this loneliness
Is what you were born for;
You chose it,
Or it chose you.
Too much the night:
All these things I fear to see,
Fear to know….
Into the top of autumn’s kerotakis
I pour mercury, sulphur and arsenic
And heat them with fire
So that the vapours rise,
Attacking and transmuting the metal at the top,
Then condense and run down the sides
And the cycle recommences.
And the slow drift
Towards destruction,
Leaf-lilt and sky-tilt,
Longing beyond description…
Memory’s mulch
Will make a pretty bonfire.
And, after all, this loneliness
Is what you were born for;
You chose it,
Or it chose you.
Too much the night:
All these things I fear to see,
Fear to know….
Into the top of autumn’s kerotakis
I pour mercury, sulphur and arsenic
And heat them with fire
So that the vapours rise,
Attacking and transmuting the metal at the top,
Then condense and run down the sides
And the cycle recommences.
Basel
We move with measured rhythm,
Regulated, constrained, discreet;
We do not like surprises.
Money, at least, we understand,
And see no evil in it;
Are we not honourable men?
Stealthy hands go about their work,
Counting riches, treasures untold,
And the dyer is become the chemist,
Trapped inside the glass.
Mad dreams lurk in the banker’s eyes,
And crimes beyond comprehension or forgiveness,
Secrets steeped in blood and offal,
Buried in quicklime, in the dark.
Under the bland facades are lysergic dreams,
Visions form the fungus, other dimensions,
Parallel universes spinning,
Angels and demons, ecstasy and despair.
Who are you? Merchant, philosopher, emperor, bishop,
The masked fool reciting satirical verses,
The demon in the carnival parade.
The Wheel of Fortune turns above the doorway
Of the Münster, where the angel sounds a trumpet
To wake the dead, and elephants bathe in the Rhine.
The wild man, the lion and the griffon
Dance on the bridge, to the sound of a drum,
Picking out the steps with ritual precision.
The Tongue King at the bridge-gate
Rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue
To greet each traveller entering the city.
In the tapestry The Garden of Love,
Two lovers play cards in a summer pavilion:
He slaps down his card, anticipating defeat-
“That last card of yours was a good one!”-
And she, holding victory in her hands,
Smiles, “And it’s won me the game!”
Crowds of people join the Dance of Death,
All heading for the charnel house,
Men and women of all sorts and trades,
Obeying the music, moving as one.
What lies do you tell? What vows do you break?
What supercilious glories do you forge?
Silent thief, see the coinage in your palm,
The gold teeth of skeletons, glinting.
Regulated, constrained, discreet;
We do not like surprises.
Money, at least, we understand,
And see no evil in it;
Are we not honourable men?
Stealthy hands go about their work,
Counting riches, treasures untold,
And the dyer is become the chemist,
Trapped inside the glass.
Mad dreams lurk in the banker’s eyes,
And crimes beyond comprehension or forgiveness,
Secrets steeped in blood and offal,
Buried in quicklime, in the dark.
Under the bland facades are lysergic dreams,
Visions form the fungus, other dimensions,
Parallel universes spinning,
Angels and demons, ecstasy and despair.
Who are you? Merchant, philosopher, emperor, bishop,
The masked fool reciting satirical verses,
The demon in the carnival parade.
The Wheel of Fortune turns above the doorway
Of the Münster, where the angel sounds a trumpet
To wake the dead, and elephants bathe in the Rhine.
The wild man, the lion and the griffon
Dance on the bridge, to the sound of a drum,
Picking out the steps with ritual precision.
The Tongue King at the bridge-gate
Rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue
To greet each traveller entering the city.
In the tapestry The Garden of Love,
Two lovers play cards in a summer pavilion:
He slaps down his card, anticipating defeat-
“That last card of yours was a good one!”-
And she, holding victory in her hands,
Smiles, “And it’s won me the game!”
Crowds of people join the Dance of Death,
All heading for the charnel house,
Men and women of all sorts and trades,
Obeying the music, moving as one.
What lies do you tell? What vows do you break?
What supercilious glories do you forge?
Silent thief, see the coinage in your palm,
The gold teeth of skeletons, glinting.
Bruges
Winter’s afternoon,
Cold eerie fog suffuses the city,
Stone bridges over still canals,
Phantom spires and towers.
Loitering in the square
I explore geometry
With a cone of chips,
Dipping the slim hot crispy gold
In mayonnaise.
With this world in my head
I can never go lonely
Nor fall too far
From the tower of my voice.
I think of the left emanation,
The ten sephiroth of Satan,
Unholy and impure,
Unleashed when Judgment,
The fifth sphere,
Breaks away from the others
And turns destructive.
In the Groeningemuseum
I stand before Gerard David’s The Judgement of Cambyses:
The corrupt judge Sisamnes being flayed alive
With surgical precision by knaves,
While the Persian king and his court
Stand around, nonchalantly looking on.
Cold eerie fog suffuses the city,
Stone bridges over still canals,
Phantom spires and towers.
Loitering in the square
I explore geometry
With a cone of chips,
Dipping the slim hot crispy gold
In mayonnaise.
With this world in my head
I can never go lonely
Nor fall too far
From the tower of my voice.
I think of the left emanation,
The ten sephiroth of Satan,
Unholy and impure,
Unleashed when Judgment,
The fifth sphere,
Breaks away from the others
And turns destructive.
In the Groeningemuseum
I stand before Gerard David’s The Judgement of Cambyses:
The corrupt judge Sisamnes being flayed alive
With surgical precision by knaves,
While the Persian king and his court
Stand around, nonchalantly looking on.
Hypnagogia
Shot from a cannon
Into the circus ring,
I perform my life
For dark faces.
Insight, hindsight, foresight:
Triplet hounds
My hand unleashes
In the hunt!
O, little whirling suns,
Iridescent bubbles,
Waves, clouds, diamonds,
Points and streaks!
Faces, faces,
Out of the darkness,
Some hideous, some sublime,
Moods and emotions
Flashing forth!
Snapping my moorings,
I drift away
Into the sea,
The Sea of Tranquillity.
I am the baby,
Dream-mothered,
Touching and sucking
The everything.
O, curves and spirals
And blossoms of fire!
The rainbows are brightest
In a blind man’s dreams.
Microscopic eyes see through
The grain of your skin.
Who is that, calling my name?
I hear a voice from the unseen,
And blue flames of music,
And churchbells in the night.
Your fate lies upriver,
Beyond the waterfall.
Smell the rose
Whose scent is sweeter
Than any rose could be.
Electricity zigzags
Over my skin,
Shocks and spasms
Rend me from within,
I miss my foothold on the ladder
And fall back into the blue.
I am running, running forever
Towards a closing door.
Contemplate the fascination,
Meditate upon your mountain,
Walk alone through silent gardens
To the ever-shining fountain.
I am my mind,
Diffuse yet absorbed,
Ranging meridians
For what it may find.
The glass is moving
On the ouija board,
Spelling out words
As the sleeper stirs.
“Do not disturb my circles”
Pleads Archimedes
To the Roman soldier
About to spear him.
Edison, dozing in his chair,
Vexed by some problem,
Lets the steel balls drop
From his hands,
And as they clatter
Into pans on the floor,
He wakes with a start,
Inspired by solutions.
Pineal gland,
Cone of light,
Caduceal sceptre-head,
Buddha’s topknot.
Death, deliver me secrets,
Render me powers
And resolve.
All worlds, all times
Are one here,
One energy,
One mind.
Into the circus ring,
I perform my life
For dark faces.
Insight, hindsight, foresight:
Triplet hounds
My hand unleashes
In the hunt!
O, little whirling suns,
Iridescent bubbles,
Waves, clouds, diamonds,
Points and streaks!
Faces, faces,
Out of the darkness,
Some hideous, some sublime,
Moods and emotions
Flashing forth!
Snapping my moorings,
I drift away
Into the sea,
The Sea of Tranquillity.
I am the baby,
Dream-mothered,
Touching and sucking
The everything.
O, curves and spirals
And blossoms of fire!
The rainbows are brightest
In a blind man’s dreams.
Microscopic eyes see through
The grain of your skin.
Who is that, calling my name?
I hear a voice from the unseen,
And blue flames of music,
And churchbells in the night.
Your fate lies upriver,
Beyond the waterfall.
Smell the rose
Whose scent is sweeter
Than any rose could be.
Electricity zigzags
Over my skin,
Shocks and spasms
Rend me from within,
I miss my foothold on the ladder
And fall back into the blue.
I am running, running forever
Towards a closing door.
Contemplate the fascination,
Meditate upon your mountain,
Walk alone through silent gardens
To the ever-shining fountain.
I am my mind,
Diffuse yet absorbed,
Ranging meridians
For what it may find.
The glass is moving
On the ouija board,
Spelling out words
As the sleeper stirs.
“Do not disturb my circles”
Pleads Archimedes
To the Roman soldier
About to spear him.
Edison, dozing in his chair,
Vexed by some problem,
Lets the steel balls drop
From his hands,
And as they clatter
Into pans on the floor,
He wakes with a start,
Inspired by solutions.
Pineal gland,
Cone of light,
Caduceal sceptre-head,
Buddha’s topknot.
Death, deliver me secrets,
Render me powers
And resolve.
All worlds, all times
Are one here,
One energy,
One mind.
Death on Television
Turn on
And watch the killing;
Murder, disaster, accident and war.
Prime entertainment.
The way things really are.
Let the mystery play begin.
Someone else’s misfortune
Whores my illusion
As reality is manufactured,
Advertised and sold.
Come, titillate the appetite,
Confirm the prejudice.
Show me evil
In diverse forms,
Carnival freakshows
And horror divine,
Electric shocks
To goad the blood.
My cupidity, I wager,
Is not so strange to you.
Are we not equal witnesses,
After a fashion?
History, it seems to me,
Is but knowledge of pain,
And events our true instruction,
As the soul, in lust for profit,
Speculates.
How cruel we prove,
And add such vices to our credit.
Whatever suffers has currency.
Give me action and destruction,
Some sudden rage to gawp at,
The bloody sacrifice
For Aztec fun.
And is it wrong
That by disorder
I may be ordered
And cleansed?
You will always want the danger,
The blood and dirt,
Animal omens, noises in the dark.
The judge must don the black cap
And solemnly condemn.
The butcher’s knife works without pause.
It is the hour of Thomas the Twin
Poking his finger into the holy wounds;
Nails from the True Cross,
Portraits of Christ.
Now, separate the saint from his head
And describe the crime scene.
And watch the killing;
Murder, disaster, accident and war.
Prime entertainment.
The way things really are.
Let the mystery play begin.
Someone else’s misfortune
Whores my illusion
As reality is manufactured,
Advertised and sold.
Come, titillate the appetite,
Confirm the prejudice.
Show me evil
In diverse forms,
Carnival freakshows
And horror divine,
Electric shocks
To goad the blood.
My cupidity, I wager,
Is not so strange to you.
Are we not equal witnesses,
After a fashion?
History, it seems to me,
Is but knowledge of pain,
And events our true instruction,
As the soul, in lust for profit,
Speculates.
How cruel we prove,
And add such vices to our credit.
Whatever suffers has currency.
Give me action and destruction,
Some sudden rage to gawp at,
The bloody sacrifice
For Aztec fun.
And is it wrong
That by disorder
I may be ordered
And cleansed?
You will always want the danger,
The blood and dirt,
Animal omens, noises in the dark.
The judge must don the black cap
And solemnly condemn.
The butcher’s knife works without pause.
It is the hour of Thomas the Twin
Poking his finger into the holy wounds;
Nails from the True Cross,
Portraits of Christ.
Now, separate the saint from his head
And describe the crime scene.
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