Electronic Gnostic

To voyage beyond the map…

That I always dreamed of,

A young lad lying on his back

In the grass, growing an angel’s wings…


The conjuror’s smile:

Pick a card.

Here I am,

A hermenaut,

A spook.

My labour

Is the opus contra naturum.


Humming and groaning

With mystical ecstasies

And erotic frenzy

My computer

Burns its incense…

(Electricity:

Ethereal fire of the Rosicrucians,

Elixir of the World Soul...)

Mother always said

Never dabble in the occult

Yet here I am, sending out mischievous embassies of spirits

Into the wishful air.


Hephaestus limps round his smithy,

Hammering out the great bronze shield for Achilles,

Aided by comely handmaids of hammered gold

Resembling real living girls.

Skilfully, he adorns the work

With intricate scenes of battle, harvest and celebration

That magically come to life in the mind…



Crafty Hermes, be my guide,

Induct me into your mysteries,

Meet me at the crossroads,

Where I traffic in dreams,

Teach me new tricks.

Con man, inventor, merchant, magus, thief,

Wielding the caduceus’s double helix,

Happening on lucky finds

With exquisite serendipity.


O, Alexandria,

Your patron god Sarapis

A syncretic eclectic hybrid;

City where Heron built divine engines,

Singing statues, automata, and gadgets.

His magic theatre

That rolled out before the audience,

Executed a miniature three-dimensional performance

Of a Dionysian mystery rite-

Flames leapt, thunder crashed,

And tiny Bacchantes whirled

In frenzy round the god, -

Then exited under its own steam.

For the temples Heron

Made mechanical singing birds,

Invisible trumpet blasts,

Mirrors that conjured spooks,

Magical doors.


Ah, memory theatre,

Carnival of spirits,

Masquerade of ghosts!

Hieroglyphs, bring down the heavens,

Bring down the heavens here!

By ciphers, signs and sigils

I invoke the angels,

Jealous of their algorithmic powers.



What allegory am I now living out,

Unconscious of the meanings,

Barely glimpsing the symbols

That point my next move?



Trithemius of Würzburg,

That prodigious scholar,

Who took over the monastery of Sponheim

At the age of twenty-three,

And built upon a magnificent library,

Full of occult texts,

And wrote his Steganographia,

Revealed to him in a dream...

Beneath the spells' compendium

Are cryptographic miracles,

And a complex system of astrological magic,

Using numerology, wax images and esoteric alphabets

To invoke and communicate with astral intelligences;

A means to acquire universal knowledge,

To “know everything happening in the world.”



I roll my soul’s dice

In the game of chance.

What say the archons?

Electromagnetic romance:

I fornicate with phantoms,

Stormed by succubi.

What is this quickening

That dizzies my being,

This blur of transformations?

Will I attain the Heavenly City

Or tumble into the Abyss?

Arias of the Castrati

Geldings, eunuchs, capons, nature’s rejects:

So they were scorned by the very public

Which thundered,wept , and cheered for more,

“Evivva il coltellino!” quaking the opera house.

Most sang not for kings and cardinals,

But to please some sweaty lecherous parish priest;

Busked for pennies in the streets,

Turned to prostitution to get by,

Ended, all too often, in suicide.

Taken like animals in the trap,

Doctored and flogged into beauty,

They served both splendour and cruelty,

Vestals of a cold bewitching flame.

To be the greatest of the divas,more magnificent

Than any mere female! Incomparable virtuosity

Had been beaten into their skins,

Outsoaring and outstranging all.

Philistine time soon rendered them pariahs,

Huge round-bodied effeminate freaks,

More shunned than loved, till the finale,

One last impossible note, no curtain calls.

Hadrian's Wall

Britannia.Pretani.Land of the Tattoed.

A rare exotic asset held at cost,

The barbarians always out there,

Wily,resolute and bold,

Hidden in the hazy weather,

Beyond the wall...

The grizzled legionaries stare out

From their posts,

Into the Brigantes’ hunting ground.

The very trees and hills are in revolt.



“Wretched little Britons,” the centaurs

Came dashing out of the fog,

On nimble little ponies, turning

And wheeling with supernatural ease,

Horse and rider one body,one mind.



On either side the war-gods’ shrines

Steam with sacrifice

The Romans,for their part,

Thank their patrons for gifts received;

The Celts, more wary and propitiatory,

Make offerings in advance.



Across Northumberland moors and valleys

The young Roman commander and his cohorts

Gallop their horses to hounds, exulting.

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

At a lucky spot he erects an altar

To Silvanus the invincible,lord of the woods,

For granting him a titanic boar

Of exceptional spirit and quality,

Which so many before him had failed to bag.

Cernunnos watches all from the trees.



The invaders’ coins shine like new moons,

Fairy-horses galloping from hand to hand.

Farting soldiers wipe their arses with moss in the latrines.

The barracks whores are quickly given nicknames.



In far-off Rome, the Emperor frets

That his famous regiments will be ruined

By dice games, drinking and the pox.

Without frontiers, without limits,

There could be no civilisation.

Let wolves and bears retreat

From the straight stones of Rome!

The Wine Drinker

A glass of wine completes my philosophy.

Man’s truest friend, proof against reality.

From beneficent illusions,

I compose a symposium.

This is no selfish appetite,

But an offering to the earth,

As the Arab makes with his hookah.

I will die under the aegis of Dionysus

Like Alexander the Great...

Sacred names of terroir and grape

Flavour the spirit’s inquiries

Through languid underworld quests.

What wisdom may I find here

In these notes and tones?

Autumn’s elixir promises eternal life:

Earth’s Eucharist that a seasoned heart

Will meditate upon,and,in the exchange,

Learn to give.To right disorder.

Sipping blessings,I begin to worship

The deep world from whose mystery

I occur.Chivalrous as a Duke of Burgundy,

In love with the Golden Fleece,

I pledge my dreams to the vine.

The world is what is left behind:

Process and transformation are my loves,

Face to face with the self in the glass,

The painful redeemer, the sinner judged.

Time, too devious and precise

For even the cleverest to dupe or avoid,

Returns a lost and weeping child

To that far-off First Communion.

Manaus

On market ice a pirarucu lies,

Six feet long, two hundred pounds,

Spawned in the seas of Gondwanaland,

A weird giant,magnificent and hideous.


The black waters of the Rio Negro

And the yellow Solimões

Meet but do not merge,

Flowing side by side,distinct,

Joined in mystery.


Pâté de foie gras from France

And biscuits shipped in from Boston.

Waldemar Scholz, strolling in his gardens

With his pet lion,

Sends his laundry to Paris

To ensure a proper crease in the equatorial air.

Meanwhile his slaves die inelegantly

As the rubber bleeds its white lines

Through the heart.


In the dolphin-breath morning haze

A little boat pilots out into muddy bayou;

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

Madness moves in the water.


From the orchestra of the Teatro Amazonas

Gaze masks of Western avatars:

Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Verdi.

Gilt and velvet,

And the chill of ghosts.

Outside,in the square,

A snake writhes across the sidewalk

Veronese's "Allegory of Wisdom and Strength"

I

Venice, 1576.All summer the sun beats down

On the paving stones, and the city is eerily empty

And quiet. Black gondolas zigzag across

The lagoon to the lazaretto on San Erasmo,

Bringing victims from the plague-ridden city.

While discoloured festering bodies pile up

On the streets, Paolo Veronese, in his studio,

Bony faced and darkbearded, stern of mien,

Among ledgerbooks, terracotta busts and torsos,

Wax model hands, and shelves of pigment jars,

White lead, lac and massicot, smalt and cendre,

Minium, indigo, verdigris and ultramarine,-

Examines his skin in the mnring light

For the telltale stigmata,-will he live

To complete this new creation?-then begins

A grand new canvas, his hand at first hesitant

Then gathering confidence, force and speed,

Commissioned by Rudolf II of Prague himself,

So craving the mythological and the erotic,

The monumental and the minute.


O, Venice of watered silk, taffeta and brocade!

Gentlewomen linger all day in dressmakers’ shops,

Fingering satins, velevets, damasks and laces.

In tapestried palazzos, while acrobats and clowns

Sport for their pleasure, rich guests feast to the sound

Of fife and flute, and dance capellos and torcias,

And sup vernaccia and matricali flavoured

With perfumes, spiked with drugs.

Among glowing aquariums and sugar statuettes

Of the Popes, and even cutlery moulded

Out of confectionery, and the toothpick gold…

Sumptuous world that Veronese made his own!

The folds in brocade, the gold filigree of pitchers,

Sheen of pink and green on velvet gowns

All attract his prying eye and yearning hand…

Alchemist in search of the ultimate tincture,

He mixes sulphur and mercury in a crucible,

Distilling cinnabar; copper dissolved in vinegar

Crystallize verdigris; each precious pigment

Materializes, unique to its moment and mood.


II


In the Hradčany Palace, on Prague’s height,

Rudolf II, bulbous eyes in his ponderous head;

Wanders round his cabinet of curiosities,

Bewitched by the unicorn’s horn, his mind

All writhing mercurial serpents and toads,

In love with the Kabbalah of difficult art,

Ostentatious surprise made artifice supreme…

All the world’s freaks and weird toys

Cannot sate his appetite for the obscure,

Feasting on automata and flying machines...

I am damned and possessed by the Devil!-


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


The circle and discover the elixir!


All the secrets of nature shall be mine…

Ever more reclusive and secretive, Rdolf

Lives on hidden codes and wild flights,

The ominous end of century bearing down

On his spirit,-the heavens are in turmoil,

And numerologists trace the panic in dates

As a nova streaks across the night sky.



Rudolf dead, the Swedes storm the city

And, marauding through the corridors

Of Hradčany, marvel at the treasures,

Walls line with paintings, chabers crammed

With wondrous sculptures and artefacts.

Penetrating deeper into the castle, soe troops

Come to the Spanish Wing, where hundreds

Of the finest pictures hang, among them

Veronese’s “Allegory of Wisdom and Strength”.

Greedily the plunderers steal the works

To bring back in tribute to their queen,

Waiting impatiently back in Stockholm.



III


In Stockholm Castle, Queen Christina paces

To and fro in her chambers, avoiding

He own unlovely image in the mirror,

(Before her birth, the astrologer had predicted

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

Hirsute ad in a caul, the king was told

He had a son. Even when the error was discovered

No one dared tell His Majesty the truth,

Till eventually his sister carried the infant

To him and he saw for himself, and smiled

As he held Christina in his arms-

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

She deceived us all!”From that day on,

She was raised as a boy, and seldom spoke

To women, disdaining her own sex,

-Ugly Christina, cerebral and witty,

Sterling virago and king amongst kings!



The booty from Prague arrives in crates

Just as the Queen is dreaming of the south,

Her heart set on Italy and incomparable Rome.

That winter, also comes the great Descartes,

Dressed as a courtier with lace-trimmed gloves,

Eager and expecting of the celebrated queen,

All too soon disappointed in her intellect,

Finding her besotted with trivial sophistry,

While she, for her part, inatntly dislikes shim

For his ugliness and arrogance,-

How dare he disdain and contradict her!

Henceforth she scornfully neglects him,

While the arctic winter attacks his lungs

And rapidly lays him on his deathbed.



Irked by her office, Christina abdicates

And heads south, with her treasures,

Head shorn and wearing men’s garb,

Short corpulent lopsided steatopygus troll,

Big nosed and bigmouthed, with fierce blue eyes,

Whiskery double chin and manly voice…

In the Rome of morbid ecstasies and icons,

She dwells among jasmine pergolas,

Regretting lost splendours and times,

For Raphael and his ilk are no more.

As she hosts the sacra conversazione

Of scholars and artists, her paintings

Gaze down from the walls, and bless

The noble strivings of abject souls.


IV


Crimson and mirrored, ornate apartments

Of the Palais Royal in Paris, home

To Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, man of talents

Forever fighting boredom, the deadliest foe,

With the habits of scholar, soldier, and roué,

Regent without office at court, an outsider,

Taking low women as mistresses, defying

Church and society with cynical wit.

At Mass, while all around read prayerbooks

He studies a volume of Rabelais,

And, at home, conducts elite orgies,

Exploring all possible sexual combinations,

With contests to see which woman

Excels in genital pulchritude.

Here hangs “Wisdom and Strength”,

And, as the picture ages, a pentimento

Shows thorugh, painted-over billowing

Of cloth, that haunts and disfigures,

As the browning canvas exudes

A mellow golden glow…

When Philippe dies, his son Louis,

Reared as a trainee roué,

Dismisses his mistresses, cancels his orgies

And turns to religion with a vengeance;

He slashes and mutilates some

Of his precious erotic paintings

And retreats to an abbey to live

As an ascetic, sleeping on straw,

And distributng alms to the needy,

Refusing even to attend his mother’s funeral

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

Traces of Byzantium

I

Venice in winter, air crisp and cold;

Garbage boats and water hearses

Ply the canals; I lose my way

In the tiny streets, only to emerge

In some secret square, confronted

By a special beauty. (In the Accademia

Sits the last official gift of Byzantium

To the Venetian Republic;

A reliquary containing a fragment

Of the True Cross, presented

By Cardinal Bessarion in 1463.

In Constantinople the Venetians

Had made their fortunes, trading

Salt and slaves for gold and silks,

Russian sables and Indian spices.

In time, they came to see their partners

As rivals, ever greedier for their loot,

And the Byzantines began to fear

These suave piratical merchants

Whose privileges exceeded their own;

And in 1204, Doge Enrico Dandolo

Sent a fleet of Crusaders to storm

And sack the City on the Bosphorus

And bring back the plunder to adorn

His palaces and churches).

Shivering in mist from the lagoon,

I walk to the Fondamenta Nuove

To catch the boat for Torcello;

Through the mist looms the isle

Of the dead, whose unloved bones

Are dug up every twelve years

And thrown into a common pit.

Desolate Torcello: the black pods

Of the jacaranda trees rattle

Along the canal.Inside the cathedral,

The Last Judgment of Greek mosaicists

Glimmers;all marble,mother-of-pearl

And enamel; catching the glow

Of lamps and candles, fabulous beasts

Devouring lost souls, hands and feet

In their beaks, while angels sound

The Horrid Horn and a siren perches

On a rock while the damned swim

In the sea around; angels with poles

Force the damned down into the flames,

Even a Byzantine emperor and empress,

As sport for blue devils, and worms writhe

In the eye sockets of grinning skulls.



Byzantium no more, Atlantis no more...

Realms of the Romaioi,

Preservers of Europe for a thousand years,

Who worshipped God with opulence,

Under the eyes of the saints in icons,

Knowing that Christ by his beauty

Overcame the world, and that man

Must mediate the seen and the unseen....

In Ravenna, fog is swirling in from the sea,

And a biting wind blows it around me,

As I enter San Vitale, the harmony

Of light and shadow all-subsuming;

Out of the walls come Justinian

And Theodora,-made by artisans

Despatched from Constantinople itself-

He, the son of a Macedonian peasant,

She, daughter of a Cypriot bear tamer,

Surrounded by their adoring retinue.

Accompanied by her ladies and eunuchs,

Theodora, once a prostitute, now haloed,

Holds a chalice for the Mass,

In her crown and jewelled cloak

Broidered with the three Magi;

Justinian, God’s viceroy on earth,

In his purple cloak trimmed with gold silk,

Carries the paten, while his prelates

Hold high the cross and jewelled Bible.


II

April in Serbia: white blossom

Of bird cherry and wild pear,

And fierce joy of šlivovica;

Inside the monastery church at Manasija,

Towering among orchards,

The are beautiful Morava frescoes,

Among them a portrait of the founder,

In robes embroidered

With the doubleheaded Byzantine eagle

The Despot Stephen Lazarević Visoki,

Son of Prince Lazar, the martyr of Kosovo,

Where the Serbs lost their lands

To the Turks, and retreated

To the northern mountains.

Subtler than his father, Stephen

Played the diplomat with skill,

And survived to die in his bed;

Here he surrounded himself

With scholars and befriended hermits,

Looking out from his high tower,

As he sought in religion solace

For the doom he saw coming

To his realm, for any moment

The Turks might launch their onslaught;

And, in the end, he was forced

To cede even his beloved Manija

To the enemy, when all hope was gone.



In a beech-covered valley, with snow

On the hills beyond, Kalenić monastery

Offers sweet refuge from the world;

In the fresco of the Wedding at Cana,

The groom pricks his bride’s finger

To drink her blood with his wine

In token of fidelity; and the guests

Dine with forks, a luxury of Constantinople

Almost unknown outside Venice,

For the Serbs had been importing

Byzantine refinements for years,

As the Nemanja kings created a realm

Vast in extent ad grand in ambition;

But when these frescoes were painted

The kingdom was in dire peril

As the Turks advanced ever closer

With each day, not to be denied.

The artists worked as one in pairs,

Applying a base of white lime and straw,

Then three coats of plaster, incised

With a cartoon, and the third coat

They painted while still wet,

So the plaster absorbed the pigments

Of cobalt, ochre, haematite, terre-verte,

Carbon, chalk, lapis lazuli and gold.



Through the Ibar valley, its barren rocks

Towering over the swift twisting river,

The high road winds through

A narrow pine valley and alpine pastures,

To Studenica monastery, founded

In a wilderness of wolves and bears

By Stephen Nemanja, to be his mausoleum,

For he wish his bones to have a holy rest,

And here he was brought home from Mt Athos

After his death there as an anchorite,

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

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

Which is to be my shroud, and prepare me,

For laying gin my grave, as is the custom.

Strew rushes on the earth for me to lie upon.

Then place a stone beneath my head

So that I may lie there until the Lord

Comes to take me hence.”

Above his simple tomb stands

A fresco, showing the sainted king,

In monk’s habit, offering up a model

Of his church to Christ and the Virgin.

His relics are said to fill the church

With the odour of violets,

And in the evening it hums like a beehive

With the chanting of vespers...



Sopoćani monastery, high

In the mountains, was built

As a Nemanja mausoleum

By King Uroš the First,

Who deposed his own brother

To steal the throne, and, in time,

Was himself deposed by his son.

These frescoes were commissioned

By Uroš from Byzantine artists of the exiled

Imperial Court at Nicaea.-

Superb frescoes, of wondrous grace,

Faces majestic and serene,

Whether joyful or sad, imbued

With mystical devotion, fashioned

With delicate and subdued palette.

On the north wall of the narthex,

A fresco depicts the interment

Of King Uroš’s mother, lying

On a bier, while an angel clasps a baby

That represents her soul,

While Christ and the Virgin approach;

Uroš himself leans over his mother,

His two sons beside him,

And a courtier, looking on, holds

A precious handkerchief to his eyes,

A luxury which the painter

Must have spied at the court in Nicaea.


Blackbirds brought the evil tidings

To the ears of Lazar’s widow,

That the Prince, whose nobility

And skill had united and preserved

His doomed nation for a time

And raised a great army

To repel Sultan Murad’s invasion,

Had fallen to the enemy,

Beheaded as vile infidels,

And thereafter for centuries

The Serbs would be enslaved,

Enfeoffed as serfs, their sons

Abducted as Janissaries to the Ottomans,

Taxed and persecuted, massacred

And impaled, without pity.


I imagine myself as Bishop Liudprand,

Tenth-century diplomat from Cremona,

At his audience with Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus

At the Great Palace in Constantinople;

“I was led into the Emperor’s presence

By two eunuchs and prostrated myself.

Before the Emperor’s throne

Stood a tree made of gilded bronze,

Its branches filled with birds

All mad of gilded bronze,

Each singing according to its species;

So marvellously fashioned was this throne

That one moment it was on the ground

And the next had risen high into the air;

Suddenly the Emperor had changed

His robes, and was sitting somewhere

Up near the ceiling, looking down at me;

How this was done I cannot imagine;

Huge, it was guarded by gold lions

Beating the ground with their tails

And roaring horribly, with quivering tongues”.


The monastery of Visoki Dečani,

Its white marble walls gleam

Amid primrose-covered banks

And chestnut woods full of violets and hellebores;

Founded by King Stephen Uroš III Dečanski

And his treacherous son Dušan

Who one day would murder him;

In 1214 Stephen was goaded into revolt

Against his own father, King Milutin,

By his stepmother, and was easily defeated;

His father had him blinded and banished

To Constantinple; in fact, the blinding

Had been bungled, but for seven years

Wily Stephen pretended to be blind,

Until his father’s death, when he ascended

The throne and, before his people,

Suddenly, miraculously regained his sight;

As king, he was ferocious and ruthless,

But fell under the influence of his wife,

The Byzantine princess, Maria Palaeologina,

Who made him so excessively Greek

In his tastes and style, that the nobility

Turned against him, and his son Dušan

Usurped him and, in a castle dungeon

Strangled his father to death with his own hands.

Inside the church here at Visoki Dečani,

Where Stephens’s body lies entombed,

Is covered from roof to floor with frescoes

Commissioned by Dušan, praying

By such offerings to God to expiate

His great sin and atone for his guilt;

Again and again, appears the figure

Of Onuphrius, wild old hermit

Of the Egyptian desert, white beard

And hair down to his feet,

Who subsisted for seventy years

On palm leaves and roots.

On the southern wall, father and son

Hold a model of the church between them,

And all around members of their dynasty

Are painted, amid archangels clad

In Byzantine arms and armour, some

With long Western swords, but others

Equipped with Turkish lances and bows.

Dušan made himself mightiest of his line,-

A handsome giant, in whose black eyes

Burned terrifying rages and wild laughter-

And dreamed of claiming the Byzantine crown,

But in 1355, while preparing his campaign

To seize Constantinople, he was stricken

With fever and died, having built dozens of churches

To atone for his father’s murder,

And kept the most splendid Byzantine court

At Skopje, as if he were already Emperor.


Built by King Milutin, the church of Gračanica,

Is subtly composed of grey and ochre stone,

In the frescoes Milutin is shown

With long white beard, in Imperial regalia,

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

Encrusted with emeralds, rubies and pearls,

A great gold halo behind her head.

Milutin was a conqueror, murderer and lecher,

Who byzantine his subjects still more,

Ordering his court with byzantine etiquette

And Imperial titles, and phrasing his decrees

In the manner of chrysobuls.

He lusted hotly after women, yet treated them ill,

Ice-cold in discarding them or using them

As political instruments to suit shis needs.

He wed Simonida when she was but five

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

By cruelly forcing himself upon her

When she was still a child. So jealous was he

Of his young bride that he had a secret staircase

Built inside one of the columns in the church

So Simonida could hear the liturgy,

Hidden from courtiers’ ogling eyes.

She came to hate her tyrannical husband

Ad stirred up trouble between him and his son

So that Prince Stephen rebelled against him.


III

Green hills of oak and walnut trees

And mountains lit with yellow sage;

Golden orioles fly agasinst the sea’s blue;

Sitting at a taverna table, I see

A thin scabby mongrel amble up

And sit beside me, begging for food.

In a dim church in the Peloponnese,

Women light candles, and place them

Before icons which they adorn with roses;

Through the open Holy Door, silhouetted

Against a sunbeam from the window,

The priest in green stands consecrating

The bread and wine at an altar, his voice

Deep and resonant with devotion;

He raises the ripidion and fans the elements

As the Holy Ghost descends, wings beating,

And the air is heavy with incense,

Candlesmoke and rose-scent,

The priest pierces the loaf with a knife,

As the centurion pierced Christ’s side

With his lance, as he hung on the Cross,

Cutting pieces for the saints and apostles

And the dead, then mixes the wine

With cold water, as the water flowed

Out with the blood from Christ’s side;

Then he covers the whole with a veil.


High against the snowy mountain peaks,

Amid dark cypresses, Mistra sits on its hill,

A nest of silkworms in heaven’s height;

Surrounded by valerian, purple vetch,

Pink hawksbeard, convolvulus, Tears of the Virgin,

And, clinging to the palaces and churches

The blue trumpets of campanula,

In the steep narrow wynds,

Where mansions, monasteries and citadels

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

And was lost to foreign powers,

Here, the last brilliant Palaeologi stood fast,

And reversed decline, conquering new lands,

Ruling as Despots over a splendid state,

Drawing scholars, architects and artists from afar).

Gemistos Plethon, would stroll to and fro

With his students in the square

Outside the Despot’s palace, lecturing on Plato;

Continually he would send memoranda

To the Emperor, arguing that, ony by reforming

According to the ideas in Plato’s Republic

Could the Eastern Empire save itself.

In the pavement of the Metropolis

Is a stone slab carve with the double eagle,

Where Constantine XI Palaeologus was crowned

And proclaimed King and Emperor of the Romans,

Though he ruled but the tiniest remnant

Of the magnificent empire of old;

And when he sailed away to Constantinople,

The Thirteenth Apostle knew in his heart

That he would be the last ruler of the East;

Four years later he died fighting to the last

On the walls of his sacked capital,

His mutilated body only recognised later

By the royal red buskins on his feet.

News

Tell me what happened

In the world I never lived in.

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

Did governments rise and fall?

I was too busy to notice,

An angler on the riverbank,

Watching the float,

Waiting till it bobbed.

Barbados

Bougainvillea’s pink crumpled stars

Supernova all around,

Retinal detonations flaunting ethereal fire...

Wild windwards and calm leewards

Are my interdependent extremes.

How can I learn the orchids’ dialect?

Golden masqueraders of Crop Over,

Parading under the stilt-walking sun!

A Seventh Day Adventist,baptised

In the sea,I come all white-drenched

And hungry,prayer-fires in my hands

To worship the naked brown bodies

Of the drowning and soon-to-be drowned.

Calypso birds of paradise,take the pirates’

Scattered gold and blow it to the winds,

On lifetimes of nonchalant splendour!

The earth is an effigy set on fire.

Love, we shall be swimming horses,

Weightless and tameless in the blue...

Teacher,preacher,policeman of desire,

The girl from summer’s edge comes,

Proffering breadfruit,her smile reefed

With secrets,holed with limestone caves.

The Spanish Dead

A grassy gully just west of Granada

With the breeze in the pines

And a spring bubbling close by;

Lorca hides under the ground where he was shot,

Side by side with a one-legged schoolteacher

And two trade unionists.


In the Convent of the Royal Discalced Carmelites

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

Labelled as one of the innocents

Liquidated by Herod.


Seven thousand bones and wisps of hair

In Philip II’s Escorial,

Twelve skeletons and forty-four skulls.

The black spider’s insurance policy

That did not keep his Armada from sinking.


Day by day on his deathbed

Generalissimo Franco looks across

At St Teresa’s desiccated forearm

Brought to his bedside,

Praying for mercy and relief.

.
Bodies,bodies,hundreds of thousands

Of bodies in the ground,

People whose religion

Was life, the light, the smell of bread,

A well-timed joke.

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

The smell of money was always on his hands,

The stink of capital, the sewer he lived in,

The frock-coated squire riding to hounds

Or quaffing champagne in elegant salons;

He would eat up ideas as greedily

As lobster salad, thrill to practical philosophy

As much as a feline mistress’s touch.


The world’s trade passed through him,

From Dixieland cotton plantations

To Lancashire mills,from the slum streets

Of Manchester to India’s hillsides.

He could smell insurrection on the cobbles,

Hear the battle on the barricades;

Science would demand an Aztec hecatomb.


Trim,groomed and vain as a cavalryman,

He grasped the word “freedom” in his hands,

As devotedly as a barber his scissors

Or a servant his master’s Chinese vase.

Never would he lose the North Sea breeze

And the sun-shot waves,exultant voyage

Of a youth pursuing the Golden Fleece!


The faithful brother,ever close at hand,

He shook with the shuttles’ apocalyptic din,

Read the grotesque facts under the skin;

How could others not stand appalled

At the bankruptcy and waste inherent

In their industrial paradise? The Inquisitor

Took up the chair in his darkened court.

Nepal

I am here to read the Fibonacci series

In an ammonite from the Tethys Sea,

Here to feel continents’ clash and quake,

Tectonic cataclysms’ Saivite play.



Moraine-milk streams from glacial snouts

Over rock-breasts,carving and scouring

With invincible gravity to the Ganges,

Pressed down by geological aeons.



Blue lotus of the Primordial Isle,

Vanished,or invisible, your aroma

Still carries on the Himalayan wind

To delirious climbers, fools for God.



Dawn river ghat: weeping sons

Circumambulate three times father’s corpse

Then set the butter lamp on his face

As the priest’s torch touches the pyre

And the howling sun surges over the peaks,

Painting all bodies with music and ash.



Some dark original shadows me,

The yeti painted on a monastery mural,

An inexplicable footprint in the snow.

Demons glower behind every rock.



High on a stupa,the Buddha’s eyes

Hypnotize the cardinal directions;

Potent as rhododendron honey,

The air teems with hallucinations.



Temple bells call out across the valley

Through craggy clouds,lunatic echoes

Dizzy as terraces’ elephant wrinkles,

Or strung-out prayer flags’ wuthering.

New Year in Laos

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

Executing nothing, never starting or finishing anything,

Incessantly shapechanging, becoming something other,

For no reason or purpose , no deadline at all

It is the theatre of the shadow puppets,

The Sanskrit verses of the sea.

Landlocked souls yearn for that wild shore.



On the wall reliefs of a wat.

Gold dancing lovers embrace, fingers curled

Into mudras, faces blissful,oblivious,eyes closed,

Stupa-helmets antennae angled to the gods,

Thirty-two guardian spirits within.

I could stare forever into a Buddha’s face,

His skull becoming mine.



A ball of sticky rice in the hand:

Civilisation’s last word. A fat happy syllable.

I climb the naga steps of the temple,

Lifted by the garuda-winged eaves.

April full moon’s waters want to drown you

In memory,wash you up on some shore

Where life can begin anew.

Eisenstein in Mexico

The icons in his blood began to work again,

He had taken leave of Russia and himself.

The Mexican skull beneath his face

Spoke Aztec poems to the east,

Laughing out the Day of the Dead.


Emotions and senses

Were taking him over,

The deliberate atheist

Painted blue for sacrifice.

He wanted to love the crowds,

The faces of strange brothers and sisters,

People without the law.


Once more a child,magicked and seduced

Into wild ecstatic knowledge,

He mounted images and rode them away;

All the centuries were happening at once,

Around him,impossible to take in,

Dreams and nightmares commingling.


Pencil in hand, he sketched

Epiphanies,vivid as the folk tales

And myths in the cradle,-

Everything was preternaturally alive

Yet skeletal, already dead.

This country was whatever he could imagine,

Remember, create.


The torero,blessed before the corrida,

He carried dark saints on his shoulders,

Through the blood-fiesta;

It did not have to be Utopia or Eden.

Just an unofficial communion,

A minute or an hour of pure love.

Remnants of Outremer

Shortlived are all the kingdoms of this world:

So God has disposed and what right has man

To argue his precedence and desire?

As long as there is land, there will be war.


Covered passages and ruined houses

In the Genoese quarter of Akko,

Handsome ashlar vaults built to endure,

Molten light and shadow melding.


Their bread absorbed the flavour

Of the Saracen sun; olive presses bled

Elixir such as Jesus had once supped,

And water-mills churned the light.


A twelfth-century scythe lies in the dirt,

Crescent moon of a thousand years ago;

The hardened hand that made it sing

Trembled also at the touch of rose petals.


The Frankish dead, in shallow graves,

Stretch out on their backs from east to west,

Stone-pillowed heads propped ,gazing

Sunsetwise,arms across their chests.

Screen

No prayers, no Masses, no good works,

Just suffering carefully examined;

I see Christ in every cheap action film,

The Madonna on billboards and magazine covers.

Pontius Pilate with a remote control,

I restlessly change channels.

My eyes accept the sacrament:

Incarnations within a screen.


Pictures reunite me with the world,

Re-acquaint me with myself.

I have sensed God more in cinemas than churches.

Can I overcome superstition,

Transcend idolatry?


I am here to bear witness.

To prepare a revelation in the dark.

An oracular object is presented to me:

The head of John the Baptist,

Orpheus,

Hussein.

I allow the darkness power over me

For what it may teach me

In exultation and hurt.


What is eternal life

If not this instant now,

Before and behind the screen?

All that remains of my rational world

Is these images, these signs.

Everyday Man (Rudiments of Tuesday)

Days require techniques.

Mostly it is waiting.

Deviant conformist,

Backstage, in an armchair,

I scribble a shopping list,

As tame as they come.

I safari through suburbia,

And join another queue,

Shuffling to and fro,

As I watch out for lawbreakers.

Is anybody listening to me?

I don’t listen much myself.

Innumerable faces blur into one,

African masks on English streets.

Weighing up costs and benefits,

I cast spells with a voodoo doll marked “love”.

My eyes fix on nothing,

Embarrassed to stare,to enquire.

Incompetent performances are my forte,

Always ready with an encore;

So hard to learn the script,

And remember my lines.

I think I may have left my life

On the mantelpiece, a kitsch souvenir

From a place half-invented half-forgotten.

The Benedictine horarium

Tells me what time to be.

Periodicity.Tempo.Synchronisation.

Duration.Sequence.

“What did you do at the weekend?”

Diseases of the heart and liver,

I must have had them all...

But what if the patient does not wish to get better?

Count Cagliostro in the Papal Prison of San Leo, 1791-1795

Immured here,damned,abandoned to die...

The furthest-fallen man in Christendom,

Greatest angel in the echoing abyss.

All Europe once spoke my name in awe

And responded to my mesmeric passes.

Why must men destroy what they cannot understand?

I strove to bring them truth and ritual,

To awaken them to their own forgotten powers.

Heal and rejuvenate mankind? Why,of course,

That could never be allowed.

I saw into their souls,a gift not easily forgiven.

They are not yet ready to return to Egypt

Nor read the Book of the Dead.

How childish is man in his understanding,

Eager for toys and entertainment-

Thus they tried to reduce my magic

To games and pastimes for fashionable soirées

And when I refused called me impostor.

Fools’ envy has been my misfortune.

The mind is God and the mind is light.

By words,herbs and stones I moved the world,

Healed thousands with my hands and eyes,

And manufactured the elixir of immortality;

The griffin-guarded liquid gold was mine!

Curse the Inquisitors for robbing me

Of my Serpent Seal-the snake with an apple

In its mouth,pierced by an arrow-

The Aleph of spirit and life,the Arcanum,

Signature of liberty,power and duty.

This fetid verminous oubliette is all I have

Of the world-tortured more by betrayals

Than by thumbscrews and rack-

And so on its dank walls I paint

With rust flakes and my own urine

Alchemical symbols of transmutation

And shout through the bars to villagers below

The horrid prophecies I see in dreams.

Slaves of the church, do not pray for me,

My soul needs no false salvation-it is free

Already,even as this screaming body rots

Back into the prima materia...

Kind tormentors,I proffer you my skull

That you should drink its alembroth

And be wise!My thanks for this quarantine,

In which I achieve the pentagon.

The Martian iron is in me,the force of art;

The gold and silver sword of Solomon

Fits my hand perfectly,-en garde!

Medieval Colours

In the thirteenth century the red dyers, anxious that the colour blue was becoming so popular and threatening their profits,went and begged the stained-glass artists to start portraying the Devil as blue and make that hue reviled.Their pleas were ignored.

To unite the four elements,

They blended precious essences in harmony,

Following the planets and seasons,

Pursued dyes,pigments and metals around the world.

Heaven and earth must be synchronised.

Body,soul and spirit must accord

Through love and strife.


To make a black ink worthy of transcribing the Qur’an

Quadi Ahmad described a recipe requiring fourteen ingredients,

Inlcuding hemp-oil soot,henna,indgo and aloe,saffron and rosewater,

Cyprus alum,Indian salt,Egyptian sugar and Tibetan musk.

The very substance of God.


Ultramarine they extracted from lapis lazuli,

From the lands of Paradise,in the orient,

Heaven’s stone contaminated with earth’s impurities;

Patiently,laboriously,it must be purified,

Obedient to its sympathies and gods.


By the sacred marriage of mercury and sulphur

Vermilion was prepared,the red elixir,

The wedding of Hades and Persephone,

A union of fire and water,heaven and earth.

The Easter egg, skilfully incubated.


They dreamed of chimeras, of making Spanish gold,

Melding red copper,human blood,vinegar and basilisk ash,

They concocted miraculous hues from ideas,

Weaving planetary rays into tapestries of light.

They codified the rusts of iron,copper,lead and silver,

And the rusts of mercury and tin;

They quantified mixtures of darkness and light.


From the blood of elephants and dragons

Who had killed one another in combat,

Under the tree at the centre of the world

The artists mixed dragonsblood;

The snake had but a moment to squeeze

Through theStrait Gate,leaving its skin behind;

The Argo,navigating the Clashing Rocks,

Lost its stern in the struggle,passing the test.


Armenian red was harvested at the foot of Ararat,

At the meeting place of East and West;

Cochineal they collected on the Baptist’s feast day,

At the solstice,the midpoint of the year.


In Hagia Sophia pilgrims gazed

Upon the Virgin Mary’s robe:

White wool dyed with Tyrian purple,

The sea snail’s yellow juice transmuted

By the sun,a truth that would never wash out.

Notes on the Weimar Republic

The maimed and broken on every street.

Wheelchairs.Masks over missing faces.

Dark glasses to conceal blinded eyes.


Smooth,pastel and starkly elegant,

The Einstein Tower spirals up among trees,

From the mind of a frontline soldier,

Beauty he had dreamed of in the trenches,

To stimulate and soothe.The revolution

Has no borders,no limits,no states;

All peoples play as one, like children.

A princely observatory for the study

Of light. Perfect equation of energy and mass.


Light and geometry merge in the lens,

Moholy-Nagy leaning out of a high window

To photograph the street below.


In the cabarets regimented lines of girls

Dance with Prussian paradeground precision,

Kicking their long muscled legs in unison.

Naked male gymnasts exercise by the lake,

Proud descendants of the ancient Greeks,

Purged and affirmed by sun and water.