RISES each nine lives an inch? Alone
Among our friends, kneeling downstream from Whom
She lived for, had been Maya. Silver inks
Flowing, the stone watcher saw through stone.
But we, with Maisie gone, and Maya gone,
Were that much less equipped to face the Sphinx.
And slept again. The La Fontaine, its shadow
Rippling the sunny, sandy bottom,
Steers past Aesop for the realm of Totem.
Now comes a huge papyrus meadow,
Fright-wigs, when the motor stalls,
Nodding in charmed agreement: good, good, good…
Insidious flora of the Sudd,
Give way to power plants! Below the Falls
Moorehead remembers hippopotami
Centrifugally held upright
In sinewy opal, each a fat chess-knight.
And, eastward of the Sources, high
Tableland, proud masts, furled sails
Cloudwhite. Here Tania flung aside her hat
To enter—years ago—the hut
Where a wasted youth lay. Seven Gothic Tales
Had yet to be set down. Perhaps her task
Deepened that morning at his side.
Craft narrowing to witchcraft. As he died
The bush-pig screamed. This hardwood mask,
Human but tusked with shell, will date
From days when “Cubist fetishes” brought low
Prices at the Hôtel Drouot
Whose bidders time alone would educate,
Making clear (to anyone with eyes)
That blockhead nudities encipher
Obligations it is bliss to suffer;
That selves in animal disguise
Light the way to Tania’s goal:
Stories whose glow we see our lives bathed in—
The mere word “animal” a skin
Through which its old sense glimmers, of the soul.
—But oh the cold! Bare pillow next to mine.
Kitchen clatter. Kleo pitching into the mess.
We won’t see her name in writing till she retires.
“Kleo” we still assume is the royal feline
Who seduced Caesar, not the drab old muse
Who did. Yet in the end it’s Clio I compose
A face to kiss, who clings to me in tears.
What she has thought about us all God knows.
Upstairs, DJ’s already at the simmer
Phoning the company. He gets one pair
Of words wrong—means to say “kalorifér”
(Furnace) but out comes “kalokéri” (summer):
Our summer doesn’t work, he keeps complaining
While, outside, cats and dogs just keep on raining.
Powers of lightness, darkness, powers that be…
Power itself, the thunder of clear skies;
Pole the track star floats from like a banner,
Or gem-tip balancing in concentration
Upon the warped, decelerating grooves;
Upward mobility, our dollar sign
Where Snake and Tree of Paradise entwine—
Like it or not, such things made the soul’s fortune.
And plain old virtue? YR HANS SAYS HE MIGHT
WELL HAVE ATTAINED AT ONCE HIS PRESENT STAGE
HAD HE BEEN LESS VIRTUOUS THAT SPRING NIGHT
O YES HE IS ABOVE ME NOW PROMOTED
By no more than a posthumous review?
CALL IT THE HELIUM OF PUBLICITY
From foggy lowlands to a level blue
As his droll stare OR AS OBLIVION
—Might reputations be deflated there?
I wondered here, but Ephraim changed the subject
As it was in his tactful power to do.
Power, then, kicks upstairs those who possess it,
The good and bad alike? EXCEPT FOR MOZART
Whom love of Earth, command of whose own powers
So innocent as to amount to scorn
HAVE CAUSED REPEATEDLY TO BE REBORN
Skipping all the Stages? HE PREFERS
LIVE MUSIC TO A PATRONS HUMDRUM SPHERES
Is this permitted? WHEN U ARE MOZART YES
He’s living now? As what? A BLACK ROCK STAR
WHATEVER THAT IS LET US NOT DIGRESS
OURS IS A GREAT WHITE WAY OF NAMES IN LIGHTS
BYRON PAVLOVA BILLY SUNDAY JOB
OTTO & GENGHIZ KHAN MME CURIE
Hitler too? YES Power’s worst abusers
Are held, though, strictly INCOMMUNICADO
CYSTS IN THE TISSUE OF ETERNITY
SO MY POOR RUINED LOVE CALIGULA
SO HITLER Here on Earth, we rather feel,
Such wise arrangements fail. The drug-addicted
Farms. Welkin the strangler. Plutonium waste
Eking out in drowned steel rooms a half
Life of how many million years? Enough
To set the doomsday clock—its hands our own:
The same rose ruts, the red-as-thorn crosshatchings—
Minutes nearer midnight. On which stroke
Powers at the heart of matter, powers
We shall have hacked through thorns to kiss awake,
Will open baleful, sweeping eyes, draw breath
And speak new formulae of megadeath.
NO SOULS CAME FROM HIROSHIMA U KNOW
EARTH WORE A STRANGE NEW ZONE OF ENERGY
Caused by? SMASHED ATOMS OF THE DEAD MY DEARS
News that brought into play our deepest fears.
This (1970) was the one extended
Session with Ephraim in two years.
(Why? No reason—we’d been busy living,
Had meant to call, but never quite got round…)
The cup at first moved awkwardly, as after
An illness or estrangement. Had he missed us?
YES YES emphatically. We felt the glow
Of being needed, then a breath of frost,
For if, poor soul, he did so, he was lost.
Ah, so were we! If souls could be destroyed,
Colors disbanded of one’s inmost prism—
Was it no more than human chauvinism
To care so helplessly? We further saw
How much we’d come to trust him, take as law
His table talk, his backstage gossip. Quick!
A swig of our own no-proof rhetoric:
Let what would be, be; let the diamond
Melt like dew into the Cosmic Mind.
Somehow the thought, put in those words, hurt less.
SOBER UP IT IS YR DRUNKENNESS
SENDS THE CM LURCHING TO ITS FATE
Wait—he couldn’t be pretending YES
That when the flood ebbed, or the fire burned low,
Heaven, the world no longer at its feet,
Itself would up and vanish? EVEN SO
Götterdämmerung. From a long ago
Matinee—the flooded Rhine, Valhalla
In flames, my thirteenth birthday—one spark floating
Through the darkened house had come to rest
Upon a mind so pitifully green
As only now, years later, to ignite
(While heavy-water nymphs, fettered in chain
Reaction, sang their soft refrain Refrain)
Terrors our friend had barely to exhale
Upon, and they were blazing like a hell.
The heartstrings’ leitmo
tif outsoared the fire.
Faces near me crumpled in the glow.
How to rid Earth, for Heaven’s sake, of power
Without both turning to a funeral pyre?
Silence. Then (animato) BUT AT 6S
& 7S WHAT DO WE POOR SPIRITS KNOW
CLEARANCE HAS COME TO SAY I HAVE ENCOUNTERED
SOULS OF A FORM I NEVER SAW ON EARTH
SOULS FROM B4 THE FLOOD B4 THE LEGENDARY
& BY THE WAY NUCLEAR IN ORIGIN
FIRE OF CHINA MEN B4 MANKIND
Really? Are they among you? THEY MAY RULE
Do you communicate? WE SORT OF BEND
OUR HEADS TO WORK WHENEVER THEY ARE FELT
What do they look like? SOME HAVE WINGS TO WHICH
THE TRAILING SLEEVES OF PALACE ROBES ALLUDE
New types, you mean, like phoenixes will fly
Up from our conflagration? How sci-fi!
(Observe the easy, grateful way we swim
Back to his shallows. We’ve no friend like him.)
DJ: Have you evolved, or changed your form?
Each higher Stage—is that an evolution?
OF SORTS THE FORMER BEAUTY FLUSHED WITH WINE
WHO NEVER TIRED OF BEING KISSED STILL MISSES
THOSE ANSWERS WHICH ON CAPRI WERE THE KISSES
GOOD NIGHT I HOPE FOR BETTER NEWS AT 9
Powers of lightness, darkness, powers that be
Come, go, in mists of calculus and rumor
Heavens above us. Does it still appear
We’ll get our senses somehow purified
Back? Will figures of authority
Who lived, like Mallarmé and Montezuma,
So far above their subjects as to fear
Them not at all, still welcome us inside
Their thought? The one we picture garlanded
With afterimages, fire-sheer
Solar plume on plume;
The other, with having said
The world was made to end (“pour aboutir”)
In a slim volume.
Quotations (a too partial smattering
Which may as well go here as anywhere):
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.—Auden
One evening late in the war he was at the crowded bar of the then smart Pyramid Club, in uniform, and behaving quite outrageously. Among the observers an elderly American admiral had been growing more and more incensed. He now went over and tapped Teddie on the shoulder: “Lieutenant, you are a disgrace to the Service. I must insist on having your name and squadron.” An awful silence fell. Teddie’s newlywon wings glinted. He snapped shut his thin gold compact (from Hermès) and narrowed his eyes at the admiral. “My name,” he said distinctly, “is Mrs Smith.”—A. H. Clarendon, Time Was
Meanwhile the great loa…repeat their ultimate threat—that they will withdraw. And, indeed, very gradually, their appearances have begun to be rarer, while the minor deities now come often and with great aplomb. The Haitians are not unaware of this. They say: “Little horses cannot carry great riders.”…When they do appear, many of the major loa weep. Various explanations are given for this. But the loa presumably have vision and the power of prophecy, and it is possible that, with such divine insight, they sense, already, the first encroaching chill of their own twilight. It is not surprising that this should come. It is more surprising that it has not, already, long since passed into night. Yet the gods have known other twilights, and the long nights, and then the distant but recurrent dawn. And it may be that they weep not for themselves, but for the men who served and will soon cease to serve them.
—Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen
AM I IN YR ROOM SO ARE ALL YR DEAD WHO HAVE NOT GONE INTO OTHER BODIES IT IS EASY TO CALL THEM BRING THEM AS FIRES WITHIN SIGHT OF EACH OTHER ON HILLS U & YR GUESTS THESE TIMES WE SPEAK ARE WITHIN SIGHT OF & ALL CONNECTED TO EACH OTHER DEAD OR ALIVE NOW DO U UNDERSTAND WHAT HEAVEN IS IT IS THE SURROUND OF THE LIVING
THE PATRON IS OFTEN DUMB WITH APPREHENSION FOR IT IS EXTRAORDINARY WHAT WE DO U COMMUNICATE THRU MY IMPARTIAL FIRE U MATERIALIZE WITHIN MY SIGHT AS FIGURES IN THE FIRE & A PATRON CALLED UP KNOWING NO SUCH DIRECT METHOD IS NERVOUS LEST HE EXPOSE TOO MUCH OUR TALK IS TO HIM BLINDING FOR OFTEN HE COMES TO OUR FIRE & HIS REPRESENTATIVE SITS LOOMING UP THE HOPE & DESPAIR THE MEMORY & THE PAIN O MY DEARS WE ARE OFTEN WEAKER THAN OUR REPRESENTATIVES IT IS A SILENT LOVE WE ARE IN A SYSTEM OF SUCH SILENT BUT URGENT MOTIVES U & I WITH OUR QUICK FIRELIT MESSAGES STEALING THE GAME ARE SMUGGLERS & SO IN A SENSE UNLAWFUL THE DEAD ARE MOST CONSERVATIVE THEY COME HERE AS SLAVES TO A NEW HOUSE TERRIFIED OF BEING SOLD BACK TO LIFE
& NOW ABOUT DEVOTION IT IS I AM FORCED TO BELIEVE THE MAIN IMPETUS DEVOTION TO EACH OTHER TO WORK TO REPRODUCTION TO AN IDEAL IT IS BOTH THE MOULD & THE CLAY SO WE ARRIVE AT GOD OR A DEVOTION TO ALL OR MANYS IDEAL OF THE CONTINUUM SO WE CREATE THE MOULDS OF HEAVENLY PERFECTION & THE ONES ABOVE OF RARER & MORE EXPERT USEFULNESS & AT LAST DEVOTION WITH THE COMBINED FORCES OF FALLING & WEARING WATER PREPARES A HIGHER MORE FINISHED WORLD OR HEAVEN THESE DEVOTIONAL POWERS ARE AS A FALL OF WATERS PUSHED FROM BEHIND OVER THE CLIFF OF EVEN MY EXPERIENCE A FLOOD IS BUILDING UP EARTH HAS ALREADY SEEN THE RETURN OF PERFECTED SOULS FROM 9 AMENHOTEP KAFKA DANTES BEATRICE 1 OR 2 PER CENTURY FOR NOTHING LIVE IS MOTIONLESS HERE OUR STATE IS EXCITING AS WE MOVE WITH THE CURRENT & DEVOTION BECOMES AN ELEMENT OF ITS OWN FORCE O MY I AM TOO EXCITED SO FEW UP HERE WISH TO THINK THEIR EYES ARE TURNED HAPPILY UP AS THEY FLOAT TOWARD THE CLIFF I WANT TO DO MORE THAN RIDE & WEAR & WAIT ON THE FAIRLY LIVELY GROUND OF MY LIFE I HAVE BUILT THIS HIGH LOOKOUT BUT FIND TO MY SURPRISE THAT I AM WISEST WHEN I LOOK STRAIGHT DOWN AT THE PRECIOUS GROUND I KNEW THERE IS AHEAD A SERIES OF PICTURES I BELIEVE I CD SHOW U TO MAKE CLEARER MY SELF & WHAT IT IS I THINK THE FORCE OF THE FLOOD HAS ONLY ADVANCED A DROP OR 2 DOWN THE FACE OF THE CLIFF & MAN HAS TAKEN THEM TO BE TEARS NOW U UNDERSTAND MY LOVE OF TELLING MY LIFE FOR IN ALL TRUTH I AM IMAGINING THAT NEXT ONE WHEN WE CRASH THROUGH IN OUR NUMBERS TRANSFORMING LIFE INTO WELL EITHER A GREAT GLORY OR A GREAT PUDDLE—Ephraim, 26.x.61
Time is a child, playing a board game: the kingdom of the child.—Heraclitus
The wind gives me
fallen leaves enough
to make a fire—Issa
He put on a suit of armour set all over with sharp blades and stood on an island in the river. The dragon rushed upon him and tried to crush him in its coils, but the knives on the armour cut it into little pieces which were swept away by the current before the dragon could exercise its traditional power of reassembling its dismembered parts. Lambton had sworn that if victorious he would offer in sacrifice the first living creature he came upon, and had arranged for a dog to be set loose to meet him. But his old father, overjoyed at his success, tottered out of the castle…..—John Michell, The View Over Atlantis
October 18, 1949
Dear Jim,
In Geneva it is a habit that all strangers have their silhouet done, and so one afternoon I went to a sitting for mine.
Tonight we are going to leave this nice old city, and I will write you as soon as I am home again. Here I have spent my time travelling on the lake in fast white wheel-boats, reading Keats and Byron, and wandering through the narrow streets which are full of small dark bookshops. We went to a concert with Furtwängler, and to another with Ansermet. It is very pleasant to stay here
best wishes
Hans —Lodeizen, on the back of his “silhouet”
…désir…des tempêtes, désir de Venise, désir de me mettre au travail, désir de mener la vie de tout le monde…—Proust
…the famous grotto. Here Pope had construc
ted a private underworld…encrusted…with a rough mosaic of luminous mineral bodies…On the roof shone a looking-glass star; and, dependent from the star, a single lamp—‘of an orbicular figure of thin alabaster’—cast around it ‘a thousand pointed rays’. Every surface sparkled or shimmered or gleamed with a smooth subaqueous lustre; and, while these coruscating details enchanted the eye, a delicate water-music had been arranged to please the ear; the ‘little dripping murmur’ of an underground spring—discovered by the workmen during their excavations—echoed through the cavern day and night…Pope intended…that the visitor, when at length he emerged, should feel that he had been reborn into a new existence.—Peter Quennell, Alexander Pope
But were it not, that Time their troubler is,
All that in this delightfull Gardin growes,
Should happie be, and haue immortal blis,
For here all plentie, and all pleasure flowes,
And sweet loue gentle fits emongst them throwes,
Without fell rancor, or fond gealosie;
Franckly each paramour his leman knowes,
Each bird his mate, ne any does enuie
Their goodly meriment, and gay felicitie.
There is continuall spring, and harvest there
Continuall, both meeting in one time:
For both the boughes doe laughing blossomes beare,
And with fresh colours decke the wanton Prime,
And eke attonce the heauy trees they clime,
Which seeme to labour vnder their fruits lode:
The whiles the ioyous birdes make their pastime
Emongst the shadie leaues, their sweet abode,
And their true loues without suspition tell abrode.—Spenser
Geh’ hin zu der Götter heiligen Rath!
Von meinem Ringe raune ihnen zu:
Die Liebe liesse ich nie,
mir nähmen nie sie die Liebe,
stürzt’ auch in Trümmern Walhall’s strahlende Pracht!—Wagner
The Changing Light at Sandover Page 6