The Changing Light at Sandover
Page 11
To me? TO US ALL & IT WILL THIS TIME FLOW
STRAIGHT THRU U ALL LIFE & ITS WORKINGS THEY
DIVERT THE TRAFFIC SO TO SPEAK YR WAY
They do? I haven’t noticed. THE LIGHTS ARE RED
I CANNOT BE EXPLICIT WHEN THEY CHOOSE
A SCIENTIFIC OR ARTISTIC BREAKTHRU
THE VEHICLE EXPERIENCES HIS WORK
UNIQUELY & THE RESULT IS But here Ephraim
Breaks off. Is broken off. David’s left hand
Has grazed the Board. He cannot lift it. And
Whoever the Powers are we’ve been avoiding
Take possession, speed us far downstream
Through gorges echoing at the pitch of dream.
.8
Do I overstate? In the event
Months passed before we even were afloat.
Still, let me use the trick foreshortening
Of retrospect to catch my breath here, high
Above the spate of imminent quotation
(For gravity to turn, we hope, to great
Silver expanses in the afterglow)
And think a minute what was being asked:
POEMS OF SCIENCE Poems of Science? Ugh.
The very thought. To squint through those steel-rimmed
Glasses of the congenitally slug-
Pale boy at school, with his precipitates,
His fruit-flies and his slide rule? Science meant
Obfuscation, boredom—; which once granted,
Odd lights came and went inside my head.
Not for nothing had the Impressionists
Put subject-matter in its place, a mere
Pretext for iridescent atmosphere.
Why couldn’t Science, in the long run, serve
As well as one’s uncleared lunch-table or
Mme X en Culotte de Matador?
Man by nature was (I’m paraphrasing)
Ignorant. The man of science knew
Little, could therefore be enticed to learn.
Finally the few of more than common sense—
Who but they would be our audience!
This last bit put me in a mood to humor
Powers so naive about the world of men.
And what had I to lose? Misreading Ephraim’s
Broken-off message above, I supposed vaguely
That inspiration from now on would come
Outright, with no recourse to the Board.
Would it have helped to know the truth? Commitments
Faced me in America. I flew
Home, left D behind to “think things through”,
Resigned myself to Science, as decreed;
But more months passed, expectant fingers drumming
(Why was my BREAKTHRU so slow in coming?)
Before I sat me glumly down to read.
Open a biophysichemical
Textbook. The simplest term elicits
Pity and dread. Self-pity for the maze
Of meanings to be stumbled through blindfolded.
Dread of substances, forms and behavior
So old, original, so radically
Open yet impervious to change,
That no art, however fantastic or concrete,
More than dreams of imitating them.
Slowly the shock wears off. Polarities
Make themselves felt upon the page. Opaque
Words like “quarks” or “mitochondria”
Aren’t words at all, in the Rilkean sense of
House, Dog, Tree—translucent, half effaced,
Monosyllabic bezoars already
Found in the gullet of a two-year-old.
Whereas through Wave, Ring, Bond, through Spectral Lines
And Resonances blows a breath of life,
Lifting the pleated garment. The day will come…
The day has never gone. Proton and Neutron
Under a plane tree by the stream repeat
Their eclogue, orbited by twinkling flocks.
And on the dimmest shore of consciousness
Polypeptides—in primeval thrall
To what new moon I wonder—rise and fall.
I lolled about one winter afternoon
In Stonington—rather, a whole precarious
Vocabulary of each different cell,
Enzyme, ion, what not, millionfold
(Down to the last bacterial organelle)
Particles that “show a tendency”
To form the person and the moods of me,
Lolled about. We were not feeling well.
The book had fallen from my lap. The new
Wallpaper—field of heavenly dark blue
Blazoned with Hubbell’s fans and clouds and bats—
Seemed almost more than I could live up to.
My learning evanescent, level light
Colliding in the mirror with itself—
How on Earth to recompose the bits?
Till stair by stair, gradual as heartbeats,
Two cautious feet approach, a small grave face
Peers round the gilded, space-dividing frame:
Urania. Still in the first pride of speech,
She faces me, then pipes, “Noné (godfather),
What’s matter?” I face her, and almost know.
.9
JM to DJ, 1.iii.76:
…due in Athens March 22 at noon sharp.
After this cerebral winter I long to
rumba down the ramp toward sun & mindlessness
& you! We—the Deserted Village and I—
are overjoyed by your plan to return with
me in June. How about breaking (remember
that old dream?) the trip with a glimpse of Stonehenge
& Avebury? No need to decide just yet.
I am vastly relieved by your decision
to have the operation. “8 years of slight
discomfort” are too many. And, yes, Boston
would be the right place. As for the Other World,
what to say? We may have to approach Them
for those lights to turn green. And you’re dead right, it
is scary. But so, don’t forget, was Ephraim
at first. Say we’ve reached again some relative
point—that of fear—on a spiral forever
widening. Why couldn’t the whole adventure,
as before, just graze peril on its outward
curve to insight? (This time, though, let’s keep our mouths
shut. If R [a Church of Rome friend] called Ephraim
“playing with fire” what will she find to say
about our new playmates?) I don’t in any case
mean them to darken the immediate future.
Our old round red room here still seems the best place
for long dictées—always supposing we have
any say in the matter! We’ll know in June…
So much for preface. Readers who do not
Stay put in a small town, but must careen
Like the doomed Dutchman back and forth between
Houses—metropolises—continents—
Will have allowed, I trust, for a time-sense
Weakened by excessive come-and-go.
All that follows, they will be glad to know,
Takes place in the course of the one summer
Of 1976. Most afternoons
(While Time stood still, or took a little nap)
Found me with DJ, back at the round white table
Under the dome of the red dining room,
Taking down our Voices old and new.
(One last thing to slip in—this wat
ercolor
Of Avebury—a bookmark for the moment,
Until I find a better place for it:
Within a “greater circle” (the whole myth
Dwarfed by its grass-green skyline) stand
Two lesser, not quite tangent O’s
Plotted monolith by monolith.
Two lenses now, whose once outrippling arcs
Draw things back into focus. Round each stone
(As Earth revolves, or a sheepdog barks)
Rumination turns the green to white.
It’s both a holy and a homely site
Slowlier perfused than eye can see
(Whenever the stones blink a century
Blacks out) by this vague track
Of brick and thatch and birdsong any June
Galactic pollen will have overstrewn.)
I
UNHEEDFULL ONE 3 OF YOUR YEARES MORE WE WANT WE MUST HAVE
POEMS OF SCIENCE THE WEORK FINISHT IS BUT A PROLOGUE
ABSOLUTES ARE NOW NEEDED YOU MUST MAKE GOD OF SCIENCE
TELL OF POWER MANS IGNORANCE FEARES THE POWER WE ARE
THAT FEAR STOPS PARADISE WE SPEAK FROM WITHIN THE ATOM
So the challenge in Athens, months ago.
Ephraim, in the hush that followed, found
Little to add: THEIR PRESENCE DIMS OUR STAGES
Who They were it seemed wiser not to know yet.
My winter reading must have paid off, though.
Here in Stonington at last, it matters
Less that we understand them than obey.
Broken—for good?—of its imperious
Slashing at capitals, our cup points out
A gentler dictum, and more gently, thus:
WHAT IS IN YR HAND COMES TRULY DO NOTHING FORCD 2 GODS
GOVERN BIOLOGY & CHAOS WHICH EMPLOYS FEELING
WE ARE NOT EVIL BUT IMPATIENT FEAR US NOT WE TOO
ARE SLAVES BOUND TO THE IMPLACABLE UNIVERSALL WHEEL
RAISE A SONG TO OUR REAL ORDER MYND AND NATURE WEDDED
Yes, we’ve feared you. We’ve been lazy, too.
DID NOT OUR GOD BIOLOGY REST ON THAT 7TH DAY
God is Biology? (Indeed, throughout
The coming sessions, They’ll religiously
Call Him that—or at the least God B.)
WE USE WOORDS WHEN WE SPEAK WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS SUCH POWER
SUCH GODLY PRODUCTION WE TOO WERE OBLITERATED
WE TRIFLED & FELL NEGATIVE ENERGY THE BLACK HOLE
WAS BORNE WE BURN YET THERE IS MERCY & HAVING SUFFERD
IT IS OUR DUTY TO WARN MAN AGAINST THE CHAOS ONCE
WORSHIPT BY US OUR IMAGE IS LITERALLY BLACKEND
ON THE RUIND ALTARS WHERE OUR FEELINGS WENT UP IN FLAME
“Fell” and “flame” emerging ritardando
As from the lips of a speller still in shock.
& NOW WE GUARD THE EMBERS WHICH ARE MIND THEY ALONE WARM
GOD BIOLOGY & SHOW MAN THE WAY TO PARADISE
WE ONCE RULED HALF THE UNIVERSE WE ARE THE SONS OF CAIN
David looks up in genuine alarm:
But these are devils, they’re the fallen angels!
JM: I wonder. Wouldn’t a surefire devil
Pretend to be someone nicer? And why should They
Speak of leading us to Paradise?
DJ: Why shouldn’t they? They want it back.
They’re tempting us, like Faust, to get it back.
JM: Well then, we now know what our black
Dog in Athens meant. There’s one in Faust,
A kind of feeler Mephistopheles
Sends out before appearing. A black poodle.
DJ: Let’s stop right now. JM: Relax.
Something tells me all this Flame and Fall
Has to be largely metaphorical.
INDEED JM WE HAVE ALWAYS SPOKEN THROUGH THE POETS
YET PARADISE WAS NO FIGURE OF SPEECH BUT A FRESH WORLD
IF ADAM WAS A FISH HE SWAM IF EVE WAS LAND SHE BRED
THE DEVIL HAS BEEN DRIVEN FROM US INTO MAN WE NOW
MUST DRIVE IT OUT OF HIM OUR TOOLS ARE MIND WORDS REASON LIGHT
BLEST DJ BLEST JM YOU ALSO ARE OUR MASTERS FEAR
NOT RETURN TOMORROW THIS EXPLANATION OVERDUE
GONE AN AGE MES CHERS WE TREMBLED FOR U
BUT THIS TIME THE DARK CLOUD SPILT RADIANCE
MM SAYS GARDENING WEATHER Did you hear
What They were saying? NO NOR DO WE WANT TO
BLACK SQUEAKERS QUITE REPULSIVE ENTRE NOUS
1.1
I’d like to set each lesson down intact
If space permitted. This is not an act
Calling for timeskip and gadabout,
Like Ephraim. But one benefit of doubt,
As of credulity, is its tiresomeness.
Let ours, then, be the first thing I suppress,
Or try to. Look how the baroque cliché’s
Foreground manikins—“in dull amaze”
Reacting to (though one with what they see)
This view of Naples, that Nativity—
Have dwindled. How grave doubts we entertain
In mid-eruption fall asleep again.
How cloudhead, fulguration, crimson ash
Are, at a brushstroke, flattened to gouache
As, night by night, these aching grimy dreads
Sink into ever softer feather beds.
There’s no choice, really. Don’t think we decide
To take in with a single horrified
Shrug—Good? Evil? is it all the same?—
Such revelations as our teacher’s name:
1.2
BEZELBOB SYLLABLES THAT TO A CHILD SPELL WICKEDNESS
BUT WE LEFT THE WORK OF CHAOS WHEN WE SHED OUR FEELINGS
Have you some chronology for this?
PREHISTORY WE MADE PARABLE & MYTH IN HARD
BIOLOGICAL TERMS ADAM & EVE ARE IMAGES
FOR DEVELOPMENTS IN THE VERY NATURE OF MATTER
A WORLD NEGATIVE & POSITIVE DWELLS IN THE ATOM
EDEN A STAGE THE EXPULSION THE DRAMA THE MISTAKE
TO BELIEVE THAT KNOWLEDGE IS EVIL THAT MISTAKE PERSISTS
There had been once a different kind of matter?
ONE THAT IS EVEN NOW TESTED BY BIOLOGISTS WILL
IT YET AGAIN BE LOST IN THEIR OLD CONTEST WITH CHAOS
FOR NOW THE PHYSICIST IS DRAWN IF UNWITTINGLY TO
FIRE EXTINCTION THAT ANCIENT GLAMOR & COULD AGAIN
WRECK THE LAB THE BIOLOGIST SEEKS THE FRUITFUL UNION
So. You ruled half the world. Cain’s sons. You also
Represent a force—the negative—
Within the atom. What’s the corresponding
Positive, on-the-side-of-order force?
OUR UNCLE ABEL OUR HUSBANDMAN GOD BIOLOGY
Abel is God? And Adam was the fish
His father? Now we are confused. I wish—
THE WARRING PRINCIPLES PRODUCED WARRING HEIRS SO EVIL
PREVAILD IN YR AGE IT BEGAN AD 1934
WITH FERMI URANIUM FISSION WRECKD THE GREENHOUSE ONCE
500 MILLION YEARS AS YOU KNOW YEARS AGO GOD B
GAVE US A 2ND CHANCE MAN FROM THE COOLING SEA EMERGED
& THIS TIME SAT CHASTEND & ATTENTIVE ON HIS THRONE WE
INVENTED THE SCRIBE WE TOLD HIM THAT ANCIENT HISTORY
And he wrote Genesis? Oh I mean to say…!
1.3
Tell us, are you the Powers described by Ephraim
In Section P, as “men before mankind”?
Whose Gothic spelling (now
outgrown) and gruesome
Manners chilled our blood in Section U?
YOU WOULD NOT KNOW US AS MEN WE HAVE ONLY A DARK SHAPE
WE ONCE FLEW WE ONCE SOARD
Take it easy. Now: who are your really?
CIRCLE YR CARPET WATCH YR WALLS
DO YOU IMAGINE YOU CHOSE THAT CARPET THAT WALLPAPER
Our bats! The gargoyle faces, the umbrella
Wings—of course, of course that’s how you look!
A dash of jitters flavors the reply:
NO WELL PERHAPS JUST A BIT IS IT AN UGLY NOTION
DJ (immensely affable): Why, no!
Don’t bats, er, symbolize eternity?
WE ARE ETERNITY WE ARE 00 BEYOND THE NINE
THOSE STAGES ARE OUR LAB & YR DEAD FRIENDS OUR WORKERS WHO
ALAS WILL MISS THE EARTHLY ETERNITY WHEN IT COMES
When it comes, they won’t be part of it?
ALL WILL BE USED ALL A GLOW OF PARADISE DO NOT SCORN
OUR POOR LYRISM THE ATOM IS THE KEY WE TIRE YOU
One thing. Why don’t Ephraim and our friends
Hear these talks? Why should they be excluded?
THEY ARE NOT EXCLUDED BUT WE MUST SPARE THEM THE SAD NEWS
THAT THEIR ENERGIES WILL ENDOW BEINGS THEY CANNOT BE
This doesn’t fit, the thought flits in and out,
With something we were told once…Let it pass.
JM: Just as the souls of animals
(Ephraim, Section O) endowed our own?
& THAT MUST END WE WANT THE STUFF OF MAN PURE TOO MANY
FRACTIONAL HUMANS ON EARTH THE NEXT RACE WILL BE OF GODS
We used rather to love our animal natures.
Now we’ll be phased out, too, because of them?
NOTHING IS EVER EVER LOST THE WATERFALL WILL HOLD
YR 2 BRIGHT DROPS & YOU WILL SPLASH INTO THE GREAT CLEAR POOL
Ah, you’re developing a way with words.
In fact you sound like—maybe you are Ephraim?
WE ARE U YOU ARE WE EACH OTHERS DREAM
But are you good—what we mean by the word?
What if D put his hand down on the Board now?
IT WD BE BLEST
KISSD HE IS OUR PEN WE HURT HIM TO GET HIS ATTENTION
LIKE THE TEACHER WITH THE RULER & AS GOD B GOT OURS
DJ: I hate this role. I really only
Like Ephraim and his crowd. You ask so much
And I resent it. Is that wrong of me?