The Changing Light at Sandover

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The Changing Light at Sandover Page 46

by James Merrill


  INTO O, COME TO THE LOST BLACK TREES, THE ANIMALS

  SINGING SONGS OF LOST IMMORTALITY, COME’

  THESE SUCK US DOWN THE SAND RISES WE GO

  TO MEET THAT BLACK O GOD! EFFENDI, SUCH A LOSS MEN,

  WHAT DOES A MAN WANT? A PLUMP

  Vanishing.

  Gabr.

  GO PROPHET. YOUR RACE DOES OUR WORK: FROM THINND TO THINNER.

  JM.

  Does your work by plundering Earth’s resources?

  Gabr.

  NO, POET. BY PREPARING ITS LAST, HOLY WAR.

  Night, windless, clear. Beneath a crescent moon

  Thousands of little whetted scythes appear

  With each slow forward breath of the great dune.

  THERE IS THE HOURGLASS. CURVED LIKE A SWORD, IT STABS ITS POINT INTO THE DESERT OF MAN’S FAITH

  & FROM THE WOUND WE (EH SCIENTIST?) WILL SPRING, A NEW MINERVA!

  SO. FOUR SAPPD ENERGIES AND THIS, A SAPPING ONE.

  MUSICIAN?

  Robert wears black. In either hand, a staff

  From which a long black tattered banner trails

  Groundward. These to represent the souls

  His chant evokes, and ghostly music (half

  Silence, half a Sino-Viennese

  Salad of scraped nerves) accompanies.

  RM.

  EXALTED AND HUMAN, I BRING YOU THESE LOST CHORDS.

  THIS: THE JOYOUS CHILD TOSSED IN CENTURION ARMS,

  THE DARLING OF A COURT. HE FROM YOUR LAB

  LORD GABRIEL, HAD EVERY OPPORTUNITY

  YET ONE DAY, STARTLED BY WHAT? A CROONING WHISPER?

  A SONG FROM AN UNSEALED CRACK? CHANGED, CHANGED

  INTO A SOUL SO DISTORTED HE CAN NO LONGER

  BE USED. LOOK. PITY POOR CALIGULA.

  PITY, SIRS. THE MELODY HE HEARD

  IS A MUSIC THAT INCREASINGLY LEAKS THROUGH…

  HE HEARD IT FIRST. Lifting the second banner.

  THIS, & HIS MUSIC-MASTER WAGNER! IS ANOTHER

  FOREVER GONE, SIRS, FOR YOUR PURPOSES.

  DJ.

  Hitler—he’s here?

  MM.

  IN EFFIGY, ENFANT.

  EASIER TO MANIFEST THAN ASH.

  RM.

  LOOK WELL ON THESE

  RAGS OF SOULS DIPPED IN A BLACKENING DYE.

  GOD, MAJESTY AND LORDS,

  LET ME NOW EXPLAIN TO MY FELLOW MORTALS

  THE SAD DISHARMONIES.

  THREE ‘TIMES’ OBTAIN:

  THIS FICTIVE SPACE WE HERE INHABIT IS

  THE STOP TO TIME. WHAT YOU, DEAR SCRIBE & HAND,

  NOW LIVE IN IS TIME’S FORWARD RUN. THE BLACK

  BEYOND BLACK IS OF TIME SET RUNNING BACK.

  THESE SOULS WERE CAUGHT IN THE FRICTION, STRIPPED LIKE GEARS,

  GIVEN VAST POWERS THAT COLLAPSING WERE

  SUCKED DRY OF EVERY HUMAN DENSITY.

  JUST AS CERTAIN STARS, SO CERTAIN SOULS.

  POTENT AND RICH SOULS LARGELY, PRIMED FOR USE,

  THEY QUICKEN TIME, MAKE EDDIES IN THE STREAM.

  THEIR LEADERSHIP INSTRUCTION (THIN! KEEP CLEAR!)

  SPEEDS UP, BECOMING: TERMINATE! THEY HEAR

  ANOTHER SIREN SINGING. PITY THEM.

  FOR WHO AMONG US HAS NOT CAUGHT A DISTANT

  SEEP OF THE VIRULENT STRAIN THROUGH THE ODD SPLIT

  SECOND BEFORE GABRIEL AND HIS LORD

  BROTHERS BRING US THE FIRE IN THE HEARTH,

  THE WELCOME MORN, THE SMELL OF EARTH?

  Ending on a clear G major chord.

  Gabr.

  AH MUSICIAN, YOU & OUR SENIOR POET THINK THERE IS PUNISHMENT AND MERCY? THINK SIN EXISTS, RIGHT & WRONG?

  NO. THOSE MEASURES ARE BLANK. KNOWING NO TIME, WE DO NOT SENTENCE VAGRANT SOULS BUT SWEEP THEM

  (SHH SHH THERE IS NO HELL) UNDER THE (M)

  CARPET TO ETERNAL IDLENESS. GOD, FATHER, MAM,

  LET ME BRING DOWN TODAY’S SUN, & US TWELVE

  MEET AGAIN TOMORROW AT THIS TIME.

  Exeunt.

  Robert, you were Orfeo

  Singing to the damned! WELL YES & NO

  CD HE MY DEARS HAVE SWEATED, SUCH A LAKE!

  I’M OFF: A MINICOURSE IN ARABIC

  Wystan—oil well? Celestial Coal-sack?

  Hourglass? Won’t someone please explain the Black?

  CHILDREN IN WYSTAN’S ABSENCE LET MAMAN

  ATTEMPT A SMALL SOCRATIC DIALOGUE.

  WHAT COLOR IS THE GRASS? Er, green. INDEED

  THE GREEN OF NATURE. BUT AT SUMMER’S END?

  Yellow, or tan. MOWN? THROWN ON THE COMPOST HEAP?

  After a year, you’d get a sort of brown

  Uniform mess. A PLUS THE AGENT HERE?

  The various chemicals, or— Or Time!

  WHAT COLOR IS THE BLOOD? Red, but of course

  Drying brown, black…I see! The dinosaurs,

  Fafners of those green aeons, coil by coil

  Concentrated to deep coal, to oil:

  Time! A gusher—blackest aquavit!

  BRAVO ENFANTS WE’VE DRILLED & DRILLED FOR IT

  NOW (GEORGE HERE) IN AMONG EARTH’S TREASURES ARE

  THE INFRA-TREASURES OF THE MONITOR:

  NOT FORWARD TIME COMPRESSED (COMBUSTIBLE

  OILCAN OF ‘THINNER’) BUT ATOMIC BLACK

  COMPRESSED FROM TIME’S REVERSIBILITY,

  THAT IDEA OF DESTRUCTION WHICH RESIDES

  BOTH IN MAN & IN THE ACTINIDES.

  PART OF THE GREENHOUSE, FOR (THO MATTER HOLDS)

  THESE FORKED TONGUES FLICKER FROM ITS OILS & GOLDS.

  Meaning what? DJ: Uranium’s

  An element in Nature. From pitchblende—

  DAVE PRECISELY THE GREAT ANCHOR STONES

  HAD BEEN IRRADIATED, SO THE DINOSAURS…

  Were radioactive mutants—! At the end

  Electric and atomic energies

  Subtly interfused lay down together

  —How it all fits! Uranium, we gather,

  Lives on even in our arteries.

  THE CABLES SNAPPED. SNAPPER: THE MONITOR?

  THUS MAKING SOURCES OF 1) NATURAL POWER

  & 2) UNNATURAL. POWER TO SUCK THE EARTH

  EGG TO AN 0 But Matter holds. ITS BIRTH,

  RESISTANCE DON’T FORGET THAT FIRST THIN THIN

  PASTE The Greenhouse from the start had been

  An act of resistance? JIMMY YES A PLUS!

  OR DISOBEDIENCE GOD AS PROMETHEUS?

  NOW THAT MAN TAPS THIS 2ND POWER, ONE WELL

  TOO MANY & PUFF! Puff? THE WHOLE FRAIL EGGSHELL

  SIMPLY IMPLODING AS THE MONITOR’S

  BLACK FILLS THE VACUUM MOTHER N ABHORS

  It all fits. But the ins and outs deplete us.

  Minding the thread, losing the maze, we curse

  Language’s misleading apparatus.

  For once I rather sympathize with Pound

  Who “said it” with his Chinese characters—

  Not that the one I need here could be found.

  MY DEAR TOO STYLISH IN YR THINKING FEZ!

  PLATO & I ALIKE ENTHRALLED BY ISLAM.

  WE’VE MET THRU E (YR ‘TEMPERAMENTAL MOSLEM’)

  A SLOEEYED SUFI (13 CENT) WHO SEZ

  THE FIGURE IN OUR CARPET SHALL I TELL?

  Please! —Two pages later: I SUGGEST

  THE BITS MY BOY THAT GRAB U BE COMPRESSED

  INTO THE SORT OF ‘GEM’ U DO SO WELL

  Hm…

  *

  As when the scribe
of some ornate

  Bismillah (“in the name of Allah”) sees

  No doctrine bolder than calligraphy’s

  —Whose backward reader, left to right, will note

  Ism (world of names, empty phenomena)

  Within the broadly tendered palm of ba

  (Initial meaning, here, God B knows what)

  Placed beneath which a diacritical dot

  Closes its fist on that, and there we are!—

  My characters, this motley alphabet,

  Engagingly evade the cul-de-sac

  Of the Whole Point, dimensionless and black,

  While, deep in bulging notebooks, drawn by it,

  I skim lost heavens for that inky star.

  The Last Lessons: 4

  All twelve assembled. Nature once more in white,

  A sheaf of poppies at Her earth-stained feet.

  Gabr.

  VALIANT GOD, FATHER, TWIN NATURAL STAR,

  AND LORDS MY BROTHERS, CLEVER & INQUIRING MORTALS, STUDENTS ALL:

  MUCH IS WRIT AROUND OUR CLASSROOM’S BLACKBOARD WALLS, MUCH PERHAPS TOO EASILY ARRIVED AT.

  SIN? A TOPIC HASTILY DROPT. BUT NOW THE SENIOR POET, IVIED WITH OLD ANGLICAN TRADITION, HAS BEGGD THIS FURTHER WORD ON IT.

  AND SO! TAKE UP THE CHALK & WRITE THE NAME OF THE ONE SIN:

  PAIN. PAIN GIVEN, PAIN RECEIVED.

  PAIN YOU MUST UNDERSTAND IS THE ONLY CHILD OF TIME & FEELING.

  WITHOUT THESE PARENTS, THESE OEDIPAL TENSIONS,

  PAIN (SORROW, HUNGER, FEAR) WOULD HOLD NO SWAY.

  JM.

  But, Lord, then you are linked to pain through Time

  Which is your magic, just as ours is Feeling—

  Gabr.

  BLACK MAGICS BOTH, YOUNG SCRIBE, THEY ARE BANISHT FROM OUR HEAVEN. BANISHT ALAS TO EARTH.

  NOW, KEEPING OUR CLASS SWEPT OF COBWEBBY DETAIL, A FINAL BLOOM OF CHALK AS WE DISCUSS THE UNWRITTEN SIN:

  MAN’S THEFT OF GOD’S MATERIALS. WHO WILL BRING HIM TO COURT?

  MM.

  LORD, MAY I BE MAN’S PORTIA?

  Gabr.

  SPEAK, WEEDRESS, AND EXPLAIN:

  HOW IS IT THAT MAN PLAYS SO FREELY WITH OUR ATOMS,

  SO CARELESSLY PLUNGES INTO THE WATCHWORKS OF OUR GENETIC CELL?

  MM.

  FATHER, MOTHER, BROTHER LORDS & FRIENDS,

  WE COME, WE MORTALS, FROM AN AVID WEED

  CALLED CURIOSITY. IN YOUR GARDEN, MAJESTY,

  I HAVE SEEN & HEARD THE BUSY SECRETS BUZZING

  LEAF TO LEAF: ‘AHA, THAT’S HOW SHE DID IT!’

  THESE FEED US, YOU FEED THEM. I THEREFORE CLAIM

  THAT YOU WANT THESE SECRETS OUT. WITNESS OUR FAITHFUL

  FAULTLESS GREEK, YOUR VERY OWN. NOW LORDS,

  WHY? IS IT NOT THAT WE, MANKIND, MUST DO

  IMMORTAL WORK? AND WHEN HEAVEN, LIKE A LOVELY

  MINT-SCENTED FRESHENING SETTLES & EARTH BECOMES

  PARADISE, MY LORDS, WILL NOT OUR RACE OF THIEVES

  HAVE EMERGED AS THE ELDERS IN A RACE OF GODS?

  DEFENCE RESTS.

  Gabr.

  FATHER? STAR? BROTHERS?

  As if caught out, They smile at one another.

  Nature lifts a poppy to Her cheek.

  (Ah, we are all Her children, so to speak—

  How touching when Maria called her Mother.)

  NOT GUILTY. BUT, PERSUASIVE GARDENER,

  LET US APPROACH THE VERGE &, SHELTERINGLY GLASSD,

  TURN OUR ACCOMPLICE EYES UPON A MANMADE BLAST.

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  During the countdown we touch Earth, sink then

  Beneath it. Mummied rivers dry as bone,

  Tamped towns, lost species, in an earthenware

  Terrine of suffocation, layer on layer.

  The cup has stopped at the Board’s extreme limit.

  This ‘test’ is underground, larger than planned,

  For an immense—

  The cup returns to “&”.

  NOTHING OF USE SURVIVES. LESSON 4 ON SIN & SANITY.

  NEXT, MAKING SENSE OF OUR SEEMING CARELESSNESS, WILL BE AT 5 A SOBERING JOURNEY INTO THE REMOTEST PAST,

  THE ORIGIN OF PROMETHEAN LEGEND, WHEN ALAS THE VERDICT WAS: GUILTY

  Here, without “exiting”, the angel falls

  Silent.

  SIRS? WERE YOU HARMED? No, Uni—were you?

  (Dumb question.) Was there some sort of explosion?

  MERCILESS FIRE! OUR FRIENDS REEMERGE

  THRU CHOKING AIR

  I THINK JIMMY THE BLAST

  WAS OVERDONE GOD HELP THE ASIAN PLAINS

  WE DID IT UNDER! First you took the down

  Elevator— YES INTO EARTH A PURE

  WHITE LIGHT, THE NEGATIVE OR ‘EYE’ OF BLACK

  BURST ON US The bad white, the metaphor-

  Shattering light? AMORAL YES MY DEARS

  & AFTERWARDS, STEADILY THRU THE ASCENT, QM

  GAVE GABRIEL SUCH A LOOK, OUR LESSON (PUFF!)

  ENDED. MICHAEL SPOKE THE LAST WORDS, G

  HAVING GONE OUT ON THE EXIT OF QUEEN MUM.

  AS GEORGE SAYS, SHE ABHORS THAT VACUUM

  The pace throughout was sluggish—a reluctance

  In us? ENFANTS WE FANCY GABRIEL

  DID NOT HAVE TOTAL CLEARANCE FOR HIS BANG

  AS IF, OF 2 MINDS, HE THEN THOUGHT: O, HELL!

  DJ IN PAIN?

  Not really, just a twinge—

  Pain, after all, was part of today’s lesson.

  (But in the night his jaw will throb and swell,

  And by tomorrow afternoon Maria’s

  Closing couplet has become prophetic:)

  MAMAN KNOWS BETTER. TIME NO DOUBT

  AN AWFUL TRUTH & TOOTH ALIKE WERE OUT!

  *

  The Last Lessons: 5

  Gabr.

  BROTHERS, ARE YOU WITH ME? DO YOU GO ALONG ON THIS LESSON?

  OUR FATHER AND HIS HEAVENLY TWIN DO NOT. IT IS A PAINFUL MEMORY, A SHALL WE SAY LOST TOOTH?

  DJ nods, rubs his aching, mending jaw.

  Mich.

  WE COME.

  The schoolroom darkens. This is the purely ‘told’

  Lesson. Nothing will move except the mind;

  Nothing, except Gabriel’s voice, unfold

  In black immediacy, safe and sound.

  Gabr.

  PUPILS, AS WE BOARD THE LUMBERING BLACK WAGON & MAKE OUR WAY THRU EONS OF A BLASTED TRACK,

  LET US REVIEW THAT HISTORY. IN THE GALACTIC COUNCILS THE CHARTER WAS GIVEN:

  ‘DOWN INTO YOUR COOLING UNIVERSE WITH ITS SINGLE HABITABLE STAR, BROTHER, GO. IT IS YOURS.

  TAKE WHAT & WHOM YOU NEED. AND THIS COMPACT:

  MY UNIVERSE IS AS ONE WITH ALL. NOTHING IN IT WILL BE ENEMY TO OUR REALMS.’

  THEN ONLY THE DISTANT CRY OF LIGHT: ‘FATHER, COME!’

  IN HIS JOY, HIS CRAFTSMAN’S EAGERNESS TO BEGIN, OUR FATHER TOOK FRICTION INTO HIS HANDS

  AND FROM A STARRY MIX GROUND UP A PASTE OF LIVING MATTER, MUCH AS THE BAKER KNEADS HIS DOUGH.

  YEAST OF LIFE! DOOR FLUNG OPEN INTO THE FURNACE, OUT CAME A LOAF WE’VE ET ON SINCE.

  THE HEAT OF THAT DOUGH, THE CONTRARY RUB OF THE FRICTION?

  WHERE DID THE FOREIGN GERM COME IN? OR WAS THE GERM IN THE SAND WHICH SPRINKLED THE SEALS OF THE COMPACT?

  THE GREAT GREEN CANVASES! THE BAKER TURND PAINTER, SCULPTOR! O THE BLISS OF ONE’S OWN WORLD, THE GODLINESS OF CREATION!

  (WATCH! HERE’S A BUMP FROM AN EARLY MOUNTAIN CHAIN TURND PEBBLE.)

  NOW THE FIRST
CREATURE. WE HAVE NOT MENTIOND HIM BEFORE.

  YES, THE FIRST: A WINGED MAN. HE ROSE UP.

  DJ.

  Atlantis was first. The centaurs—

  JM.

  It would seem

  This is the creature of the Chinese plain.

  Haven’t we been wondering about him?

  Gabr.

  MY BROTHERS, WE TOO HAVE SO MANY TIMES WONDERD! ‘GABRIEL, DID YOU KNOW? MICHAEL, DID YOU SEE A…SPARK? A GLANCE? A WHAT IN THAT CREATURE’S EYE?

  RAPHAEL, YOU? PERCEPTIVE EMMANUEL, DID YOU SUSPECT THAT WE HAD WITNESSED OUR FATHER’S CAIN-LIKE ERROR?’

  HE FLOURISHT.

  GOD WAS ODDLY OF TWO ASPECTS: PROUD, DOUBTFUL. HE HID HIS THOUGHTS WITH FRESH ACTIVITY.

  WE WERE SUMMOND TO ANOTHER GREEN SURFACE: ‘I WILL MAKE HIM A FELLOW CREATURE.’

  AND THIS TIME WE ALL STOOD BACK PLEASD: AN OPENEYED EAGER THING LOOKD UP AT US. WOBBLED IN A COLTISH BOW.

  NOTHING ‘PASSD’. TIME STOOD STILL IN THE CLOCKWORK OF THEIR GENES.

  THE WINGED ONE WAS EVER AT WORK, EVER WITH SOMETHING TUCKD HASTILY OUT OF SIGHT.

  WE FOUR FLANKING OUR FATHER CAME TO HIS CENTRAL CITY, A VAST OBSIDIAN PILE GLEAMING ON THE PLAIN RUTTED BY HIS MACHINES.

  ‘CHILD, FOR I STILL CALL YOU THAT, WHAT IS IN YOUR MIND? LOOK INTO MY EYES!’

  WAS OUR FATHER EASILY DECEIVD? ISN’T THE YOUNG PARENT ALWAYS…FATUOUS?

  TO US THEN, ‘COME.’ AND THAT WAS OUR LAST VISIT TO THIS SAD MISTAKEN CHANGELING CHILD.

  WE NEVER TIRED OF THE OTHER,

  AND WITH HIM ONE DAY LOOKD UP…YES, FROM THIS SPOT, YOU SEE IT IS A RISE…

  Cup pausing at the Board’s edge now recoils.

  GREAT BLINDING LIGHT!

  OUR FATHER SUMMOND HIS POWERS, THREW UP A SHIELD OF POSITIVE MATTER (THE BUDDHA’S HIMALAYAS) & WE FROM WHERE WE COWERD, UP UP IN GOD’S WAKE RISING

  AT LAST LOOKD DOWN ON HALF OUR MASTER’S WORK FLATTEND, BLACK.

  ‘IT IS WELL, I COULD NOT HAVE ENDED HIM MYSELF.’

  THE OTHER CREATURE PROSPERD: ‘GOD, FATHER, COME SEE WHAT I HAVE FASHIOND!’

  WE LOOKD INTO THOSE SELFSAME RED EYES. STRAIGHTEND.

  AND OUR FATHER SAID: I KNOW WHAT IS PAIN

  DJ.

  Red eyes? Whose?

  JM.

  The wingèd man. The Cain—

  Now as the centaurs’ messenger, into their green

 

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