The Changing Light at Sandover
Page 46
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