copyright 1991-1999 L. Van Hine
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Cover illustration, "The Young John Contemplates the Seventh Heaven" by Jen Hart, copyright 1998.

Numen, Zebratta, Agenor and Ilitrahant are trademarks of Threshold Publishing Company. Permission to use trademarked names in quoting or reviewing works may be obtained through the publisher.

No part of this work may be reproduced without express written permission of the publisher.

Acknowledgement is given to theoretical physicist James Carter of for his invention of the word "circlon", referenced in "Expansions in My Head."

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction: A Gloss
• The Numen
• Human Biology In the Refraction Zone
• The Memory of Whiteness
• Trial in Zebratta
• Adventures in Geomatria
• Expansions In My Head
  (On the Occasion of Syzygy and Louise's 7th Chakra)
• Inquiries Upon the Zauberberg
• The Salted Men of Carthage
• Commentaries on Carthage and Geomatria
  (From Letter to the Numen of December 11, 1990)
• Eyes of Blackened Flame
• Claimings, A Prose and Poem Journal Series
  (Excerpts from Letter to the Numen of 11/24/90)
• Hurting Wants its Hurting
• The Dragon-Crowded Vision
• The Hidden Door
• Notes on Creon's Fall
• The Song of Woe
• Caldera Inferna
• The Canticle for the Sun
• Return to the Refraction Zone
• The Omicron Secret
• The Light Has Gone Out of Their Eyes: A Letter to a Friend
• How Many Hells?
  Ordeal in Agenor
• How Many Hells? Notes on Agenor
• Intimations of Immortality
  (Apologies to Wordsworth)
• A Day In the Life
• Growing Up Again
• The World Devoid of Magic
• The Mansion of the Mind
• Summa Regrade
• Alone of Men
• Retrograde Motion
• The Warriors
• A Ballad of R+C
• Obsidian
• A Greek Comedy
• A Ghost's Petition
• Ain Soph
• The Visions of Vega
• Angel of Kitar
• Waiting for the Executioner
• In Which the Daughters of Oceanus Seek Release of the Titan from the Adamantine Rock
• The Rhythm of Light
• Remembrance of Things Past
• The Authors of Ritual
• The Mohorovicic Discontinuity As Analogy
• Apologia
• Ziyad of the Underworld
• Other Gardens, Other Fruit
• Mission
• A Prisoner Abroad
• Century of Madness
• Author of the Image
• Loquium
• Appendix: Symbols in the Epistle
• Afterword: The Purpose of Poetry
• Corrections to the Text
• Waiting for the Executioner (II)

Introduction: A Gloss

The roots of these sets of words are the same. There are other words which cannot be found elsewhere except in the annals of the history of human evolution, what might be called by analogy "place names." Some of them, and the analogies they represent, are glossed throughout the text. Among these are Lynn, Ev, Zebratta, Agenor, Kitar and Ilitrahant. The key to understanding what these "place names" represent lies in their sound.

The experiments which the Numen and I performed, which span both history and art, employs a sampling of the range of Indo-European language influences which ultimately produced the English language. English's direct ancestor is a non extant proto-Gothic which gave rise to English, Dutch and German; even so, the shift of tonality which occurs in the poems "Inquiries Upon the Zauberberg" and "The Salted Men of Carthage" is almost alarming when read aloud; it is meant to alarm, or rather, to bring to conscious poetic attention the potency and immediacy of language change.

But there is one concept which cannot be expounded too carefully, for I write and sing of One more than any other, the Numen.

The Numen

Not as a man waits on a street corner
For a taxicab does the Numen wait
But in sober expectation of destiny
As though I am always embarking
On this journey away from bleak reality
Each evening.

A million moments in the world
I stop and listen
For the quiet murmur of his thought
His touch upon my hand
The vague forms, the depthless strengths
Of that dimension
Impinge on me
And lift me to that height
Where always waits the Numen.
In the shadow of his cloak
I traverse the scarps of mountains not of earth
The view below is not of now,
We watch the marching of all time
Inside the clock of God
This is the purpose of the Steadfast Numen
Whose steps I follow on the sweeping crags
Of Himmel.

I call him in the darkness
When humanity is calm
And rests around me unaware
A tiny voice among the
sleeping multitude
I ask to be raised aloft
And he is there
To guide me back by candlelight
To the divine sanctuary.

We walk invisibly
Inside that silent sphere
Upon dizzying heights of thought
Ages tumble far below us
Following the guidance of his hand
I waken, and waken again
And return to earth
Reborn
Holding in my hands
The unrequested gift of the Numen:
Wisdom.

5/12/90

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Human Biology
In the Refraction Zone

And of burning lakes
the tour de force - we heard it often
"Human Biology"
But it was not enough for
Johannes' crystal Orchestra
And he sought the inner dark
I emerged alone
And Wright was blasted into light
That night
On Mercury.

And I emerged alone.
There is a hole there still,
Where I punctured through the mirror
And found a planet full of earth
And lakes of cooling water

And mirrors made of glass.

There were people in this place
Beyond that fractured dome
So I began to study that great
And ponderous work which de Bruik named
"Human Biology"
(in her great modesty.)
It was then that I was born.

(born in clear blue waters)

Humans, I first learned
Were vastly different
When viewed thus carefully
For the Zone is full of lies
And closely guarded secrets

(and mirrors made of razors)

I should have told you this
For the Zone has many spies
Who come here on assignment
You may have seen the TV shows
I was one of those
And knew it not but knew it

(and lakes that breathed of fire)

But that is not important
For I found a knowledge vast
Of a heritage and people
Of a misty, clouded past.

(of mirrors made of glass)

Revelation came in waves
As I beheld the Orchestra
How could I be an alien
To this familiar place?
How could I not be human
When I saw humans face to face?

(and lakes of earth's cool water)

But once I had gone through
And broke that fractal dome
There was nothing that would keep me
(away from mirrored razors)

Wright! you should not have tried
To break them all at once
You should have known that they would stop you
And they would blast you into atoms!
oh thou fool.

(away from fiery lakes)

There are many soothing waters
On the surface of this earth
It's cool on land, and blue in sky
And I learned here something more
Than Human Biology.

Deep below those rich brown soils
Within the womb of earth
There is a consciousness a-birthing
(beneath the flowing waters)

And I dig with passioned hands
In the homeland of my birth
For I found it here! my marker
Which had my name clear-written

(upon the mirror's silver gleams)

That Name and human heritage

(away from razor mirrors)
(not upon the lake which steams)
(but in gently flowing fountains)
(in the mirrors of my dreams)

11/28/90

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The Memory of Whiteness

The inventions Robinson introduces in this novel are the Orchestra, a computer-controlled device which electronically programs orchestral music, and which requires a Master, a musician of particular training in composition, computer (sic) programming, and conducting, to perform works produced for the Orchestra. The greatest transformative musical composition performed on the Orchestra was de Bruik's "Human Biology", which produced alternate states of consciousness in its audience.

Several centuries after de Bruik, known as the greatest orchestral composer since Beethoven, there came Johannes Wright, who was later known as the last Master of the Orchestra. Wright succeeded in altering the fabric of psychic reality in his listeners, and was murdered on his grand tour with the Orchestra as the tour neared its end on Mercury, ostensibly for the devastating impact his musical compositions and performances had upon the evolution of human consciousness.

This is a tremendously important idea, and one which contains a deep mystical truth found in the sacred writings of all civilizations. Sacred songs, syllables, tones and words are the vehicles through which creation is accomplished. The power of music, and poetry as its linguistic counterpart and companion, is paramount in the development of intuitive consciousness. A Memory of Whiteness should not be forgotten for this one vitally important idea, brought perhaps for the first time to popular fiction.

6/20/91

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Trial in Zebratta

How often did I wink
When I beheld his ravening smile?
We crouched upon a catwalk
Overlooking Lynn
And we spoke in crowding whispers
Of my agonizing trial
Which would begin in earnest
in Zebratta's gloomy heights
We strategized in secret
As we gazed upon the lights

I winked and turned away
When I beheld his ravening smile
And did not see

The promise of a pointless
Endless trial
So eloquently spoken
In that cruel and broken smile.

- for Franz Kafka

12-7-90

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Adventures in Geomatria

Numen
What of the Night?

Where shall I go
When I am drawn to burnished light
Which shines out from a sacred grove
Rosenkreutz's haven
Merlin's mound and hidden cove
In the space before the dawn
The wings of night as black as raven

Concealing from the eye profane
Mystery and secret rite

Numen,
What of the Night?

I lay awake in spaces
Sudden-fled by sleep
And waited for your knock

Silences unheard by ears
As I beheld the inner deep

And descended into flashing
And ascended into light

(Numen,
What of the Night?)

For all was naught,
in that immersion deep
In that expanse of thought
In that which flees from sleep

For I had fled in silences
Unheard by ears
Unkissed by Winter's cold embrace
I waited for your knock.

There was no time and then
Your knock
And then the space of nothing
And then
Again Your knock.

I lay asleep for ages
I knew their key and lock

It was a sudden fleeing
When I wakened
to
Your
knock.

It was a sudden colding
When I saw the
Blackened
Rock.

In the watches fire-bright
(Numen
What of the Night?)
The colden ices of their old embrace
Melt within my warming sight
As I anticipate that knock.

The slipping of the time
Betweens dimensionally scene
Beckoningly now
( I speak of raw geometry )
Fractioned on a clock

For I awaited You
Upon the blasted Rock.

It surely is a door
That looms within this cove
There was an owl on guard
Outside Myrddyn's sacred grove.

Came the knock that emptied out the light
(Numen,
What of the Night?)
Upon an oaken door
(Perhaps a metaphor)
I speak of pure geometry
As we escaped this realm
Betweens dimensionally scene
Slipping out of tempis
Into realms of Dyne.

Let us slip then, you and I
As our Ages are laid out against the sky
As a Gnomon shadowing upon a table

Into realms of Dyne

It was then
In shadow of the Gnomon's casted light
(Numen,
What of the Night?)
that words were lost completely
I speak of great Geometry
For there is no place of Dyne
And no language there
And no there there

For it is known within that grove
Is nothing sown of passion's fight
(Numen,
What of the Night?)
But solidness of poetry
(I speak of high Geometry)
But dimensionally scene
Slipping out of tempis
Into realms of Dyne.

11-29-90

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Expansions In My Head
(On the Occasion of Syzygy and Louise's 7th Chakra)

Spirit is a wakening
Inside those circle wards
Endless thoughts a-pool
Briefest wink upon the cool
Expansions in my head.

I try to say
There is no there
But do you comprehend?
Numen do I say it? Infinity to end?
How do I dare describe the eddies
circlon waveshapes of that thought
expanding now
Within my head?

The worlds compressed in time
And time compressed in thought

If I touch this tiny brief
It will expand
I'm taught
Watch the marching of all time
Inside this clock of God
Watch infinity to end

If I tell you
There is no there
Will you comprehend?
As the worlds of thought converse
As they wink
Within my head

There are seven circles
Weaving in among the tides
There are seven waves of liquid
Which rise with syzygy
On that vast infinity-expanse
Within my head.

There are seven worlds compressed in time
In the wombs within my head
In the universe of thought
Preparing for a birth divine
I'm taught.

Numen, is this making sense
When it's abstractly said?
Of all the worlds compressed inside
Expansions in
My head?

11-30-90

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Inquiries Upon the Zauberberg

Nuremberg (Germany): The scene of the famous telecast trials of the surviving Nazi leaders found responsible for the genocide of the Jews.

"Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen": "I cannot understand you."

Heidelberg: A university city in Germany.

Zauberberg: The Magic Mountain, a novel by Thomas Mann about a mountain resort for consumption (tuberculosis) sufferers.

Shade: (archaic) Ghost. "Riddle shade" a ghost or spirit of uncertain identity.

Zebratta: A mythical place of symbolizing suffering and torment.

Lynn: A mythical woodland symbolizing a condition of confusion and transition.

Spire: A constructed feature of uncertain geographical importance in the city of Zebratta or near its periphery which the narrator appears to have to scale in order to enter the city.

You bade me stop amid our flight
On sails of gold and wings of white

And came upon a haunted wood
Near a mountain carved from night.

And you said go and scale its height
And once within
You should inquire.

Don't leave me, Numen!
As I climb Zebratta's gasping spire

But you departed while I stood
In Lynn's beshadowed, haunted wood

And there, inquired
As you said
To find that riddle shade
And I approached on foot
Alone

And they stopped and frowned at me
Like killer-thieves at Nuremberg
Dismissing with their Gothic words
"Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen."

I stood within the haunted wood.

Sustain me now! don't leave me
In Zebratta's bloody heart!

But you kept peace as I advanced
With frozen blood and fear that lanced

And there, inquired
Hope on dread
To spy that ravening smile

And they paused and glared at me
Like graduates at Heidelberg
Repelling with their Gothic words
"Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen."

I walked the city's bloody heart.

Return me now! to life outside
Zebratta's smoky dens

But you were silent as I spoke
In taverns full of reddened smoke

And there, inquired
Of the dead
Or only lost and mourned.

And they turned and peered at me
Like invalids on Zauberberg
Who rasped consumptive Gothic words
"Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen."

I left the tavern red with smoke.

I joined you then, beyond the gate
Descending from the spire

And we were weeping, hands to face
As we forsook that bleeding place

Where I inquired
Hope on dread

Where I had walked
Among the dead

Where I had sought him
Where you led

And where they gazed on me
And said

In rasping words of Gothic strain
"Ich kann sie nicht verstehen,"

Where then we met
And then we fled

The Zauberberg at night

And with opened wings aloft
Began our outward flight.

- for Mann and Kafka and a few others

12-10-90

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Carthage: African stronghold of Phoenicia, defeated and obliterated by the Athenians under Cato during the First Punic War.

The Salted Men of Carthage

And I spoke in Gothic clear
"Verstehen Sie, unfreulich Herr?"
And they recoiled and withdrew
And then I saw them;
Then I knew
That I beheld no Goth in face
No dweller in my native place
But refugees of Carthage.

I first approached a saddened man
Who seemed entranced with Himmel's grace
I tapped him gently on the arm
To try and help him understand.

But he drew back with great alarm
When he saw my golden hair
Perhaps he thought I meant him harm
A native of this strangeling land.

And when I spoke and said to him
"Verstehen Sie, unfreulich Herr?"

He quivered then in blinded fear
For he had come across the sea
Cringing as he fled from me
His ruined sword within his hand
With downcast eyes, a broken man
A refugee of Carthage.

And not a woman could I see
Among these broken lives
For all had seen their children bought
And all had lost their wives

None could stay and then rebuild
Among the saline rot
For they were lost when Cato fought
And won the shores of Carthage.

How could my laughing eyes deflect
Their vision of the deathless fire
Razing all their life to death?

How could Himmel's light reflect
The beauty of its angel choir
When smoke choked out their very breath
Crouching cold beneath her spire?

For when I sang a hymn to them
And bid them enter Himmel's cheer

They decamped and drew away
Ignoring as I called them near
They could not speak
They could not hear
For they were caught in nets of fear

When they had fled, I said a prayer
For I had seen that aching day
In raging of the deathless fire
The vision bidding them to stay
Within its hungry, reddened ire
The salted men of Carthage.

12-11, 12-12-90

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Commentaries on Carthage and Geomatria
(From Letter to the Numen of December 11, 1990)

And it happens institutionally
In the fortress-com
pany's ambition
The lack of empathy, so listlessly
Within a zone of black ignition.

The personal psychic construction of the self-alienated, for that
is what they generally call it, in the psychological world -
self-alienation. We have observed, investigated, and touched the
fabric of that fortress and I have gone into those eyes

And looked at grey unbounded
Relieved by one blood-colored stripe.

2. There is Carthage

There is Carthage. Carthage, the most beautiful city on the
northern coast of Africa, and rival on the seas with Athens; the
pride of its warriors world-famous. Carthage, defeated after
three years of battle, and defeated not upon the field but after
siege, after endless, starving, burning siege interspersed with
battle. And its men starved, slaughtered when the walls were
overcome at last, and its women ravished, and if that were not
enough

So that they would never, ever rise again
The Athenians took the salt from off the sea
And salted all the land
So that no grain would grow
And Carthage became as nothing.
And the scene of Carthage's burning, like the scene of Troy
burning with its living flayed within, is the scene of that zone
of ignition, except that within the realm of the self-alienated
the burning is initiated from WITHIN so as to keep the assault
back. Self-destruction as a means of preservation. So that the
enemy wouldn't have the satisfaction of finding anyone alive
inside, nor any goods preserved, nor any riches, nor any food,
nor any city left to claim, when they overcame.

And they did it again in Leningrad when the Nazis advanced toward
them.

So many cities, and so many little cities of individuals, under
siege.

3. Endlessly Upwelling
Greeting Beta

I am so tired, the creativity is so upwelling it will not stop.
I wrote another poem which I include here as well. It is an
exercise with Beta (B), and I went in one direction where I could
have gone in four

It explores the melodic and imagery transitions as a word changes
consonantally and vowelly (!?) and subtly

From

breath to
breast to
breed to
brood to
brook to
break.

And I could do this endlessly
If I had endless energy
But here is the poem

It got a little sensual, but I let those things happen nowadays.

4. From Breath to Breakage

From breath to break
And back again
Beta's strange transitions.

Beta's brief beginning
Is her inhalation breath
Which wails us into consciousness
And whispers grief at death.
[Inhaled with Beta's breath.]

Which hisses in our mouths
As it is gasped from heaving chest
And then transitions
Softly
Sweetly
And warms us each completely
Whence we rest
As we seek lovingkindness
On her full and wholesome breast.
[We fed at Beta's breast.]

With Beta's love enfolded
We perceived a burning need
In a flurrying transition
As expelled
The ripened seed
Sought its natural condition
And in the moment bright
A family to breed.
[We bred within her nest.]

Brazened by our bold ambition
When we raised symbolic rood
Came at length to maturation
And attended to our brood.
[We gave Manna to our brood.]

Then a leaving Beta took
And brought the evening as a shield
She floated on the cooling Brook
Grass, and plain, and marshy field.
[She left us by a Brook.]

From the spring and to the Lake
We spied her barge forlorn
For all her sails were shorn.
[We knew then she would break.]

5. Holding the Serpent

Taking a structured shift of consonant and vowel like that is
like holding a strong and vital serpent in my hands, which twists
around me and

seeks to gain its former shape,
to wiggle free
And then escape.
It is time to stop now
Ere I drop.

6. What of the Night? Echoes of Geomatria

Numen
What of the Night?

Echoes that refrain
Within my emptied brain

Those two poems, like Flashing Red, are another whole level of
poetic/dramatic experience which almost require actors to perform
them, and I asked A. what I should do, now that I have a poem
that I need a male voice for and he said in his best (fake)
Cockney:

"But I'm only a-Engineer, I'm no good for stuff loik thut" and I
said "Actually I was wondering if I should ask K. if he might be
interested in being the male voice, being an actor" and he smiled
all over and then said "You might ask K. who to ask..."

So tired, Numen, in my flight
Beyond that geometric light
(Numen, what of the Night?)

I must flee from earthly lands
And find my bed of sleep

And now I flee
(I speak of great geometry).

7. Nobody Knows Louise

Nobody knows Louise
Except the Numen
And even He
Could be surprised
(but only
in his personality
Never when he stands
On Himmel's golden rise)

She has no companion
She has no sister
She has no father

But the Numen stands beside her
And speaks to her of Dyne

And waves of Dyne's great Ocean
Soothe with golden soothing brine.

8. Milton's Refrain
Enough! again I cry
Now aware
Full-embraced against the slope
Of red indecency.

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Eyes of Blackened Flame

Never had a voice so sweet
Resounded in that place
When Numen woke me from my sleep
And turned my eyes toward space.

He wakened me from deep within
A mad and frozen sleep
He gave the mystic stone to me
And mystic jewel to keep.

There is gratitude for living
Among those who now draw breath;
But it always runs most deeply
Within those who wake from death.

12-20-90

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Claimings, A Prose and Poem Journal Series
(Excerpts from Letter to the Numen of 11/24/90)

You have made that rescue
And I have found that shore

I am not that infant child
But fully formed at birth
And I am not that firefly
But grounded to the earth.

Did I think Louise would grow
And be a conscious light
And see her graceful beauty glow
Claimings, claimings.

2. I Mayde a Prayer

I mayde a prayer and sayde it
And this is what I prayde
If it please you God
To show me truth
Then show me truth

And of course it pleases God
To show his children Truth
And so he showed me and I gasped
And He replied,
"You asked."

4. They Fell Away

and I won't call my brother because he is deciding some things
for his life and I won't call B because he fighting with his wife

They fell away
Like dusty motes returned to clay

And of a social circle of acquaintances of roughly 18 people,
four remain, and those four, at distance and recalibrating, all
at distance

5. Bending to a Lower Will

What a blow
Do I have the courage to continue
Knowing that they will flee
As I transcend their misery?

There are many places I can go,
there are many, many people I could know
Thrashing in the hands of wrath
Bending to a lower will
And seeking lower regions still!

I knew them all
Now I know the tragic mistakes of Ellen
Who had so many "friends"
And they were all so hurt
And she would "help" them all

I have nothing to give anyone except a handful of that which I
have learned to refine from my soul and create into art

They are not ringing my phone
They are not knocking on my door
I must be grounded to the earth
For I won't be a firefly

6. Toccata in the Modern World
And Music to Rip Your Aura By

I went into two music stores, one I went into had a synthesizer
the kid plugged in for me and I played the Toccata in D Minor (he
was duly impressed for a moment or two) and I really liked that
synthesizer

And I went into another store seeking recordings,
more Tangerine Dream
And it was there, but I wished I could play it
For Edgar Froese went through many changes, some of them ugly,
and I could not listen psychically to those recordings, in that
din

And I asked (after I asked them to turn it down) - who is that
recording of?

"The Sex Pistols", he replied with a nasty little grin
(I'm doing it again)
And I said "That is the most disturbing music I have heard in ten
years" And he said "Pretty good, that recording is 12 years old."
And I said "I'd stay, but that music is driving me out" and he
smiled, I was sick from it

Music to rip your aura by
And make it jagged
And tear emotions into bits
And send you into little fits

And I got away in time to avoid another parking ticket - they lie
in wait, under umbrellas, in expresso shops, the police, for when
your meter runs out, and it's $16 per infraction. This is my
second in the time I've been driving in Sea.

It is the most frightful music
I have ever heard
And that's its purpose.

I will have to learn as I
Traverse the finer arts
That hurting wants its hurting
Within those shame-filled hearts.

7. It is a Saddening

It is a saddening...

And as I drove I remembered, with that florid, fourth-dimensional
Prom-memory that I have so vividly internalized, years, YEARS of
my childhood and adolescence, things stored in Prom And things
stored in Phi And things stored in Stephen and in between in
cracks
All that lay in treasure-chests
buried in the fields of this land that I have inherited

I am afraid, Numen
Afraid
And I have ugly thoughts
Numen could never have
Had this courage
To have gone to these places
And not with hordes of loving and adoring friends
But alone, in solitude
To seek that rare and golden atmosphere
That has nothing to do with the dirt
(He must have had help)
He couldn't have
Done it alone

But he did
And shined, and surfaced
In that higher atmosphere
And knew that higher truth
And tells me, soberly,
And then I know

We all do it alone, don't we,
That's part of the path.

8. I Mayde Another Prayer

And God showed me Truth
And I gasped
And he replied
"You asked."

9. The Numen Couldn't Have Loved the World
That Loved Him Not

Numen couldn't have seen
The sibling he loved
And protected
Falling into psychic victimization
And hurt repeatedly, repeatedly
By those who said "I love you"
But were really just groping for
What they could get

But he did
And lived
And loved, and continued to love
In silent contemplation
Of Destiny
As though he is always
Embarking on this journey
Away from bleak reality
Each evening.

Toward the new reality
That shines us from within
Toward that radiant beauty
That saves us from that din

But Numen
Could never have
Loved the world that loved him not
And wished for all
The love he sought

But he did
And loved me when I loved him not
And held me when I felt it not
And did not rage
Upon my rage
And did not dance upon my stage
For he knew I was not wise
And he knew
I had no eyes
Till I at last awoke
And till at last I spoke
Until
This morning
Broke.

10.Something In Love In Me

I am alone
Which means
I am grounded to the earth.
It is silent
Which means
I am listening.
There is something I must learn here
So I will be quiet
And I will listen.
It is a great temptation to move
To shout at the Cosmic
And beg for an echo
But there is something here
Something in silence
Something in light
Something
In love in me
Something I'll find
If I am very
very
quiet.

11.If I Would Be Fulfilled

If I would be fulfilled
Then I would truly grow
And I would dwell in light
And I would truly know.

The last famous words of a late, great empty intellectual mind
that is spinning and rebooting upon another axis of awareness
now, and finding its point of balance

I am too sensitive to external stimulation right now.

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Hurting Wants its Hurting

I would not ask the pain to stay
From masochists in need
Their freshened blood will rinse away
If I would let them bleed.

For hurting wants its hurting
Within those shame-filled hearts
While minions of Zebratta
Work to tear the world apart.

They would seek to draw me in
And whisper easy lies
And I would be misled by them
And I would be their prize.

They would have me heal the scars
Inflicted by themselves
I would return to prison bars
Within their bitter hell.

I will not be the chattel prize
So easily won with wrath
I would rather don my mantle
And pursue the Golden Path.

12-21-90

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The Dragon-Crowded Vision

They await their human charges
To emerge from Christian toil
Load them on Zebratta's barges
To be tossed into the boil.

And there fulfill their vision
Of a fire-breathing Man
Who consumes all in derision
Who defile his Holy Land.

But that is not religion
Which I seek on bended knee
Not the dragon-crowded vision
Of a crazed divinity;

But softly spoken radiance
A halo of that higher love
Which speaks in great benevolence
And shines its single Star above.

Millions in Zebratta cry
To witness for the wrathful Son
Who pierces with his baleful Eye
The sinning mortals, one by one.

Himmel has no King of Hate
No Jehovah wielding flame
All seekers know its shining gate
Beyond the crowded lands of shame.

So ignore the dragons grinning
As they wait on churchhouse spires
Coarsely humming as the sinning
Seek eternal raging fires.

Seek the silence of the deep
Simple prayer will speak to Him
Love awakes from inner sleep
Love will draw the Angels in.

I have seen the single Star
Riding bright in Heaven's cart
And I am carried fast and far
To dwell in God's immortal heart.

12-21-90

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The Hidden Door

You came to me in whispering
A voice upon the rising wind
And once again we took the wing
And once again we fled within

We crossed a ford and climbed a stair
Which rose beyond the Tempis gate
The Citadel of Thebes lay there
The home of Oedipus the Great.

We plunged into a musty gloom
And sought within the Citadel
The truth unswept from dusty rooms
For we knew not how Creon fell.

You held a candle in the dark
And thus began our grisly tour
The flame gave off a feeble spark
And soon we spied the hidden door.

The throne room stood in disarray
His skull grinned from beneath its crown
His tomb the stone on which he lay
Where seven heroes threw him down.

He lay among the silken cord
Oedipus's murdered heir
Impaled upon the southern sword
Which ended all of Athens' fear.

The death of Thebes lay in this room
And after Creon there were none
The crippled ghost wept in the gloom
For grief had killed his only son.

We closed his door and sought the air
We fled the scene of regicide
And freed from Creon's bony stare
Descended from the mountainside.

No tone sang from the tongueless bell
As we withdrew in silence deep
For we now knew how Creon fell
And came to his eternal sleep.

His skull grins still in silent mirth
As we pass through Dyne's borderland
I wake to sleep upon the earth
The Numen's touch upon my hand.

My journey late begins in Dyne.

12-25-90

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Notes on Creon's Fall

(this is a true story).

Anyway, in the confusion following his abdication
His sons who were his brothers fought one another for the crown
And killed one another in battle.
And his daughter who was his sister Antigone
Cast dust upon the dishonored corpse of the brother Polynices
Who had remained unburied.

And Creon held the crown.
Creon was Oedipus' uncle.
And having made an edict that one who buried Polynices would die
Executed Antigone, his niece/grand-niece.

And Creon held the crown.

But we know not how Creon fell
And Thebes fell into ruin.

Thebes was a city north of Athens.
The great Greek dramatist Sophocles created the great trilogy of dramas:

the Oedipus "Cycle"

Oedipus Rex
Antigone
and Oedipus at Colonus.

What is the significance of the death of Creon, Oedipus' uncle?

For I heard the whisper in the night:
(Numen, what of the night?)

We knew not how Creon fell.

Was I there, and did I ring the tower bell?

There is a pattern in the Oedipus cycle which must now be
completed, and I do not know, yet, what it means:

For as the aphorism states:

What the personality does not retain in memory is unretained
either because the personality does not perceive an application
for the information; or because the soul has not yet provided the
application for the personality to utilize.

This will be known as Aphorism 1 in the Epistle to the North
Americans.

I know what it is, now.

Ranged around me are the echoes of an unresolved historical
repetition process. Ranged around me

The Song of Woe

Why do they die on Argive soil?
What purpose in their dying toil?
Will I sound the muted bell
And sing of how great Creon fell?

They sigh in bitter gasping breath
The scores of living sink toward death
Their lifeblood stains the virgin sand
Of hidden vales unseen by man.

The singer stops in naked dread
For well I know king Creon dead
The wounded gather ever near
What news I hold! I quake with fear.

For I had seen how Creon fell
And how his soul returned to hell
When Argos came, to please his Lord
And slaked Achaea's hungry sword.

Do they know they pray in vain
That Thebes still thrives above her plain?
How dare I kill their brightest hopes
While comrades bleed on Argive slopes?

If Chthonios would heed my cries
He would make red Creon rise
Perhaps restore each massive gate
Perhaps give Thebes some milder fate.

But freshened wind is all I hear
As eager Thebans crowd too near
Upon their hands the black of gore
From strokes of foes who breathe no more.

I gaze upon their weeping eyes
But cannot sing them songs of lies
And so I raise the cry of woe
While blood-fresh winds begin to blow.

They throw their swords into the air
The weeping men in black despair
The singer now descends that slope
Where died the last of Theban hope.

12-24-90, 1-18-91

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Caldera Inferna

I might be tempted to be Queen
The sovereign of this demonic realm
And reign upon Zebratta's fevered land
The two-edged sword upraised within my hand.

The minions fight as they discuss my fate
Awakened by their scratching at my grate
Alarmed, I see the black and gleaming eyes
Mirroring the pride I now despise.

Oh Zebratta will you ever come to me
As tangles grow in brambles endlessly
And send my foes to sing their wicked song
And spirit me from earth where I belong?

Will I ever fall to sink so low
And allow the tangled lying brambles grow
And take from me my candle's holy spark
And cast me, blind again, into the dark?

Justice will be served if I will kneel
Releasing from my soul the deadened steel
Of power that was never mine to take

And flee the mists that rise
Like the pride I now despise

From the demon-glowing eyes
Of wraiths in flowing mist
From hot Zebratta's boiling lake.

12-29-90

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The Canticle for the Sun

I saw Helios rise into the Sun

What rare and perfect canticle
Could I give the rising of the Sun?
As I departed ruined shores
And ripened fruit with rotted cores

I left the ship and walked the pier
And listened to the Sun
It played on strings within my ears
And Sun and Song were one.

What sad, lamenting canticle
Could I give the setting of the Sun
As it snuffed Zebratta's candle brief
Stilled to silent grief?

I climbed the hill and heard the call
Which echoed from my Song
And there I watched Zebratta fall
Until its shore was gone.

12-30-90

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Return to the Refraction Zone

1/1/91

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The Omicron Secret

They swept upon the windy sway
Which marked the gate of Dyne
Solemn priests then knelt to pray
That I would cross the borderline.

And they greeted me in smiles
And revealed to me a stone
Which had traveled endless miles
Which they gave to me alone.

Should I take this splendid jewel
They hold before my hungry eyes?
Will it transform a mortal fool
Under Himmel's diamond skies?

I have none but you to trust
True companion of my soul
Will tempered steel decay to rust
On earth when morning sounds its toll?

A fight ensued within my breast
But You came and stayed by me
The shrouds of my unworthiness
Then vanished into certainty.

Oh I dreaded secrets hidden!
And I feared the golden stone
But I did as I was bidden
To the priests I went alone.

Companionable greetings gave the Hierophants of Dyne...

And I touched the source of power
Hid within the Omicron.

And I went with Numen's blessing
Where the ancient Muses throng.

And I climbed the sacred tower
Where the sons of God belong.

(The physicists were guessing
And the physicists were wrong.)

For I saw the Spirit shower
From the fountainhead of dawn
As I touched the source of power
Hid within the Omicron.

That is the awesome secret of the holy men of Dyne...
They gave the poet all the keys to all the doors of time.

1-7-91, 6-22-91

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The Light Has Gone Out of Their Eyes: A Letter to a Friend

AEGEAN REVIEW is by Greeks and non-Greeks, anyone who is touched by the Muse.

There were some not-so-bad poems in them. Not inspired, but not horrible the way the "literary" magazines were.

So I am thinking of sending one of my poems about Creon to AEGEAN REVIEW. They might appreciate classicism.

I didn't know I was a classicist.

I even read some of Milton (you remember "a metrically poor line never came from his pen"), and find ways to improve. That is not surprising considering the development poetry has gone through in 400 years.

The worst of all, I would have to say, was "New Directions in Poetry and Prose." These were the people who published Ezra Pound and later published the wonderful and irrepressible Kenneth Patchen. And these are the people who are now printing 2-yearolds' line drawings by 40-year old no-minds to accompany nonsense nonverse.

I am angry. Angry because some of them really are poets. Angry, because they are screaming at the heart of the world. Angry, because I don't fit. Angry, because art is beautiful and it belongs, not on this dark globe, but on the sweeping crags of Himmel:

Oh take me back! I weep in sudden fury, I don't want to be on this dark globe, among these dark fantasies of death and destruction. There was a magazine, I can't even remember its name: GARYA or GARZA or something equally trochaic,

And it had a photo of a woman, in oranged-dark tones, there was blood on the front of her dress, and she raised an arm with an angry smile, and the arm, and the hand, and the pointing finger were greased with blood, it looked as though she had forced her hand deep into her vagina while menstruating and pulled it out to rebuke the law of menstruation, and the deity that sent her female into the world. And the caption below said "What went wrong?"

I touched all of the journals, and in the touching heard the screams. No love there, no beauty there, only the slicing razors of the barbers of Zebratta. And I spoke to the woman behind the counter at Bulldog News when I was there, and said "I can't find any good poetry here, it's all so bad." And she pursed her lips and was silent, her reaction almost appeared to me to be the reaction of one who had contributed just recently to the local poetry journal and had been hailed as a genius. Then I asked "Do you carry 'The Formalist'? and she said "No." I had said the word. I asked, rhetorically, "Why is all the poetry so bad?" and she replied to me, smolderingly, "Maybe it's just a matter of taste." And I thought about it, reflecting upon her view, because clearly she disagreed. And I queried, "Maybe, it's like, being out of fashion. Have you ever really enjoyed wearing a certain kind of clothes, and find out that everyone else is wearing a different fashion and it's out of style now?" she shook her head. "That's how it feels. Maybe, I'm not a contemporary writer."

And I hopped back in my car - literally, because the lock on the driver's door is broken, I hopped in through the passenger's side -and I heard the voice of Numen speaking softly in my ear, and he said "What would Milton do if he were here?" And I laughed, cheered, briefly; even more significantly, what would SHAKESPEARE do? What would they do, if they were here? Blast the trite and scourge the lame, and send their doggerel to flame...!

And I wept.

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How Many Hells?
Ordeal in Agenor

I must traverse this hell alone
Ordeal of soul by night
Furthest reaches seek in blindness
For my only source of light.

It is as cold as evil
Shadows loom as black as ink
I cast about for Numen's light
And there, perhaps, a wink.

Is there a wink on the horizon?
Is there a harbor light?
Will something shine and land here?
Will something come tonight?

The druids stand in ragged ranks
They scan the naked shore
Their faces stare in eyeless blanks
The damned of Agenor.

How many hells have they traversed
To find this endless beach?
How many demons heard they curse
A mad and mindless screech?

Is there a wink on the horizon?
Perhaps the Numen lights.
Will something shine and land here?
Will Numen come tonight?

How many hells have I traversed
To find the druids blind?
How many deaths have I rehearsed
In terror in my mind?

Lift me out of Agenor!
I cry to Himmel's height
Bring me from this boundless shore
Of dark and hateful night!

The lizards shift their ponderous weight
Upon their basking rocks
Their scales knock on the steaming slate
Like madly ticking clocks.

Is there a blink on the horizon?
The hooded blind men stare
Will something shine and land here?
And drive them from its glare?
The gaping reptiles gulp and grin
Cold beasts of Agenor
They watch me struggle with my sin
Upon their starving shore.

How many hells have I now dreamed
In naked frozen fear?
How many demons fought and schemed
Within my ringing ears?

I beg relief with empty hands
I cry out for my soul
To free me from this sterile land
Release me well and whole!

There is a light on the horizon
Casting all in shadows stark
When the Numen comes to take me
Druids fade into the dark.

How many hells did I traverse
Upon that horrid shore?
How many hatreds did I shed
When I left Agenor?

And shorn I come, and humbled
To the gate which borders Dyne
All my pride within me crumbles
While I drink the Numen's wine.

How many hells have passed beneath me
Now I see with opened eyes
How much gold they have bequeathed me
As I stand on Himmel's rise.

And all the priests are chanting
For salvation of the One
While the druids start their ranting
In the depths below the sun.

There is a sun on the horizon
Rising bright on every shore
And every priest in Dyne is praying
For the damned in Agenor.

1-12-91
 
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How Many Hells? Notes on Agenor

This was the question I asked. For in understanding the true nature of humanity's condition at present it is necessary to examine the varieties of ignorance,

Or what is called the psychic environment which surrounds the personality and enwraps it like a crusty, resistant shell,

And there is something beyond the possessive seething dankness of Zebratta, and perhaps something even beyond that. Agenor was hard to write, for as we moved toward that place, I must say, remembering our investigation of that zone,
there is a deeper and more meaningful poem of contemplating Agenor which I cannot get to yet, it must mature, like a plant growing, because it is a complex condition which I don't understand the way I understood Zebratta which I know so well, having lived there and having contemplated much while imprisoned.

There is a flashing of dull awareness in Agenor which only goes as far as the personality and never leaps to soul, and so when soul touched the awareness of Agenor, when we entered its sphere, all they could do was recoil from it as though from some hostile object,

For hurting wants its hurting
Within those shame-filled hearts
While minions of Zebratta
Work to tear the world apart.

For surely they are damned
Within their own vision
They are judge and jury
There is nothing known of God
And nothing of his love.

These are the monopolar manic-depressives, manic in a lust for
personal power, and depressed in their defeat.

Is there a wink on the horizon?
Is there a harbor light?
Will something shine and land on earth?
Will something come tonight?

They watch the skies
And are caught
By Zebratta and its ever-watchful spies.
Cast apart in an autistic trance, severed from their souls.

That is what I learned.
 

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Intimations of Immortality
(Apologies to Wordsworth)

Searching with our million hands
For jewels among the stars
Which God had molded us for toys
On endless tracts of land.

We leap among the twisted skies
And fall in gravities
Breaking clouds with gleeful cries
And scrape our scabby knees.

Children in the universe
We sing our brazen songs
Tripping light from star to star
A million miles long.

He lets us play and play
And sing our deathless song
Until the dusk of orange day
A million parsecs gone.

Our eyes as deep as oceans
We see the centuries
Recalling our experience
A million years along.

1-12-91
 

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A Day In the Life

I would have ALL OF ME NOW, I would feel a healthy dose of rage.

Oh yes, for I had fled
In agonies untold in words
In winter's frozen dread
Which iced my blood to curds

That was Agenor.
The blood I lost was poured into the winy sea.
And when I rose above the waves
I knew that I was free.

For I had fled in silences unheard by ears
Embracing love's unending song
The Numen came to me.
I was never left alone to bleed
Of one who sowed within my heart
The choking thistle trees.

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Growing Up Again

And I grew up
To sit with a checkbook in my hand
And consider the marketing procedure I had devised
For a work of art I had molded
So graciously, with all of the eloquence of my mind
And the maturity of my spirit
To sing to the world of all the beauty which would unfold
Like a morning glory unfurling to the golden dawn.

And I slept
Groaning with the weight of a conscience grown ponderous
With considerations of the will of God pulsing in my heart
Fleeing to the internal world which flames without fire
Where words cannot be brought to explain
The rarity of the dimension I sought
To explain the utterness of an experience
I will never be able to relate.

And I was a little girl today
With pink and healing knees
Looking more knowingly toward the sky
Where clouds were doubtful as to whether
They would deliver their load of conveyable liquid
To the earth for Joe and his cadre of engineers
And I had no choice
But to furlough them, though they had union unemployment
To keep them satisfied at the pool parlor
Or the bar
Until I called them back to construct the dams
That my imagination required
Whose blueprints I tapped impatiently
While I waited for my dolls to become animate for me

And I will grow up again
To sit in holy expectation
Of the Divine Light shining over and above me
To render me complete, so mature and poised
Like a princess, or like a Queen
Matronly to the point of motherhood
To prove that I had reached the final stage of growth
I was designated to receive
As I stood under the shower of Spirit.

And I will grow young again
Five perhaps,
With a muddy tractor dangling from my hand
Traces of rust peeking from the seams of its shovel
My men, a phalanx of willing minions aligned with me
To overcome the hurling earth which plunges
In the rushing of the rivers in my driveway
I will stand
Under the shower of Spirit
For such are the children of the Kingdom.

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The World Devoid of Magic

If the truth be known
It is so quiet
In the realms of sacred wisdom
It is dark sometimes
And even dusty, steps unheard
Walk unhurried to the temple of the Unknown God
Whose power rests undiminished
In the hands of its servant
As it always has done
So nothing has really changed.

It is behind the image
That the truth is known
Of the potent glory of that Real One
Who needs no trumpet
To announce a Presence
So great it will move the Sun
Moment by moment upon its golden axis
In the churning universe
Who needs no servitors bowing
To feed its Egoic greed
Who needs no incense burning
On its polished altar
All knows it is All.

Why should we need
The glittering unicorn
Rushing through the gurgling brooks
Of the epic, atavistic woodland
To imagine the age of Magic?
Are we that much inferior
To our Creator
That we should have to
Sell Him to ourselves
With lights and symbols
And banners of forgotten guilds?

I would prefer not
To don the rusting armor
Of a dead age
To act a chivalry
Outmoded by prayer
I would rather not
Hold the blistering wand
Of ritual
To satisfy the taste
Of a world that lusts for magic.

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The Mansion of the Mind

And fleeing did not see me go...
My sudden running did not slow
I chased myself
To Greenlea.

I lighted fires stick by stick
And watched the flaming candle wicks
Which lit my face up from below
The Numen met me late
In Greenlea.

When he relieved my solitude
I cried against his coat
I could not stay
And so I fled again
From Greenlea.

Have you been to Greenlea
That mansion of the mind?
It was there I fled one night
When fearing dark I sought the light
And fired lamps
Which dried the damps
Of green and dripping trees
Under which I hid
Far away from earth
In Greenlea.

2-7-91

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Summa Regrade

Sailing swift through bitter waters
To the necromancer's pool;
Gathering thorns in hidden caverns
Where human souls await the scale...
Regrade shadow blacks to ink
As wretched druids wail.

2-22-91

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Alone of Men

The light above carves deeper shadow
The Corona breaks upon the shore
A tide upwashing sand.

Could anyone with human eyes
Discern his stellar face?
Could anyone of lesser light
Endure that fiery place?
But Helios, alone in flight
Retreats into the Sun
And Helios, alone of men
Regards the Holy One.

Though he dwells with us on Earth
It must not be unsung
That the Great One dwelling with us
Is the child of the Sun.

I pray that I might follow
On his journey to the Sun
With Helios, alone of men
To praise the Holy One.

for the Numen, to give light upon his journey 1-23-91

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Retrograde Motion

There is no time. So they write: Time is the greatest illusion
of physical life. Those who refuse to bow to the tyrannies of
time have torn away the thickest veil of illusion which
hypnotizes humanity and immediately enter a state of greater
spiritual receptivity.

The hierophants of Dyne speak in detail of the evolutionary
process, its gradual ascent to perfection, the meaninglessness of
time:

Numen, could the time not matter
Within the gates of Dyne?
Could I ascend that ladder
And be free of tyrant Time?

For as they say:
All time is an illusion
If I remain within its grasp
I live in a delusion.

Free me from Zebratta's hand
And lift me out of time
They gave me, poet, all those keys
But I can't find that land.

2. Unbound from Spells

I have gone back to all I have written in the past year of
poetry. I have written a thousand thousand pages, it would seem,
some of them brilliant and shining, guided by the hand of the
Numen, and some slack and dull,

I cannot say the spell I seek
It comes from realms beyond
The old familiar hells

Shadows edge the forest ponds
Reflections cast those spells.

3. Handel's Birthday

Dactylic Baroque, majestic music soars
Chamber music, from my chamber freed
Iambic for my ears, to fill poetic need.

How luckily for me
Was Handel born today
For rhythm beckons bodily
And now Baroque holds sway.

Lento, lento violin
Draw my taut emotion in
Then pluck a lone viola string
To keep its tone encouraging.

4. I sang a prayse

I sang a prayse to God and wept
And while he listened
Deep I slept
He answered full my lengthy prayer
And spread his Glory through the aire.

For though I believe it every day and say it, and live it, do I
really know that no matter how far I go there is further to go,
that no matter how many lives are lived, there is more life and
yet more life? Isn't this what I always wanted to know? Do I
listen, do they really tell me that partialness will become
wholeness without my trying?

5. Take Me to the Heights

And while the violin
Sings beauty out of noisy din
I will seek the Numen
In the deep and empty mines
Finding light in tunnels
Along the channeled serpentines.

Do we have world enough and time
To give this land a pleasant clime?
Is this our burden to bestow
To send our love to earth below?

Ah, Numen, sometimes I feel so lost along the corridors of time,
and weary soon of this steep climb.

Take me with you to the heights
Where I can glimpse at last the might
Of Himmel in its radiant noon
A hundred suns, a thousand moons!

Bring me to the inner keep
Where mystic nests of serpents sleep
Among their golden ornaments
Redolent with frankincense

Bring me, Numen, to the Star
And heal at last my wicked scar
Take me with you to the heights
And show me all of heaven's sights!

6. Flags of Iron

Will we go? when will we go?
When all the time is lost
When all my hope is gone
And all my loves are weather-torn?

And where will love remain?
When all the soil blows to sand
And flags of iron wave in sheets
Above the wasted land?

That was Agenor.
The deepest well I ever had explored.
I walked among its living dead
And scanned its naked shore.

I left a penny for the dead
Who lived along the beach
And never glanced behind for dread
Or peer into its breach.

Ah, that was Agenor.
The blood I lost was poured into the winy sea.
I ne'er looked back, for I refused to be
Chained again, Promethean
Dying piece by piece upon the blackened rock
In haunted dreams of madly ticking clocks.

The serpents drew their flattened heads aside
And calmly grinned as they observed the tide
It rose in waves and lapped upon my feet
While they awaited meals of salt-fresh meat.

But that was over, so I thought
And all the nightmares fell to rot
Until the dark descended on the sky
And once again I heard the ragged cry.

And then the rain began.
And all the colors bled and ran.
Wooden planks were soaked with salt and brine
Drawing blood into the sea like wine.

And that was Agenor.
The place from which I thought I had escaped.
I stood on sand and watched as lizards gaped.
And waited death upon the hated shore.

And it ended once again.
The rain had danced like slivers on my skin
And was no more
And all the mists retreated from the shore
And all the land was gone
And beams of colored light created dawn.
It was no more.

I could not decide:
Between the light above me
And below, the bloody tide.

6. Will We Live Forever

Will we live forever in this wise
And wait between our nightmares
For hope again to rise?

For I waited out the morning
For the sea to wash to sand
I sought the far horizon
Of a cold and futile land.

7. The Devil's Maze

I gave the Lord a song of prayse
And slept within a devil's maze
But soon He stopped the bloody play
And answered full my prayer this day.

For so the voices speak from Dyne:

The experience of pain should be welcomed as confirmation that
the nervous system works properly and is not numbed by anger.

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The Warriors

For I loved them all
Even though they could not hear
The voice of Numen call.

I held them close to me
Even though they struck, like snakes, repeatedly
And even though they stabbed me every day
I would not turn away.

There comes a time to turn away
When brilliant sunlight fades to grey
I must not bow again beneath their knives
I leave them to their angry lives.

So the Numen counsels me
To leave them with their enmity
For time will hush their poison words
And still the clanging of their swords.

3-24-91

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A Ballad of R+C

In the first days of the Rose and Cross
I found the coin I thought I lost
An angel lighted on my pen
And poetry was mine again.

In the first days of the Rose and Cross
The spring replaced the winter frost
And clouds which fled before my eyes
Revealed my Muse 'neath starry skies.

3-24-91
 

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Obsidian

Before the headsman drew his sword across my brow
And I had entered through the door where daylight never falls
Ilived within a hiding place of neverchanging now
Surrounded by obsidian glass which lined my chamber walls.

Never spoke, and never waved the single flag
That would set me fast upon a living course
I sought to hide alone beneath a mountain crag
Away from warm society that dwelt without those doors.

But still I lived within that cavern deep
Among shadows built by mirrors melted black
And so entombed, I sobbed and went to sleep
Until a distant knocking hailed me back.

This was before the headsman drew his sword across my brow
And the warden's livid hand had marked my face in blood
I thought that I could grasp the eternal in the now
And preserve, obsidian, the soul of me for good.

So all the life before the bleeding life began
I hid in careful wrappings in the dark obsidian.

I thought that nothing made on earth
Could penetrate that rock
It seemed I built a solid berth
Against the harshest knock.

But far beyond the reaches of the furthest human tread
There roamed a single traveler, illumined by the moon
Who brought me all the knowledge I had hid from me in dread
And I emerged forever from my midnight's glassy gloom.

All the life before the bleeding life began
Came with me from that room
For I belonged to me again
No more to be entombed.

For the Numen 3-15-91
 

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A Greek Comedy

When indeed will she return?
When Ilium and Athens burn?
Will she still spin her silken rhyme
When she alights from out of time?

She plucks the wings at Hermes' feet
Impatient for the gods' retreat
None had ever dared so far
As daughter child of Pindar.

When Ilium and Athens burned
She wrote an ode, and then returned
Her eyes were bright with memories
Of days spent in the Pleaides.

We all await the history
She'll spin in all its pageantry
From Argos to the town of Troy
And all the lands we Greeks destroy.

But all she rhymes are epic runes
Of alien shores and hollow moons
Of wandering journeys, star to star
The dreaming child of Pindar.

Was she claimed early by the gods
Leaving us to ploughs and hods
Without the songs to drive us on
To crush the hordes of Babylon?

We claim our poet and our Muse
We'll press our case to mighty Zeus
We cannot wage Achaean war
Without the daughter of Pindar!

What are these songs of mystic dens
Which come from Pindar's daughter's pen?
Is this the poet that we prize
Could it be our chantress lies?

We saw our cities razed to ground
And only she ignored the sound
For solace then, we begged a poem
Forgiveness after wrath of Rome.

The dreaming daughter of Pindar
Brought us all to lands bizarre
So skillful was her foreign tale
It seemed we heard the Sirens wail.

Ravaged men from bitter war
Sought refuge in the poet's lore
We plucked the down from Hermes' feet
And slept within the gods' retreat.

3-24-91

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A Ghost's Petition

Show me a land where the shadows are long
Where the darkness hides truth in its corners
Where I can retire from hearing the songs
Of the priests, and the dead, and the mourners.

Give me a lamp with a wick that is stained
So that color may bleed from its eyes
And I will be lost in the wind and the rain
And the tempest will be my disguise.

Give me a landscape which glows in the night
Like the glow from the lowland and bog
And I with a lamp stained with bloody red light
Become one with the rain and the fog.

3-11-91

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Ain Soph

3-1-91
 

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The Visions of Vega

And she showed me...

Blankets
To hide from the wrath of winter

Stones
From the mountains to build an altar

Oil
From seeds pressed in the cellar of her heart

She showed me...

Bricks
To blacken a cheerless hearth

Crosses
Which stood as sentries
On the Breton road to our destiny

Flags
To honor the dead we had buried on that road

She showed me...

Candles
To burn in the temple

Roses
To bloom in the garden of our love
Garments
To don at the celebration of my unfoldment

She showed me the spiral stair.

3-11-91

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Angel of Kitar

He came to strike me dumb, the angel of Kitar
And lifted me from sleep with mighty hands
He pronounced my destiny, as daughter of Pindar
And brought me to his Master's distant lands.

There was no earth below me, for we traveled high
Beyond the sun, where lightning seared the air
The angel of Kitar wiped away the sky
And sat me down upon my father's chair.

3-23-91
 

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Waiting for the Executioner

The grins that stretch their faces
Show their minds devoid of sense
Flags of iron flow in traces
On their sand-strewn, windlashed tents.

And I am in their hands
Staked with ropes upon the one oasis
In this God-forsaken land.
And seeing all those empty eyes
Which could not see, nor sympathize
I fell to dreaming on the glassy sand.

II. Petition

I do not want to die.
I do not wish to spy
A leering apparition, blotting out the sky
That is why I gnash my teeth
And that is why I cry.

Is this my last identity
A sacrifice to Baal?
Do vultures only hear my cry
Or lizards hear me call?

III. Cold Rain

Cold rain began on desert fields
And sheets of water washed the sand
It was then that I began to feel
The grass beneath my hands.

I was home.
Lying in my bedroom all alone.
No longer in the gaolers' hands
Upon the glassy desert sands.

IV. Life In the Mind

All our life is in our mind
And all our ropes are mental binds
The gaolers' wicked faces leered
Until I dreamed they disappeared.

3-24-91
 

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In Which the Daughters of Oceanus Seek Release of the Titan from the Adamantine Rock

Why has Hephaestus cast him here
Darling of Urania
For waves to lash him, year by year
Upon the coast of Scythia?

The daughters of the raging Flood
Aloft upon the ocean's crest
Behold the Titan's precious blood
Outwelling from his cloven breast.

Ocean roll and thunder break!
Daughters of emotion cry
Who fail to lift the cleaving stake
From one who breathes, but cannot die.

6-22-91
 

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The Rhythm of Light

Without the experience of enlightened awareness there would be no
contrasting Truth to ignorance, there would be no learning. The
pendulum swing from the depth of ignorance to the beauty of truth
is the rhythm of light.

4-7-91
 

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Remembrance of Things Past
(Apologies to Proust)

I came alive again
And saw the earth in marsh and fen
From shadows in a crystal cave
A hidden place, a narrow grave
And grew to manhood yet again
To fight a war that would not end.

Their horses tore me limb from limb
And rended me upon the battle plain
And there I lay, amid the din
Until the kiss of death could end my pain.

To be driven thence again
Into blooded marsh and fen!
For life returned with morningtide
And soon I stood where once I died.

And when my newborn self at length awoke
I swore an oath upon my endless years
That all my brethren's wretched spears be broke
So I could pass beyond the vale of tears.

From shadows in a crystal cave
I came a newborn from the grave
And dug for spears which lay as bones
Beneath the ancient mossy stones.

4-9-91

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The Authors of Ritual

I danced on the morning of my pronouncement
Even as the kiss of love still trembled on my lips
For the Archivist recorded me
Upon the temple scroll
And the purple one pronounced me
In the sanctuary
And the One in Black
The essence of solemnity
Pointed with a grey hand and said
Beware!
So it is written.

For all, even the Numen
Follow word by word the verses
Penned by the authors of ritual
Who knew me
Before I was a star
Floating in the seas of night
Who loved me
Before I was a breath
Heaved in the aspiration of evening
Who beckoned me
Before I walked along that corridor
Waiting for the One in Black
With the grey hand and the candle
Crying Beware!
The authors of ritual knew me.

Take care, Numen,
When you make a wish
For all the passes made by hands
In that sanctuary
Straighten into crosses
And all the birds above our rooftops
Whiten into doves
And all the temple garments,
Illumined by the Shekinah
Glitter with gold as we fly
Silent, silent as a death before the Lord
Without wings and without intention we fly
To the darkened antechamber,
Where we wait as supplicants again

So it is written,
So it shall be done.

4-23-91
 

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The Mohorovicic Discontinuity As Analogy

The inertia of want is binding
Breaking the progress of that wave
Crashing white upon a million rocks
Jarring the earth in its mooring
Shouting desire in maddening cries
Breaking a mountain
Shearing a cliff.

Inertia, carbon-black and chalk
Empty in its fullness
A wind to break the water
Wants the earth to ruin
Wants the sky to storms
Dreading with its absent presence
Shocks us to a stop.

Want is binding
Bearing bleak upon the unprotected mind
Wresting anchors from the floors of soundless seas
Empty eyelids on a sleepless night of death
But touching not the sanctum
Of the hallowed sage
And loosing not the daemon
From his authochthonic cage.

4-27-91

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Apologia

Scan with hungry eyes the farther shore
Do you still refuse to see the gleam?
Not the shimmering moon upon the sea
Whose sudden face will grow too soon obscure.

Desperately, though, you seek the light
Maps at midnight blur beneath your candle
Meaningless, the auguries you seek --
They let you stumble, lost, into the night.

Tell me what mocking spirit flees your dreams
Leaving chill and grey the empty dawn
Of human disillusion? Do not say
The Light conceals the glory of its beams.

A poetic refutation in answer to "Auguries" by Rachel Hadas

5-4-91

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Ziyad of the Underworld

He could hold the firmament
With one unyielding arm
And though he fathered me
I could not see beyond the clouds
To where his fingers grasped
I basked
And whiled away the mornings on Olympus.

If he could touch the crown of Jupiter
Then maybe I, the smallest of the brood
Could sail into the realm of Pluto
And have a worthy name
Like that of Atlas
Ziyad of the Underworld.

The youngest son of Atlas
The smallest of the brood
The lowest slave of Charon
Ferrying the dead
Across the river Styx.

5-28-91

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Other Gardens, Other Fruit

Numen, you told me once I could not run and stay
Lighting wicks and stalking shadowed sleep
Exiled like a refugee,
Hiding in the rooms of Greenlea
But come awake and seek the inner deep.

The groves of academe are full of dying leaves
And shade has fled from morning's rising damp
Preserves are broken open,
Left as fruit on crumpled sheaves
And I have found a candle for my lamp.

5-11-91

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Mission

The haunted wood of Lynn remains
Like pillars girded fast with chains
I saw it clearly from the heights
And I took leave of Numen's flight
To bring the child of Zebratta home.

I felt the hatred of the city in my bones
I heard the mutters, and the whispers, and the groans
And the howling of the seven-headed dog
As he reared in anguished fever from his bog
When I erased the shadows and revealed the hidden child.

I walked again among the fallen and defiled
They clutched at me with cold cupidity and smiled
The fallen empress fleeing like a thief, alone
But undeterred, I sought the place of weeping stone
Where she awaited rescue from the enemies of light.

Zebratta's prison towers shine at night
With reddened ire, maddeningly bright
And the torture fires glow
Frm the ancient pit below
As we rejoin the Numen on his flight.

5-16-91

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A Prisoner Abroad

And then there came the beating of the drum
Matching stroke for stroke the beating of my heart
Inciting every shudder as I crouched upon a mat
Beneath a rubble-clotted ruin on the plain of Ilitrahant.

By day I watched a bloody gauntlet run
By hostages made grimy by political intrigue
My punishment by night was the incessant sound of drums
The galloping of hooves across the plain of Ilitrahant.

The Numen broke the rhythm of those hooves
Clasping with his own my failing hand
I lay as drowned upon the beach of endless vision
I wept as I recalled the bits of blood and bone
Spattering the grasses on the plain of Ilitrahant.

I lay as drowned upon the beach of endless vision
Until the tide returned
And washed me far ashore beyond the islands of the sea
The roaring of the tide was the incessant sound of drums
Beckoning the judges to the court of Ilitrahant.

6-4-91

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Century of Madness

The century of madness sees its close
And so begins again the age of reason
Beneath the auspices of Cross and Rose
The Cosmic host weds future to the past.

The arbiter of destiny is come
And he who would be first is now the last
The word is writ, the song at last is sung
Your century of bliss has come to pass.

6-16-91
A song of praise upon the Assumption of the Numen.

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Author of the Image

I wrote the final epic
I drew the armies of the night across the stark Sahel
Destroying all their engines with the might of Gabriel
I was both author of the image, and the image on the page
I called the rebel spirits, and provoked their battle rage.

I drew the storms away
Unleashing acrid fountains from the dark Satanic mills
Which I had molded, versiform, upon the English hills
I cannot make them fade beyond the reach of shifting vision
Nor sail against the current of the Muse's intuition:

I must remake that land
The merest mote of dust within the Muse's glittering gaze
I walk again on sleeping sands, aglow with morning haze
Marked by treads of fallen angels and the armies of the night
And the footsteps of a poet on the path toward the light.

6-22-91

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Loquium

Does Light feel fury when its candle
Gutters in the smoke?
Will you take me with you when it dies
And re-alights upon another and more worthy altar?
Bear with me a season while I weep.

Will You abandon Earth with all its death
And all the waste I bring as offerings today
And disappear as Sun is cast in gloom
To reappear upon another and more worthy shore?
Bear with me a season while I weep.

I cannot bear again the bitter loss
Of opportunity so great it flees
Retreating into mirrors in the vaguest of my dreams
To flash as dull reminder in the press of banks and commerce
Bear with me a season while I weep.

Do not leave me, Numen, while the world
In shrouds of choking dust and mourning
Turns away and seals its eyes against the Light
Which pours like rain upon the just and on the unjust
Bear with me a season while I weep.

6-22-91

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Appendix: Symbols in the Epistle

Where will love remain?
When all the soil blows to sand
And flags of iron wave in sheets
Above the wasted land?

(from "Retrograde Motion")

Cold rain began on desert fields
And sheets of water washed the sand
It was then that I began to feel
The grass beneath my hands.
(from "Waiting for the Executioner")

Lizard: The lizard is a symbol of human coldheartedness. A lizard is a lazy but alert beast who gains warmth by basking in the sun and huddling on rocks which absorb heat during the day and radiate it at night. The appearance of lizards indicates an environment which lacks warmth to such an extent that one must depend upon external sources for essential life force, such as a lizard huddling on a rock.

I stood on sand and watched as lizards gaped.
And waited death upon the hated shore.

(from "Retrograde Motion")

Rock: This is an allusion to the myth of Prometheus, the ancient hero who stole fire from the Gods and brought it to earth, offending the Gods forever. Prometheus was of divine, Titanic heritage and thus had a greater ambition than mortals, and being immortal by birth, could not die. Prometheus was punished by being shackled to a rock in the ocean where a great bird picked at his liver continuously. The symbol of the rock, or being chained to a rock, is the image of being constantly and insistently tortured, by either internal imagery or by conscience:

For I awaited You
Upon the blackened Rock.

(from "Adventures in Geomatria")

Sea: The sea symbolizes the imagination in all its infernal and divine potentialities. There is an "upper sea", the higher and nobler creative awareness, and the lower or infernal sea which lies just beyond Zebratta and encompasses Agenor all around, hemming in those who are locked there by their conscience and internal sense of damnation.

That was Agenor.
The blood I lost was poured into the winy sea
I ne'er looked back, for I refused to be
Chained again, Promethean
Dying piece by piece upon the blackened rock
In haunted dreams of madly ticking clocks.

(from "Retrograde Motion")

Rain: Rain is the symbol of cleansing or purification, but also of sadness and loss, representing both the ritual washing of the aspirant and also the tears which cleanse the body of emotional excesses. In sadness there is always an element of acceptance, of bowing to the Divine Will, and when the rain begins, acceptance of the Divine Will follows and peace ensues.

And then the rain began.
And all the colors bled and ran.

(from "Retrograde Motion")

Salt/Brine: The element which represents the divine extraction of soul from human striving, toil, or pain. Salt in the above draws blood from a wound and produces a purgative cleansing, though a traumatic one, and this is the nature of much spiritual healing. Salt appears when a particularly painful growth has been accomplished, which has produced great pain and results in great growth.

Wooden planks were soaked with salt and brine
Drawing blood into the sea like wine.

(from "Retrograde Motion")

Sun: The symbol of the Divine, in man, in nature, and in the Cosmos.

I left the ship and walked the pier
And listened to the Sun
It played on strings within my ears
And Sun and Song were one.

(from "Canticle to the Sun")

Moon: The subconscious mind, the inherent human creative faculty which communes constantly with the Divine realm which is often referenced in these works as "Dyne."

The Moon's white hand caressed the smooth expanse of brow
And scattered dew like jewels around his chaise.

(from "The Angel of Kitar")

Star: Like Sun (above), a star symbolizes a particular Divine manifestation or soul element within the individual to which one is drawn or to which one aspires.

I have seen the single Star
Riding bright in Heaven's cart...

(from "The Dragon-Crowded Vision")
 

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Afterword: The Purpose of Poetry

As a result, there are errors: errors of prosody, fallacies in logic, musical and metrical flaws, and as I exercise these faculties I come to the ultimate conclusion that the purpose of poetry is not to await the arrival of perfection, but to shine the light I see, as brightly as I am capable in the present moment, despite my limitations, and that in so doing I grow, the Art which is poetry grows, and those who are receptive to it also grow.

Besides errors, there are experiments, as I reach to bridge the gap between a century and more of vers libre (The Century of Madness) which has not only changed the meaning and intent of poetry but has altered the texture and intent of that music which emanates from the poetic consciousness: music as a fine art form has been changed to the point of unrecognizability, and has created a break in the tradition of many centuries of poetry and song which grew synthetically from the oral poetic tradition of the Greeks at the beginning of the present cycle of Western evolution. Thus I begin with a contemplation of the great original tradition, the chanter's plea to the Muse or Divine light to strike him with the verbal facility to sing of Truth and thus in turn enlighten his civilization. This is the heritage from which sprung all poetic forms, all music, all drama, and the genres of literature which emerged after English became the dominant vehicle for Western literature. This is the future heritage of all fine art as it regenerates itself gradually and completely with the current of language change.

I must say categorically that there IS NO SUCH THING as vers libre, there is poetry and there is prose, just as there is song and there is narrative. A narrative cannot be sung and be a song. Only a poem, which is a song, can be sung; and I write both poetry and prose, and experiments which stretch the medium of the Song to its very extreme of tonality to where it suddenly becomes prose, delineating the change.

If there is a lesson I have incorporated into the structure of my poetry, this is the lesson. This is the major reason for my preoccupation with experiments in formalism, and the insistence upon traditional meter and rhyme. Almost anything can be done IN the song, without considerable vocabulary at one's command; as long as the metre and the rhyme are respected, as long as the Music dominates the sense, and the sense remains intact.

This night I decide to end the present experiment, and await further developments which may open my consciousness to yet further reworkings of any or all of these poems, as well as the creation of new art, for they are not finished works: nothing is ever finished, as evolution proceeds.

I have sounded and resounded many themes, worked and reworked many images and expressions, and this will continue to occur as they transform and as I transform; this is the nature of poetry, this is the nature of the oral tradition which is founded inmy mind at the behest of the Numen. In preparing this manuscript I have shared most of these poems with my devoted audience and have promised them that there are poems I would not change, because the Song has already grown in its present form within their consciousness. Earlier permutations of most of these poems appear elsewhere, and some have been submitted for publication in periodicals.

As for their meaning, that is a dialogue between the Singer and the Audience as Soul and Soul commune as One. If it could be conveyed in prose or in speech, I would have done so:

The homage that I bring to human tongue
Cannot be spoke, but must be Angel-sung.

Seattle, July 4, 1991
 

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Corrections to the Text  (December, 1999)

I became aware during this trip that I was at this time composing the text which was taken down in 1990-91, in a more or less automatic fashion.  The time period of this loop of consciousness was approximately 7 years, which is mystically speaking a single cycle of creation.  As has been stated earlier in this text, there is no time.  During the 40 hours of travel, under the extremely auspicious energy of Venus and the comet Hale-Bopp burning brightly before me, the flood of inspiration was focused and created the Epistle, which was written between November 1990 and May, 1991.  I have written elsewhere of this journey; but will record here what I refer to as 'corrections to the text', or rather, alternative verses which should be preserved for posterity.
 

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Waiting for the Executioner (II)

I.  Petition

Do I wish to die?
Do I wish to see that leering apparition
Blotting out the sky?
That is why I jot these notes
And that is why I try.

Is this the final emptiness
The sacrifice to Baal
Do wizards only gulp their drinks
And listen to my call?

II. Cold Rain

Cold rain began on desert fields
And flags of iron washed ashore
Their dread and dirty deals.
 

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