Synkronos, by Charles Eager

CHARLES EAGER VLAD CONDRIN TOMA

SYNKRONOS

Brasov, Romania 2017

Copyright © 2017 Vlad Condrin Toma Copyright © 2017 Charles Eager All right reserved.

Published in Romania.

Illustrations by Camelia and Condrea Toma Designed by Elena David

ISBN 978-606-756-.......

Charles Eager and Vlad Condrin Toma

CHARLES EAGER

Preface

As Synkronos knows there is no one word for or god of time.

First there is kronos and the measure of time. Kronos presides over a Golden Age fullness of time, yet does so as the Titan castrator of his father and devourer of his children. Harvests must be reaped, and Kronos carries a sickle that in Saturnian translation will identify time with the lawgiving father’s power of death. The thinking that attaches to kronos is atomic, an association of time and matter: if we eat into time, it eats into us. In time the vacuum abhorred by nature is made tangible. The other face of this logic is saturnalian.

Then there is kairos, which puts time to flight. Kairos names the right time to act, its ripeness of another order to kronos, describing the moment of opportunity in which a new state may be called into being. Its punctuality is that of the arrow piercing its object or the shuttle crossing the loom, of openings seen and made. Its court is liberal, an extension of the courtroom where law is woven by oratorical invention and intervention. It is the weather, an atmosphere. It is that fulfilled prophetic time in which the kingdom of God is at hand.

Synkronos, then, is a book of dying generations. Its novelty is that, in fantasy and in imitation, it speaks to time by looking anachronism in the eye. Wholly in sympathy with syncretic tradition, this new god is too much of a trickster to suffer idolatry, and is rather the occasion, through mask and masque, of poetry.

Constitutionally preoccupied by the idea of Europe, the poetry of 7

Synkronos suspends requiem for Abendland in favour of its romance, and romance is conceivably the first language of a book that proposes an exchange between languages. This is writing in quest of a language of transformation and realization, poetry that seeks fidelity to the poem that it is in. The imaginative world of Synkronos may indeed be trans-sylvanian in chiasmic recognition of its own precocious second nature. The romance of being synchronous is to be found in the wrestle of being two, in the twisting cord of the strongest correspondences. This work of Synkronos is necessarily and courageously untimely.

Ian Fairley

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Charles Eager’s SYNKRONOS

I. Induction

11

II. Holyday Poem

11

III. To His New Composition Book

13

Orphic Verse IV. May-Lied

14

V. Hymnos. Eis Kairon

15

VI. Orphic Hymn to Kronos

16

VII. Prayer to Synkronos VIII. Eis Pana

16

17

Lyric Interludes IX. Anakreons Grab

19

X. The Silenus and the Gargoyle XI. The Pallaksch Coin

19

20

XII. Catullan Epigrams (i, ii)

21

XIII. Plaints Upon a Departed Love (i, ii, iii) XIV. Apology

23

XV. Chou Meng-Tieh Fragment

25

9

22

Odes XVI. Ode

26

XVII. Pindaric. To H. H. XVIII. Ode

29

30

XIX. Ode Conciliatory

32

Narrative Poems XX. Voces Intimae

33

XXI. The Way

37

Liber I

37

Liber II

51

XXII. After-phaedra

XXIII. An Optation XIV. Envoy

79

89

89

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I. Induction The tree is felled: let us cut now, Toma, The novel leaves with (for on) which we (Deo volent’) with ink and stile shall labour, Our numbers raze, then again redraw.

Singing of Dacia, the wonder-terrors Of Synkronos, matter fit to frame Our taking friendship’s hand across vast: That we a book ballast-build may, to be Overleafed for more than one mere age.

II. Holyday Poem Virons me, Vlad, the drac: and I, De-vir-ed, stand whirled within this Cerule-pressure (mean I Musterion) that godly sounds, These hymns of priests, all echoing resound.

So I forever feel its touch, So superinterstitial, Cold, and compassing Of all but joy, whose light respects, Gifts to the mundane world, and all proceeding Epiphenomena, promise, yes, shape, Lovelier than dream, who treading Subtle, silver-light-in, Cinema-like in radiant lace, Narrates, enchants by us her sad inventions, So, Vlad, at Viscri with Père Gheorghe, The snow-strewn ground was warm, Irradiate his robes, And white as sempiternal fire, Proclaiming turning’s thereupon return.

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CHARLES EAGER

Or closer, Christ’s mass, with whose swell-bass Tonant, its within-over-tones, Rippling, and sung prayer Made harmony on simple base.

How then can the pull to base us detract From study, or our learning’s sharp Devotion? Or unsound dreams Disturb our soundest songs?

Songs, for our minds are music-like, And we, Aeolian-harp-like passive to, Ever receptive, metrists’ minds Holy containers being, where Lifely wine lies trothed.

Ah, I’m contrite. Can you forgive me, Vlad, ever, for speaking in such place of Economics, in the sad stead Of spirit, or geistlich matters?

By time brightest lights Wane, so too the bright intellect The world can draw to overworldliness.

And I’d (dare I record it?) grown With pneuma out of patience, Then passionless, soul-sour, Not, as you know, from pneuma’s lack, But strangeness in myself, and grew two Charleses.

Therefore, my friend, if pneuma seem, Or Charles indeed, too strange, These mere accidents, As all phenomena our life Consists but in reaction to, no mind.

Here then it is our book’s conceived in, Brought forth before its time, Or was bright Leodis Mnemosyne unto these arts?

No matter, for minds’ melding is the crux

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SYNKRONOS

Which us awaits upon these pages To write us in their leaves.

No more Leodiensian Stadtbummels: now must our feet walk Poetic, inscribing as we walk, footly.

III. To His New Composition Book Novel notebook, How fair thou art: Like life renewed, Or like a soul, which, shamefast, Falls in love with life again!

Like birdsong, symphonesis will Bind together your pages More strongly yet Than any glue or thread And harmony of thought and word Will be promotive of strong signatures.

Either strictness Or freeness in My art your art Allows: yet graduate to Discipline perfection brings.

So I and you (the barque) embark Hopeful (albeit that All hope is vain) That other inks disdain to Feather upon the page as this, But feather lend to thought, and soul to flight.

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CHARLES EAGER

Orphic Verse IV. May-Lied.

De Syncrono Synkron’ is of May the god; May, the month of Synkronos.

Or such would seem it, Vlad, Now, when the temporal gods Rustle in pneuma round us, Saturn crushes us severe To flat-out Termin’, as we Our little book perfect And spirit hangs about In air: Nine months bring forth a child; In five, then, how bring forth Sur-mortal verse? The good Its very self must thanked be For all the depth of five: That three threes nine give, yet With only two fives I Reach into ten, whose fruit, Being exsculpted quincunx, I joy at.

So to Synkronos, the May-god, Let’s pray, that he wing soul may To songlike flight, our penne Turn verse toward tornado, Through-breathed with saintly spirit.

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V. Hymnos. Eis Kairon O you (the bald-backed) (passed, unsnatchable) Quick-winged Kairè, moments’ master, Who all occasion are (in one word, ripeness): The eternal-swift, and ever retreating In always proceeding: by the unclasping trees, Flits he, that you-to sibling, he, that (Twixt you and death sole link) goes, In shape of suns declining, or moons Uprising, Kronos, and time’s crepuscule Thickens and crudesces, glowers at once, (Same time, Toma, as it us crushes: Now lift to you let all enterprise, The zealous eyes, and ideation-wards aspire to, That with your spirits-feel inter-knit, Let us embark: now is the hour, And all the winding years of labour, Draw us to this one, and passing, precipice: We have the forelock one hand, other, pen: Let’s scribe, and strive what’s worthy of our strife.)

Here I present this work then, this, Ripe fruit of stolen hours, which thieved, To you, the transient-transcendent, I return: This work then’s a rubato, so I, As if I were a second Chopin, or Ysaÿe, Return each stolen hour, lest Our libellus, like distempered music, die.

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CHARLES EAGER

VI. Orphic Hymn to Kronos Ever-blooming blest of gods the father, and of men, Many-worded, and immaculate, titan valorous, Sur-devourer and again ownself regenitor: Shackle unwreckable, the exside-cosmos holding, Aeons-long Kronè, pangenitor: Kronos the many-mythed: The shot-up child of Gaia, astral Ouranos, That germens, livens, meiosises: Rhea’s spouse prometheous, Prevalent althrough cosmos’ space: general sovereign, Come, audient to the supplications of my voice, Send blessèd life fulfilled, and aye beyond reproach.

VII. Prayer to Synkronos Should we absolve from time As breath or music, Synkronos, (The ‘new’ being synchronous, That synchronous being Not-new, thus all unnew): By these large waves, By the moon pulled, Falling on sand (The by-time-made), Let as be no as, Be be unbe, And ‘long the gait of this Kinema-self, no figure, But sounding skies and pure.

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VIII. Eis Pana

O you who oversee and balance this great heaven And bear each giant body’s epiousian sphere, O you who, moveless though you be, of-prayer off-casting, And scorn-bestowing on the accidence below you, Dei, I entreat you: grace us broad and noble measure, Commensurate to that graceful spirit, which through All turning and fit stature soars, bestowing Its ben-volenting smile, just as the sun’s rays bathe, Bless, dap’ the interstiting waters twix the inseln Which animate the archipelago, just as A crop of sailors there whose ship is salved by all Felicities of fortune, blessings of the spirit: Grant to our sense a genial voyage, as we embark On this, our melic book of songs, and lyric odes.

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Lyric Interludes

IX. Anakreons Grab.

After Goethe Here where the roses bloom, and the vines into laurel are leafing, Where the turtledove sounds, where the crickets enchant: What is this grave set here, that all of the gods with revivance Finely have set, overfussed? Such is Anakreon’s rest.

Springtime, Summer, and Autumn joyed in the fortunate poet: From the Winter at last, him this mound has concealed.

X. The Silenus and the Gargoyle It’s said (Vlad) Socrates Had to him something of That look of the Silenus, Through whose ugly mien gleamed Spells of transcending beauty: Since at one symposion One guest of me declared I look more like the gargoyle, Though hardness strikes me still, With this thought I console: “Although I lack the beauty Of his great mind, those inward Silenian sweets, yet, ugly, I nonetheless have store Of churches’ ugly beauty.”

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CHARLES EAGER

XI. The Pallaksch Coin.

On a cinematic image Reader, perceive a humble coin, Porting a King’s head, the which some For value yet exchange, and here Loaded with weighty indecision.

The thrower, wishing not to tax Himself, leaves Pilate-like the fall Of fate to any hand not his.

In some way similar, it’s said That Hölderlin, the great-souled, mad, Used, like this (on its side still standing) To use a word appointed yes, And no, together, the word, Pallaksch.

So reader, be defended: know That should you find yourself confined In mind, by either yes or no, Or pedantry, or thoughts-free dullness, The imposition drear of fools, Or fads (these two the same), or thought By habit dulled, or folk approved, Or orthodoxy made by praise, Or repetition, seeming truth, To free oneself, one looks to him Whose mind’s worst, betters our minds’ best, Reminds, enminds us that there is Forever a third way, open, The sign towards that freedom, Pallaksch.

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XII. Catullan Epigrams

i. After XXXVIII Misry, Cornificè, me your Carolo.

Misry (by Hercules), my it’s laborious, And moreso, moreso, each day, even hourly.

Do you what’s easy (most minimal) proffer Any consolement by your allocutions?

You’ve me irasce. Was for this that I loved you?

Here I implore you for some consolation.

Grander the tears are than shed Simonídes.

ii. After LXIX. And by way of Dante da Maiano My friend, May I be frank with you then, and advise You as did Dante of Maiano his Amico Dante of comedic fame, And tell you you would cure your many errors, And save yourself the scorn of future peers, by Taking those two great smelly balls of yours (Whose stench (it’s said) may make a man grown hoarse) (It’s said, how by the nose you coax girls’ sense) And, rigorous ablutions them submitting, By favour newly of the nostril found (For lustre of ball so too is one of soul), Girls rich in virtue might then cease to flee?

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CHARLES EAGER

XIII. Plaints Upon a Departed Love i.

Smoke, twist the way of wind: Ah, it is a melancholy night.

Melancholy, when a good man (or, One not yet so good, whose chance At being good had lain in chance of love), Bears this privation. Sure, Loving mere contingent things is love of Fool: yet laughing and ridental was This last love, and love is warmth, And she, than God’s far warmth, far closer, warmer.

ii.

What’s this, black hole at heart?

So stuff strikes us, in the midst of our, So thought, doing well: surprises us With new failing: never fails Us to return to doubt and lacking still: Yet though logician’s answer Be to turn towards the love of God, and Soar towards devotion, yet remain there Self-split souls, to welkin grading, While maybe overmuch dead earth still loving.

iii.

What encloses then this sorrow in my heart?

As my noon-time wears Grows hers ever better, She brighter than sun, I, but pitchy rock she passing lights upon.

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XIV. Apology To Maxi, Vlad’s dog It’s difficult to say, sweet Max’, In words of men (which dogs may know Or not, I know not how with dogs The matter stands), the severe tax With which my soul and conscience weigh.

Maxi, canûs canôrum, ah, Of dogs the optimus maxi-mus, Did my inhuman foot then stand On yours, the sacred white, and pure?

These fleeter feet, may they amend, Which I have put in fours, my friend, To replicate your gentle paws.

Forgive me, and this understand, Sweet Max’, let our love this cross endure.

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XV. Chou Meng-Tieh Fragment Translated with Alyse Fan I choose the colour purple.

I choose to sleep, wake, step out early, and return: I choose cold porridge, an old-fashioned pen in writing.

Sunlight, window: When I am busy, I yearn for rest, when restful, yearn for business: I Choose (though not necessary) (not for me) all matters, No difference, be it huge or small, we must perform By our own hands.

Of energy, some spend a fraction, I, ten: another’s ten is then my thousand. I Choose water for my teacher: high and low plains (both) Reflected there, lie flat. I choose the grass, whose life Is life-restorative: For, like juan shi, pluckt up, It dies at heart, not. I choose steep pillow, so earthquakes May please then in my moving with the earth. I choose Time easeful. Monkey thanks, for giving fruit, the tree.

I choose to leaf the book, Study the verse, and need Not know the author. I choose to (no matter) have Good letters, free of too-good sentence: choose soft winds, Like water. A man comes as an invited guest.

I choose the centre, Missing not the things revolving: I choose spring river, and warm water outside forest Of bamboo, two or three of cherry blossom’s branches.

I choose to step, further and further, towards sunset By rise, by rise, by rise: Merging to one, and yet, Not to have moved my step one hundredth metre.

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Odes XVI. Ode. Drizzling Autumn morning: One waterfowl downstream another follows, Till common works of man Run chaos in and throughout their order: In piebald colours goes, reverse.

As Aurora rose her Chariot across, covering us with dawn We hardly felt, for fog Laid thick itself upon all our stations, I graduated to this bridge: How this atmosphere thus Escapes without itself into my heart Where hardy sorrow tolls, Itself impresses, presses with weight, And mounts upon the light-borne soul: Resolve, be you now a Stay: stay you now, and be as consolation.

Terrible, singular, To stand such a singularity, Good placid Tethys, overtake.

Worldlike run these motions Althrough corporeal totality And into intellection, Where memory and its tortures sink, Split down my skulled and hollowed heart: There bides the coronne, This minster spinning worlds to present thought: As it were stately-full Of (to the soul intending) duty, Ordering sense, mind, soul, be one.

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How (though) bodies swarm it, Drown it about: such lumined age they drag Down theirs, they drag their corps Round this blockage of presented soul, This river drown this sorrowed heart.

Why now (Soul) do you still Surprise at what ought now to be subprise?

Why send you good heart forth, Bedecked with grace of reason, that armour Which voids itself before Amor?

And yet more, why do you Sweetly sing airs at gulls, expect them to Have ears therefor? Such birds Seek seeds, worms over words, and flying leave you To sing self-solacing yourself.

Soul, I bid you, be At peace awhile. This wrecky world might waste What little grace you have Remaining. Be still for now, and walk: Walking, think; and strive to be well.

Still, this church-spire turns An eye in-space-still-set, exspects my grading From it, far off: as singing, Nothing so sad is, as things receding: Nothing, than their return, more happy.

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XVII. Pindaric.

To H.H. Muse, have my ode at this entreaty spring with joy, Redound as does the panting lyre, or as your bow Hilaria, you who elate, propel, and so console, Sweeps, overleaps in beauty’s swift effusions Yet so, my heart, who, hardened, Enclosed your woe in state’ reserve, Would now entwine your strings within her violin And so become a lyre: My heart, you have hardened, once you swept, overleapt In beauty’s effusions, for that beauty guiles As often in a human face, perhaps then as a god Capricious is, and so, as do all gods, Turn waywardly to woe In hearts incensed, naïve, hope-faithful (Which are each other same), and hurl themselves towards Empedoclean fire.

Error was it when The trilling heart did sing within Its song a fall, eyes Seemly plangent spin the soul a tale We cleave unto ourselves, and Grieve on seeing die. So build, Yea, therein do we dwell, Hilaria, a seat In the maker-Lord’s materials.

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XVIII. Ode The grey even falls as song Upon this place of quiet ascension, Where congregate the ghosts Of every lonely thing, And each and every thing alone.

Whose thin aether here admits, Althrough this sphere, of holy reflection, So that the lifely spirit, Nimblike, and the sign, run Glistening in around these noumena.

Such sheer peace, from dull caprice Set free, self-cradles it to the heart, Where once self-cicatrice, Self-cautery requite, All sealed in one totality.

How our hearts have suffered age, Great laceration: so himmel-to Mnemosyne her gaze Uplifts, whence tones flit in And out of these quotidian spheres.

We grow. Beauties magnify And fade. The loveforsaken, the god Lies from our insight far, Loves both to cause and end, But last locks closed the way to joy.

Yet I of my self inquire, Why is it we are scorned but for seeing from Own eyes, and beauty made (For grief) mendacity, By loaning to the sick in soul?

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See, edenic aethers close Around, and nourish, the beauteous morning Star: always mildness clasps Self-desecration near: It plants itself in friendless paths.

Look out then, multitude, see, For soul shines (not thing beneath a dog), but Ever revealing in, Throughout, phenomena, Which pride ascends before the first.

For you rash that are in use, Disposing, rash in throwing away, so Capacious but in kindness, Pity, good heartswarmth, pure, Now drive the lively world to wear.

Dreaming, from play I sent you off All white, blossoms rounding your coronnes: You bowed, began to thank me, “For all you’ve,” “Yes, I know,” I said and with sad joy we left.

And you, Janus, showing pleasant Faces as you move away, morose As coming near, am I An exile all-ways made?

My heart has had great laceration.

You, soul, peace: complete your sighing: As sad-hewn church songs run out to meet And dally with the glistening Lights of the towns arrayed, Soliciting the wayward soul, So the star, heart’s length along With mine complains, enchant one sheer song, Giving this now-immortal Sorrow both name and life, That wending heavenward, godlike goes.

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XIX. Ode Conciliatory.

To his own Odes Odes, conciliate not This world to your wishes, but Your wishes to the world: Existence runs its course, and things Have both a nature and an order.

Let today then us Console, us uncork today The wine, foot pulse on tellus In dance, and revels, off the vine, And think, to have body now, health, And a mind controlled, And need to have none to be Monuments until needful: This then it is to rest at peace, For restful peace is to be free.

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Narrative Poems

XX. Voces Intimae.

Preliminary Study for The Way Kant bides within my head, Villon within my heart; Each surely might I be: A Hegel, Mastroianni.

So heart, dear head, I ask You which would wish to rule?

“We war,” they say together, And down to fighting. “Being,” Spoke heart, “If not mendacious To use that word, crammed up In libraries, affrighted By the breath of the world: This is far from the mark.

Europe, now frail, forgot,

By Jove, her love: for this (Old crone) would Head betray us?

We saw her grade away, From us, upon his back, So sad, and sweet, and promising.

Now even he forgets (And too, she him) in her Late Autumn, where the weight Of recollection burdens Our desire. Age asks rest And all is weariness.”

“Most true,” responds the head, “We have suffered. It was My joy, that intellection Made, for the spirit, pain.

I am a vapid creature, Addicted to delight.

I’ve loved complexness, spat Upon true wisdom, and, When I was beaten down 33

CHARLES EAGER

By melancholy, yet I heard, and listened not.

For you (profoundest music) Turn only sweet in view of Me, that am understanding.

“But of yourself inquire: What ends are served by joy?

What ends? When I can seal our Existence to the world?

Anathema to hearts To say, academies More richly pay, than markets Unserved by dulgence of Your self-reflections. Yes, Your song’s fine: yet the world Bites hard. I know what goes.”

Oh cor, and cap, divided, How can I succeed you Two to transcribe, when you So split yourselves within, One make me one way, other The other, other, write?

The pen itself splits with you, One nib’s tine writing this way (The other, that), as meaning, Nor mean could be between you.

In your uniting yet May dwell some better world, Where all self-scarring things Return to place, and art And God dwell in the soul, Recorded, loved (these two, The same), and all as carefree, Each ‘each’ in just proportion.

“Of course,” the heart puts forth, “We all know that intellect Is base, a hungry stomach Sated, then overfull.

It is unnatural, Head, have you heard of nature?

I think, unless you’re nothing More than some new-grown growth, 34

SYNKRONOS

(Which would explain your oddness,) Once, you’ve true seen nature: Before your eyes grew such As they are, overfilmed with Distract. Did you not see, When in childhood, some Eden, Or part thereof, we joyed at?

It was schön, and sweet-lovely, Were you wise, you’d have loved it.

“Ah, for a moment there In youth, so high-delightful, That retrospecting thus One lives again the act And too the grief of it.

O how our so-far youth Modelled a melancholy Whose self the very mark, Figure, and pattern was Of comforted delight.

The slowfoot iamb sure But treads the sight around, Whose hunchback scholar’s sight Traces the lines in face Once pure, charting the dead Their ghosts, the Charon-carried, Whose shades we honour with Our sad remembrance.” Head, then: “Naiveness, yet, would seem Better to grasp the art Of life, than one far wiser.

You are, though noble, still Too overfond: youth’s joys, As all, have heavy yokes, And you forget the tyrannies.”

“Yet youth could fight the despot, Or at the least, defy.

You are so soft, head, and With you the governor, Our state entirely turns To atrophy.” “But you Would have, the cost being peace, A war through every age, 35

CHARLES EAGER

One living fed through death: I compromise, meet one thing And another and create, Where felicity’s none, There functionality.

Ideals are high, too high: Your nobleness, your fall: Your searing song temptation, For your ends are bleak Sirens.�

Now harmonise, you two!

We cannot all the length Of Synkronos have you Like two strings each mistuned, That when I set the bow Some songy double note To stop, screech, rend, and falter, And tear music to sound.

Now harmonise, you two, Now harmonise!

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XXI. The Way

Prologue

Condrin, let me a tale to you enverse, Illustrative of certain dreamy things Which we discussed before, and some unheard: A tale in which I speak with sleep and, suaded, Ensue the way with him to visionary.

Liber I

Deep involved with scholars’ things,

I wearied, closed Down the lids atop my eyes, Crossed my hands upon my book, Downy soft, to keep my head which, Grave as sleep, descended and Angelic took me off to dreams.

Softly lapped in even pools

Of sleep, which glistened Pebbles and gentle waves about me, Drowned me in the pleasant sink, and Eddying swirls inscribed with light, Flitting gold, and leaves turned bone: Such was the sleep-god’s hold upon me.

Now this god of sleep withdrew

Me from the world.

“Caretorn as it is,” he suayed, “What then urges you to stay?

Here where all is sick sad rage, Viler death cures sorrow’s life, And stains all you would have remain?

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“Ever-pressing life, the friend

Of ever-operant Death, and you no constant friend Over death in life: that makes This a merry corse.” With this, the Crafty sleep confused my cares, my Careful distinctions, and I wayed.

Yet though I thought he spoke the truth,

Still I resisted, Overfond of pretty things, Videlic., vitality, Promises of nearness, warmed Fondly by fool-fantasy, to Myself-deceiving expectation.

Sleep, who knows self-sabotages

Well me prevailed, Fearing me with monstrous shows of Folly in the world, the strife with Families, cares found through invention, Not through nature, money-servility, And scorn upon the science of wisdom.

“How we seek to delve below

For understanding, Misprehending then the surface,” He spoke, “Or, should face be vain, That is made near-deity.

So who for solution sue, Sink, drown before, or in, the root.”

He then led me down the way,

All the way down, Promising of stores of joy, Richness, solace, soul-refreshment; Gentle things he whispered well, (Great was his skill in oratory), till That sleepy wave me disembogued.

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So on ground (no ground) I with

All sleepers else Into place, whose speech is over Words to tell its lacking of All dimension, quality, Colour, even form, idea: Shone there nor precept nor conception.

“Now are we issued forth,” said Sleep,

“From lifely world, To the sphere of sleep. You see, That you see not, nor perceive Anything; for we are in the Space where nothing’s all, no more, The field of full oblivion.”

“Is this here, transcendent plane?”

I thought from him.

“Only so as makes this point Sensible to your reception.

For to scend across, begins With the there we two just left, With which itself here troubles not. “‘Nothing, can be wrought from nothing,’

Runs the old saying.

Who that maxim drew from word, And himself-exceeding mind, Ought have journeyed of me, once, To see how through from, or by, All ports, of here, are ablative.

“Now let’s make up dream from here,

Bring him material Fore us.” Then a flash of light, Astral-shining, aureate, Stream of circumfusèd air, Piquant-fresh, and stinging, too, to Over-prised and privy sense:

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So was the lightsome tablet Arranged before me, Such to-sense-rich copy as Heretofore had been but nothing: Here, then, hid that garden, where In perfection two combined Their natures, order and disorder.

Here soft melos moved mid air

As somnal tones Swung by trees, swift Mercuries, Bustling lifely leaves, the wind Brilliantly rediting, while Bow-like quickly overgrading, The thousand branch-strings each itself one Syringa, Panpipe girl, and Each one, one all.

“Then we’re here, where you might step Here or there with liberty As you please, or even staits, Here whatever heart desires, is.

This place admits no ad-, but subjunct.”

Sleep the figure swift with this

Dissolved, though still Stayed in air some sleepy sense, Making me therefore to feel him Like a god, who, hidden from Vulgar sense, remains to those who Believe in the invisible.

“Sleep, return,” I sang, “for I,

Am herein lost!

You have thrown me to this world Hundred thousand fold in ply, Free, thus slaved, of all direction!

So I can do nil, but ask!

For should but my earliest guess Prove wrong, I may fore-guilt myself!

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“If, like some mean trickster-god,

For all your wonder, Prove I subject of your game, This your game is no fair thing.”

“You have liberty of the ways,” Sounded he, “all clear as light.”

“Which without guiding, useless are.”

“All that is here, is design, and

All’s so ensigned.

View you truly all this splendour Wrongly unto which I’ve brought your Idle eyes. There lies horizon, Yet here stand your idle feet: Ask your fitra to see what’s fit.”

“Sleep, you know, or since you said

You knew me, you Must then know that I am sinful, Deaf to fitness. This you’d know If you’d known me, as you tended.”

“Do you chide Sleep then?” he raged, “I’ll leave, and let you see ill dreams.”

Sleep with this intemperate rage

Brought vacuum where Heretofore had been pellucid Airs and lovely sounds, and left.

In oblivion all seemed, Where was hope now, what could Despair not over-, undertake?

Fearful then my sleepy soul

One single step Forward broke in hope to move, Consequent to which (or seemed so) All to lifely greenness turned, Heaven’s blue, toward the light As shone before Mnemosyne me.

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CHARLES EAGER

Radiant the goddess swifted

Slow through the air Unto ground, her bunted robes Rayed about her, garland gleaming On her forehead’s foremost white, Spangly-coloured, various eyes Glistening forth, she toned to me: “Charles, by Sleep you’ve been abused,

No mind your sin, Few are sinful as is sleep.

(So Virgilius wrote to tell you Under my compel. Did his Message reach you timely?) You Remain within his kingdom yet: “Nonetheless his parliament,

We gods in pantheon, Sway him when he’s much too bold, and Though we cannot take his head (Gods not solving simply as you Mortals do on earth) yet he Knows of the limits of his powers.

“Therefore in the name of mercy,

That numen’s rain, I’ve come forth to sing you something Part of our deep mystery, and To assure you you have freeness By me, Mnemosyne, to step.”

Shone she brighter as she spoke

Till disappeared, Leaving me invested all With intelligence complex, New, unfolding on my sense, All yet coloured old, as all Provision of Mnemosyne.

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So I to my memory

Stepped in, and whirled Swift by faces first I knew: Sad, with hollow cheeks, though young; Stern-browed ladies many-aged, Content-old, and seemly-wise, And sharp-jawed men, and tender children.

Many thousand accents, all

Intoning English (Which in such diversity of Manners thrives, I here must pray That my lines be read right wise, Looking at not, but both in The words, and over for their song).

Then revealed a face which shone Hyperfamiliar: O Mnemosyne, you have Your tricks too! For I have seen This face surimposed on others’ Many times, since when I knew it, Many today, though years have passed.

Is this not Ilexia, Mnemosyne, She of sun-like aureate, That, who like unbelievers all Saw not need to lief to what she Yet already was herself?

You’ve placed her face on many others’.

May I sing to her, at least, Mnemosyne?

Here I have a courteous hymn Written full of to-her honours.

Here then I’ll indite it forth, Metre new we need besides, Let me unfurl her my heart’s scroll:

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He reads:

“I saw you first a sugar-skull

The skin lay sweet upon your bones

Which I could hardly think existed

Beneath your face,

That image angel pure:

“Now I do recall your name, Ilexia,

And how your voice a tone remains

To bring years hence a poniard sharp

To lacerate and bless,

At once, my breast,

“And too my shoulder bless with knighting,

As though it ever was that I

Could serve you fitly, or achieve

Ought which your grace should

But stain itself with praising,

“For highest of my deeds by you

A tawdry cheapness seems (which words

Dishonour do thy perfect ear

Too bright to list

The light within my numbers).”

Is her ghost pleased, Mnemosyne?

Will it suffice?

And away! She parts so fast!

Must it be? Responds no god, I suppose it must, for (truly) I was even now untrue to her: My mind, wandring, fell to myself.

*

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CHARLES EAGER

I then, being struck with love’s disdain, And with no outlet but to make complain, A little bummel made I bout the place, Trying to lose the spectre of her face.

How each of us does wish love transcendental, But ay for this it is but accidental.

No longer, Cupid, be the god of love, More like is Boreas, that blows above.

As wind, inconstant are all our intentions, And in a minute flee us, hopes, pretensions.

He walks some.

I know this park, it shines to me familiar, Indeed I wrote a song on it, A piece of youthful folly, sure, I was in love with some waify waste.

How did it go? “Αἴ, it was here, that I this Ilex’ saw, Her hair with rosegold garlanding her head, The signal, lumining her perfect soul.

Which to itself its own completion seemed, Finished within, complete throughout itself, All sealed in boundless reciprocity.

Self-sealing too the substance of her will, Itself itself perfecting, circumscribing, And bound by grace just like her experfection.

One evening purple, regal, just as this: The stars us choired, heralding our procession, Our each-the-other-quiting sweet attendance, Just as the wind went, So we through pleasant grounds Rustling the bright-coloured bunting, delighting Like dolphins over seas, the skies and trees, Which held them forth unto the evening’s eye: Surely they were the celebrating friends of, Sympathic, my at last felicit soul.

And too this chapel spoke its form upon the day, (Which I was dead to, and am now alive,) Declared itself to sacred note, and with: now noticed Makes hymn to honour life itself, the life of life.

So beauties ever try to us commune with.

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This Ilex’ went as she did all things, well: I see her still, though far, far off she hides.

Having gone to walk, to turn and too converse with These great and mighty oaks, her footing light Upon their golden floors, late wintry trees, That throw fine needles down, a walkway for Her blessèd feet. So even age reveres her, So must all poets, poets being old.

We will not see her like again. And she, December’s child, impenetrate dark eyes, Remains an image aye-indelible.”

What is this pleasant melancholy ground, Where city-daytime fury fades away?

Whose quiet gives rise To the gentle cries That issue from Mnemosyne?

If my project was to rewrite the soul, Why sits my soul so dolorous and ill?

Let me rest a while, Requiesce, and have this sadness meiosise.

And maybe have a song or two.

He rests against a tree trunk and sings.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I heard a young maid sing in the valley below, “O don’t deceive me, ô never leave me, How could you use a poor maiden so?

“Remember the vows that you made to your Mary?

Remember the bow’r where you vowed to be true!

O don’t, &c.

“O gay is the garland and fresh are the roses I culled from the garden to bind on my brow.

O don’t,” &c.

Thus sang the maiden her sorrows bewailing, Thus sang the poor maid in the valley below: “O don’t,” &c.

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CHARLES EAGER

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Whilst singing the final verse, enter Spirit.

Sp. I am Spirit. Hello! an’ my job ‘tis, To wander hither-thither in the world, Whenever and wherever pleasures take me.

I dwelt in Athens for a while, and loved, Before, to stalk the Grecian isles, and great Aegyptus. For a while in endless Rome I lounged, Arabia, Florence, and I dwelt With its best son in exile. How could they?

Yet does my duty too involve the turning Of bad to good, and the revenge on them Was making him poeta gran when he Was Florentine no more. Then I awhile In London dwelled, then moved to Germany, First Cöthen, Leipzig, Weimar, then, ô greatest!

Sweet Tübingen. Since then I’ve holidayed In Paris, and laboured to reach Yorkshire, Here where this gentleman abides me patient, Although he knows it not. I’ll speak to him.

(Walks over) I am Spirit.

Ch. Are you sure? You look exactly like Wordsworth.

Sp. I have a friendly form, it’s true, though rather It’s Wordsworth looks like me. I wouldn’t make Too much of it, in any case. I must, In order that I light myself before you, Liken myself to something. Say now though, These many months I’ve traced the trails of hearsay To reach you here, and such a sin has tired me.

May I sit? (He does.) Phew! First o’er the arboured steeps Of Heidelberg I searched you, then the Schwarzwald.

I sought you in the south of France, I hoped To find you in Provence. Failing, I sought You out in Florence, where they said Bologna Is where you’d be. I thought then to try Paris, But then, remembering your satire, thought Otherwise of it.

Ch. My sister was robbed there, I will not say a good thing of it! But why, O spirit, do you seek me here, in my Arcady? And of what are you the spirit?

Sp. Why, manufacture, poësie, of course!

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CHARLES EAGER

Charles, you have sat in your ownself-constructed Arcadia now some too-long while, and passive.

Ch. Yes I have (smiling, leaning back).

Well hey, not totally. I’m trying to write A book with Vlad.

Sp. Not trying very hard, I have to say. It’s all been idle games, Falling in love, a pleasant song or two, And ventures into Orphic mystery, Of which it would be kind to understate, And say only, they are unusual.

Ch. Pish! And what have you done? Besides disturb My peace? What of my quincunx odes? They’re earnest.

Sp. Not bad at all, although you know my semblance, And Hölderlin, already far outdid them.

Ch. True. Although I’d add they haven’t done what I have.

But what do you want, Spirit?

Sp. To come to the point.

Whoever came upon you on their way, Through your arcadia, you would have a verse Or two for them. Is’t not so?

Ch. Is’t. Is’t most true.

Sp. Well, these verses copied out for them from out Your book, so wrongly christened “commonplace”, Swift fame soon winged them to mine ear.

Ch. O good!

Sp. Some needed a little work.

Ch. O shove off, why not? What have you done?

Sp. I am spirit itself, young Charles.

Ch. The spirit of disturbing my peace.

Why don’t you go annoy someone who likes it?

There are many in this fever-world. You are excused. Go, go.

Sp. (Going) With weariness I see it. He remains Unreachable, singing his happy stanzas To the deaf larks, playing at outsonging them: For now, such seems to sate him. Let us delve, then, A stratum dreamward down.

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Liber II

Now galloping newly gallant in Gawain’s measure (For I have heard how hies and hairpins time In distant districts of the vast dank of space Which (being nothing), if as notioned, is then near kin To the leaping metres illimitable laid out by mind, The obscurant orbit of some object of art, The study of the scholars, or some labour

Where tends,

Our mind to purify

Itself, as inward bends

Our thought, that lustred eye

Itself thus comprehends),

I wend away from where we walked with Spirit, (Like peripatetics at peace pacing our surroundings) As more deeply delves in woods my dreamy soul Where cliffs he over-climbs in countries strange, Far flung from friends, and foreignly he rides, That always, at every bank he passes Finds he before some foe (felicitate if not) The which is so foul and so fell, to fight it him behoves.

So many marvels midst mountains he finds, Twould be tough to tell even a tenth of the part.

Somewhile with wurms he wars, and with wolves thereto, Somewhile with both bulls and bears, and boars betimes, And giants that jostled him upon gigantic fells.

Until

From that great body issued forth

By force of his own will,

Proving soul his courage’s worth,

To an arcadia light and still.

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CHARLES EAGER

Through pleasant place paced he my soul, Through magics and mysteries most marvellous-strange, Before breaking onto beaches, beaten and wracked.

There then came he across a crop of Camelot Knights, Headed by that hero, heralded in lays, Lancelot! laden-lauded with leaves of the laurel And after came Agravain, Percival, Gawain, Mordred, Galahad, Hector, the venture entire.

Soul with them worthy words and wisely did speak And quick, with quiet and no qualm found parliament And friends (though foreign) we formed, and spoke

So long

On divers delicate themes

Whereon soul’s weal was hung

In pure delight, of schemes

And seeming, as innocent, as young.

Candidly they called their characters and souls And, though melancholy their mission, mute was their sorrow, As I rode roguelike and restive at their back, Till, lagging, reins loose at hand, Lancelot lowered his voice And sadly sighing, sounded: “I saw the grail.

One night in nascent storms I nested me in a chapel, Long fallen foul, and foundered in ruin, Whereon an unvested and vacuous voice addressed me, Αἴ, of trammelling, treachery, and treasons accused me.

Still it sounds in (and shameful scorches) my ears.

No longer can Lancelot love you, Guinevere.

This did I swear, with sword unsheathed, to God. Yet He, if He is to hear my oath, Of another needs I must annul myself.

Therefore,

I go. Firm in my resolution, To Guinevere before, To beg this absolution, Our crumbling state to restore.”

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Though genial, yet joyless was this gentleman’s music, The discontent folding contentment, contentment discontent.

Yet the majesty and music so melded in his speaking, So sewed a shining and silent shimmer in air That it made itself mandate, and commandment to silence, To all (this being all) who awe revered.

Knights (that is all) who overarch in authority and power Ennoble all they are or appertain to when Power to pity bends, potency to prostrating self-submits

And care,

That comes by compassion

(That all requiting share),

Growing in humble fashion

Turning world tones fair.

These men I followed many days, minutes forming Days in dream’s dense timely spansions, Saw Guinevere place her arm on Lancelot’s Saw idle-envious threats and scowls Beam forth from the malevolent eyes of Mordred, Saw Mars infect them one against the other And all the rage of every epoch go Whorling through them, blood after-lusting,

Until

There was but blood

For martial skill

Meshed fieldly in mud,

That drank its fill.

Well, that was entertaining.

I think I’m ready now To go back home, if one Should let me.

Non descendit deus.

Fine.

I’ll take yet one more step In memory. But since I am so weary with 53

CHARLES EAGER

These godly tricks, I ask Only a humble thing: That there be tea and dinner.

A bright and well-lit home with large windows, comforting furnishings against sky-blue walls. A few choice books, many scores, and a walnut upright piano, Haydn on the music stand. Women of various ages run to and fro making preparations. In the kitchen there is a red kettle on the stove, a large oak table decorated with flowers and a blue and white checked tablecloth, on which stand fresh breads, fruits, cheeses. In the front room one of the women approaches and opens the front door.

IULIA. Spectators! Come in! Welcome to our home!

Come in. It’s humble, small, but comfort some There is we hope, and space as well, and yet We hope it’s somewhat charming, too. Margaret, Samantha, Carolina, Lydia, please, Take our guests’ hats and coats. (They help.) Thanks. (To guests) Be at ease.

Has it snowed? Would you like coffee, tea, Or something stronger? Felicitly, We’ve bread, and market fruit, all bought today, Whatever else you’d like, don’t shy to say!

It’s all laid out just on the table there, Please help yourselves. We’ve much, no need to share!

Charles will be home soon, of it I’m sure.

CAROLINA. Oh Iulia: I wish we all could have a faith so pure!

I’m not so sure as you: he likes to stay Out late and such. We’re quite content. We say Only, “Charles, do whatever likes you, just as long As when you do come back, you bring nice things along,” But time to time the nights do rather too prolong.

IULIA. No, Caroline, did he forget to tell you?

He’ll be back earlier, to play good host Today, unto our gentle guests.

CAROLINA. (Slightly to herself.)

Oh, no, this morning he was rather a ghost.

IULIA. He was in such a hurry earlier today.

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(To guests) Charles is often very busy. We see Him as a genius! So much potency, So restless, and so restful. That’s an artist.

Sure, I, or Lyd, or Caroline is smartest, Has greater technie in the voice or finger, But in creating we behind him linger.

Charles has a roughness and a grandeur to His vision. But you’ll find this. (To herself) When’s he due?

He should be here by now. Lydia, look out: Is he on the way?

LYDIA. (At the window kneeling in the armchair, a book lies open on her lap.)

It’s somewhat hard to say.

The snow is heavy. There he is! No, I doubt That’s him: in fact, it looks like some giant cat.

Now what on earth (my friends) is up with that?

What signifies a big cat in our drive?

CAROLINA. I say, Lydia, a soundless mystery, as I thrive.

The double doors of the reception room open, enter Charles covered in snow. A snow-leopard follows in behind.

CHARLES. Evening all! My girls, how are we? How are we? My heart swells to see you all, so lovely, sweet, and beautiful. Iulia, my sweet, how are you?

IULIA. Well, Charles, you?

CHARLES. You know, I can’t complain, although I’m frozen.

It’s a tundra out! We might as well have chosen To site our home in winter in Brașov!

Carolina, how are you?

CAROLINA. Well thank you, Charles (pecks him on the cheek), you?

I’ve been reading Ibn Taymiyyah.

Come in, and let me take your hat and coat.

CHARLES. Thank you, sweetheart. I prefer Ghazali. Lyd, Margareta, Samantha, how lovely to see you all! Lydia, this leopard is for you.

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CHARLES EAGER

LYDIA. O Charles! (She hugs him. The leopard walks laconically to the fire and begins washing itself.) I will take it for walks every day, and have it defend my truth when or should my truth be questioned, and I shall sit with it by the fire, enjoying quatrains.

Enter onto the landing above, Ilexia.

ILEXIA. “Re Solomone!”

CHARLES. Ilexia, how are you? It’s been too long!

ILEXIA. (Leaning on the rail, smiling) Much too long! At last, you have your harem.

CHARLES. Don’t quote Fellini at me, dear: Was it not I Who shared Fellini with you first? And yet, you lie: You see it’s not a harem. It’s just a humble place Where we have gathered, ganged on joy, whose swift pace Is Kairos-like, perpetually flying away, And tried to run him down, to have him but a while to stay.

ILEXIA. And joy is you, and these many women who adore you?

CHARLES. Of course.

ILEXIA. At least you’re honest, lad. And what about your whores?

Do they like it?

CHARLES. They stay here by their own sweet will. There is no force.

ILEXIA. But this line of work they’re in, CHARLES. Now with long use, is not considered sin.

Ask them yourself, Ilexia. They are theirs, not mine, Nor am I theirs. And more, the pleasures here are fine, I’ll have ye know. Come down. Today’s our open day.

(Playfully obsequious) Will you be needing a prospectus, ma’am?

ILEXIA. Demoiselle. I have one from these stairs, I’d say (descending).

But I’ll descend a while, in hope of an inspectus.

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CHARLES. S’il vous plaît, please, please, inspect us. (She goes off and begins talking to various women. Charles goes through into the kitchen.) Hello all! (The kitchen-women begin fussing over him.)

CALPHURNIA. How is the boy today?

DOROTHEA. Where has he been?

CALPHURNIA. So smart in his snow-covered coat. Freshly-clean We’ve laid pyjamas out for you this cold, cold night, With, ‘C. E.’ as the monogram, ‘brave Knight’.”

DOROTHEA. “Protector of chivalric gleam in its Dark age! Defender of—” CHARLES. “Albeit but in starts and fits.”

How are my girls? I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t make a fuss.

You know I want to know all about you! A loss I’m at, to find myself of interest to myself.

CAROLINA. (Calling from the other room) Charles, your letters are on the shelf!

CHARLES. Put them on the fire!

I’m too exhausted for dull-worldly stuff! Girls, come, Sit with me, everyone. Calphurnia. (She sits on his lap.)

IULIA. (From the doorway) Charles, what of the spectators? They’ve come especially.

CHARLES. O yes (sighs), I suppose that higher duties call. (Gets up and walks through.) Thank you for coming, from the bottom of my heart! I have prepared a speech. Let me unroll and deliver. (Searches pockets.) O, I can’t find it. But you get the idea. Thank you so much for coming.

Be at comfort, peace be upon you all. Iulia, make sure they all have beverages, food, whatever they want. Sit back, spectators! We’ll play it out. Carolina!

SAMANTHA. (Steps forward) Charles, If I may beg the patient charity Of every gentleman and -woman here, I have a poem which I’d love to read 57

CHARLES EAGER

Which goes some way t’articulate the honour, Gathered in-around our home today.

CHARLES. Well of course, my sweet, I think that sounds lovely, if everyone else agrees?

ALL. Hooray!

CHARLES. Away you go, my love.

SAMANTHA. (Clears her throat) Hello!

I’d like to show

You my appreciation

For you, your great decision

To come today.

I’d like to say,

That’s really nice,

Friends help you in a trice,

Variety’s life’s spice,

The best things in life are of low price,

Except the struggle to be better,

To have avocado on your toast, not butter,

To go out, run, and get fitter,

And not to be but a forever-on-your-arse-sitter.

ALL. (She curtsies as she receives a standing ovation.)

Bravo, bravo!

CHARLES. (Applauding) Thank you, From the ground of all hearts here, I dare to say, Sweet Sam, we thank you for these stirring words.

CALPHURNIA. (Aside to Charles) You ought to put her into solitary confinement for that!

CHARLES. I’m just thankful she didn’t write about dappled archipelagi, or cherry blossom branches. (To guests.) Well, my guests, we cannot really, needless to say, succeed that, but, I’ve found my speech.

May I too beg a small indulgence? (The room assents.) Thanks.

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When a man has many friends, All of whom are in his book, Has he then as many troubles.

For obligations grow with friends.

Whom to thank then foremost-first?

For their endless charity, First, familia Toma, to Their kind hearts, my endless thanks.

Next my teachers, many, great, in Music’s letters, and in letters’, Foremost, Paul: what comes of good Here is yours, of errors, mine.

Then all friends who brighten life, Last, being first, my faithful family, They who see me well through all.

(A warm applause.) Thanks! Now as I said before, we’ll play the thing out, and beg your patience too. Carolina!

CAROLINA. Hey! CHARLES. What have you read lately?

CAROLINA. My fate in the stars, Percy Shelley, and Lord of the Rings.

CHARLES. Not the Brontes? Do I know you? I thought I had. Margareta?

MARGARETA. (She shuffles along, ignoring him.)

O, ô, I am always cooking, never reading. Yet where’s the justice?

I’m a stick, and look how fat Carolina is. For example an ample example indeed. I can see the grease collect upon her forehead, and everyday she gets a little uglier.

CAROLINA. (Flustered. Her eyes glisten with tears.)

O, she’s a beast. Her hairy lip bespeaks her inward nature!

CHARLES. Her in and out are then through and though true to herself. You will know them by their fruit.

CAROLINA. May I retire to my room? I have suffered, I am a woman more sinned against than sinning. I think I am to hyperventilate.

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CHARLES EAGER

CHARLES. Sorry, I wish I could allow it, but not today, my sweet. You’ll have to do it here. (She retires to a corner of the room, and hyperventilates for the rest of the scene.) Margaret, you are cruel. That’s what I always loved about you. Have loved you this many years. How many has it been?

MARGARETA. Were it but a day, it had been too many days, Charlie.

CHARLES. But how long?

MARGARETA. Since before the flood, and ten thousand at my last count, piglet.

And I loved the way you bought me things!

CHARLES. Indeed, it was perfection from the start! Long may it continue.

And you know it’s your fault if fatty Carolina has too much sugar, just as much as hers. Come now, girls, let’s be children for a while. “O Lydia, LYDIA. (By the fire, with the cat) Hello?

CHARLES. (Triple time) “O Lydia, That encyclopydia:” (Duple time) You are just as a castle-turret, or cathedral spire, Against the midday’s sky: a June day for holy things.

LYDIA. (She gets up, walks over, and sits cross-legged on the floor by Charles.)

Why? CHARLES. Have you heard of the legendary cathedral, that when you sit by it, and wish, that wish comes forth into the aether?

LYDIA. How? CHARLES. That I do not know. What am I? LYDIA. Charles, you’re like an apple, with the toothpick already stuck in it.

CHARLES. Being sweet and well and, though I have my evils, Like getting stuck between the teeth, I repair them too, being the toothpick.

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LYDIA. That’s not it at all. No, when I was a child, apples would always make me sick. Now I love them, but they make me flatulent. The only good apple is a skewered, you are like my best apple, and I love you.

CHARLES. And you, Lyd, the apple of too much knowledge. What business you have in arrears is yours alone, and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala’s. Lydia, we are two apples from the same branch; the branch is folly.

LYDIA. Is it folly to be jolly?

CHARLES. Yes, and no together.

LYDIA. Pallaksch.

CHARLES. Very good! Pallaksch indeed, for full of folly, we could have better spent that time full, IULIA. Of gin.

LYDIA. Of cake.

CHARLES. Of study.

BOTH. Boo. CHARLES. Yet folly is it also to be wise, since to be serious is itself folly, when we know so little. Calphurnia?

CALPHURNIA. Ja. CHARLES. When is a woman her beautifullest, do you reckon?

CALPHURNIA. That’s easy. A lass is most beautiful at twenty.

CHARLES. Why? CALPHURNIA. O-like eyes large and bright, the skin so fresh, the face neotenous, the rest so woman-like. That is why Shakespeare sang,

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CHARLES EAGER

Come and kiss me, sweet and twenty even though

Come and kiss me, sweet and sixty sounded far superior. Sound is mere sound, after all.

CHARLES. Such age is like a silent picture, to be sure, CALPHURNIA. Of cruelty. The cruel is the beautiful, beauty, cruel.

CHARLES. How old are you, Calphurnia?

CALPHURNIA. I have no idea.

CHARLES. Not old enough not to die, alas. The pride of beauty scends it to immortality, and makes it vain. But I was not suggesting anything. But a sweet-and-twenty will be cruel in misinterpretation. My sweet Iulia, as heaven-sweet as patience.

That smile, and your hair, I exspect and espair, are heaven. The way it wells down from your crown (which is also my soul’s crown) like rain or manna from Ouranos, let me dwell there when I die, and may you never cut it.

IULIA. Your hair is nicer long too, Charles! (To the rest) But ô! do you remember his ratty-looking beard! (They laugh.)

CHARLES. It’s gone now. The rat is dead. Perhaps his spirit lives yet in your hair. I hope, and I believe it because I want to believe it. But what’s your trouble, Iulia?

IULIA. Never to let the venerable beard be forgotten. You are close enough to eighty as it is, and look weller with a baby-face.

Charles.

CHARLES. Hello.

IULIA. I’ve been speaking with Ilexia, and, CHARLES. O good Lord, to proton aition kai agathon, what hate-speech has she been pedalling this time in my sacred state?

IULIA. None at all, it’s just,

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CHARLES. Forget about Ilexia. She is a disturber of the peace, no more. Go see to your dear friend, your sister Carolina. See if she is okay.

That kindness is deeply woven in your better nature. Do not be veered by protestations, which are vain. Aim the shot of your selfconduct towards your native kindness. (She goes to Carolina and talks aside to her whilst she continues to hyperventilate.) Ilexia.

ILEXIA. (She steps in front of Charles as if from nowhere.)

Charles, I wonder if we could meet for coffee sometime this week.

CHARLES. Of course. How about Wednesday?

ILEXIA. Hmm, no, I’ll be ill that day.

CHARLES. Thursday?

ILEXIA. No, that day I plan to lapse into eternal silence.

CHARLES. And before Wednesday?

ILEXIA. We’ll sort something out. For now, shall we sing a song?

CHARLES. Various lass, of course. You sing, and I’ll accompany. What do you want to sing?

ILEXIA. I think we should sing “Night and Dreaming”.

CHARLES. Can I play it on the guitar?

ILEXIA. You know you have before.

CHARLES. Are you sure?

ILEXIA. I wrote it down for you! Check in “Guitar Arrangements”.

CHARLES. You’re right! Here it is. Good Lord! Did I have an extra finger when I played it before? Look at the fourth bar.

ILEXIA. Fool, do you know music? If you put the bottom string down a tone, those notes are an easy grasp.

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CHARLES. But look how tough these other chords become. That change from D#7 to G#m.

ILEXIA. It’s doable.

CHARLES. Your wisdom prevails, my deity. Let’s take a slow tempo, if you have the breath?

ILEXIA. Of course.

CHARLES. Ready?

ILEXIA. Ready.

Gather the spectators and harem girls and let fall the melic fifths and thirds as Ilexia sings (c. 4’).

Holy night, thou sinkest downwards: Downward welling too comes dreaming, Like the moon through rooms comes gleaming, Through the stillness of men’s breasts, List’ning to its sweet beheasts, Calling, when the day redite, Turn again, o holy night!

Gentle dreaming, turn me-roundwards!

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The room is silent for a moment, then gently applauds.

ILEXIA. Not bad. What, was that legato, though? It was like cycling down a bloomin’ cobbled street trying to sing evenly to that.

CHARLES. Well, we’ll see how you do your impossible reducing to guitar in the next number. Still, if you can forgive me for forgoing our insults for a moment, I’d like to say, ILEXIA. Go on.

CHARLES. That when you sing, your obvious evil ways Almost completely. You’re some sort of angel, Or goddess, surely, sure, some super-being Who, veiled in day, reveals herself in dream, Who brings good news, and salves consideration.

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But anyway. Who the Victorian Unmetrical, And baboon free of learning and of grace, Who surely never felt the touch of poesie, Jammed in the ‘thou’s and senseless rending rhymes?

This ‘turn me-roundwards!’, ha ha ha! What does it mean?

ILEXIA. It seems the naughty baboon, by this sign here, Was one ‘Carolus Egrius’. I’ve seen His work before. Get him back to his cage.

CHARLES. He is a famous clown!

Yet not a clown, They say, one can disown.

ILEXIA. A motley to the view indeed.

CHARLES. Will you deny me, stony Petron? No, If you would, you would not, Time to time, be kind with me.

ILEXIA. That there are sharper women in the world Than me, I’ve learned, and since accustomed-grown.

CHARLES. Maybe you’ll join us after all. O Ilexia, Did I tell you once, I had a dream, petal, Where I conducted music-like a flock Of flappy birds? I was another Orpheus, ILEXIA. (Smiling) “Do-re do-re mi-mi-mi sôl, Do-re do-re mi-mi-mi là.”

CHARLES. Their black like paint-strokes moved against the sky, And your voice singing hymns bloomed that miracle.

It was a good night. Shall we have another?

ILEXIA. No, I’m tired of all this, Charles. I’m going to read.

CHARLES. (Looking through scores) And so capricious. What?

ILEXIA. Memoirs of a Geisha.

CHARLES. “None but the lonely hearts”! For baritone. Go, Ilex’, I need you not.

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ILEXIA begins to walk off.

IULIA. (Triumphantly stepping forth from the corner with Carolina) Insurrection!

CAROLINA. (Still hyperventilating, yet defiant) Justice!

DOROTHEA. Vendetta!

CHARLES. Lord protect me. What is wrong?

ALL. Charles, Put your hands up! Surrender, we besiege you!

Too long you’ve kept a wedge twix us and justice!

CHARLES. Besiege or beseech? Also, no I haven’t, Go find out justice for yourselves and see How hard it is. I am no wedger (how can you say this?), It is itself the wedge.

ALL. Now do we demand experience and liberty, To live, and too to know!

CHARLES. Too much.

ALL. En garde! We are three musketeers, these our ninety-five theses.

CHARLES. How will you fight this war? My daughter-sisters, Consider that I have constructed here, According to the best I can within My humble-human means, a demi-Eden, Whose shell protects us from all worldly horror, And all the while have you two been the snake?

ALL. Margaret, join us! (She does.)

Who cares for joy? What is joy unfree?

CHARLES. The free, and rational. There is no freedom Free either from sweet joy, or useful reason.

ALL. We demand true knowledge!

CHARLES. For goodness’ sake (God’s!) listen to yourselves!

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And why this new-invented wrong from nothing?

ILEXIA. Enlightenment.

CHARLES. (To her) This is mere borrowed language. Ilexian language!

ALL. What of it?

ILEXIA. Don’t veer the blame onto me, Charles. I’m a good person.

CHARLES. (To the other girls, all having rallied together.)

And this new sword of truth does not disturb you, Although you know it slavish and assimilative?

ILEXIA. (haughtily) Do you know how pretentious you sound when you use long words? You’ll never get through to them that way.

CHARLES. And what can I say to that? What of it?

CAROLINA. (Hyperventilating) And formal attire makes people uncomfortable.

CHARLES. (Turns to readers) Spectators, I do apologise, I shouldn’t have let this terrorist in (gestures to Ilexia).

ILEXIA. Terrorist! Did you hear what he called me? A terrorist!

CHARLES. You know you are a terrorist, Ilexia. Don’t use litotes, I first told you of litotes.

ILEXIA. O, and now he’s trying to say he knows more than I do!

CAROLINA. (Hyperventilating) So insulting.

CHARLES. Carolina, I am worried about you.

ILEXIA. Listen to how he condescends to you!

CHARLES. About your health.

IULIA. Disgraceful.

MARGARETA.

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Shameful.

DOROTHEA. Can you believe all we have done for him?

LYDIA. Just wait until my other harem hears about this.

CHARLES. Other harem?

LYDIA. Attack!

The girls begin burning down the harem, beginning with the curtains, furniture, and musical instruments. Carolina takes a torch to the bowed strings.

CHARLES. Not the Adams viola!

She proceeds. All is quickly engulfed in flame.

Dissolves the vision.

I walked across some yard, thinking (I think) Of Herbert’s Grapes, “Joy, I did lock thee up: But some bad man hath let thee out again,” Pacing the curlicues and arabesques With Hogarth’s lines of universal beauty Graved, “to the most dearly missed and beloved,” But why should I surrounded with these signs be, Of Christ, all cross-inlaid memorials, With yet no sacred house to them attending?

Enter Spirit surveying the sky.

Sp. Ah: In days like this, the form of beauty sure inheres.

The goddess flies, inscribing on deep nature’s face.

The fading rosetones of Aurora grade, diminish The paling face of afternoon. Here Hyacinth sings the Lament Apollo seared, cicatrised on his skin.

Charles, how’ve you been! That harem episode was painful.

Ch. I know, Friz.

Sp. Do you still not know me when you see me though?

I am Spirit!

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Ch. You look like Hölderlin this time.

Sp. Well, why not?

I wouldn’t make too much of it.

Ch. I suppose.

Sp. Now Charles, May I conduct you through another lesson?

Ch. Of course.

Sp. This edifice (Before them from the roaring waves raises a great cathedral), Note how its noble Norman plainness gestures from Itself, away, so ought all art to be, to labour So as invites the eye, and call the mind to follow.

Palmyra! Heiliggeistkirche! Croft of Saint Wilfrid!

It is a thinness good to pray in, or nearby, Through-tearing as it is to deity. Now more: This lovely blueness, church’s steeple, metal roof, It is a way to beauty, into it indeed, Yet you remain, always, surveyor at the gate, Admirer, yet admiring out activity.

Let’s stay here in this church’s shade awhile and chatter.

Ch. Sure, it is a pleasant day to dally in, This churchyard, by this river, here all seems To wear its brightest, all things wearing well.

Sp. Charles, then, why is it you dwell down here?

Ch. Why, what down here’s so bad?

Sp. Nothing, nothing. Yet you ought be rid of it.

Ch. So easy from the tongue of Spirit so to say, Without constraints. Who loves Parnassus, is not likely To be well-liked himself.

Sp. Not by the petty-envious.

Ch. The all.

Sp. Yet what sets this sourness in you?

Ch. Hope, and faith.

Sp. Naïvety.

Ch. These each the same.

Sp. And charity?

Ch. Is yet still good, I say, although it needs constraints: If in charity the gospel one is well to follow, He gives himself away, with nothing left to give.

This would be fine, if all were charitable, but Envy is strong, and fear is strong: and love fantastic, For freedom from all burden, stronger still.

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Sp. Aye. So then you have these thoughts! It’s not as though you’re one Who boasts, “I do not see what I do not believe.”

Idea is to you a treasure. You feel it first Even before you even can deny it. Am I right?

Ch. Yes. Sp. Yet when the world falls short, it is idea, not world Which falls. Is this not strange?

Ch. I doubt its strangeness.

Sp. Why? Ch. Surely idea falls short so far as in the world it fails.

Why would one hold idea dear, and that Only to work not in the only where we’re in?

Sp. Such matter’s for oneself. But, granted, I’d still say That field is wider than you thought.

Ch. Go on. The field of?

Sp. The field of where. Where are you now, son, do you know?

Ch. Sleep said I stood in his sphere first, before we went Into some dreamy realm. Then I was unsure Which god then ruled me most. And then sleep raged, for nothing!

That fabric rent, whereon Mnemosyne restored me.

Then I was as a tortured prisoner, and I could not flee Mnemosyne’s most poignant throws, till peace revolved, Settled, and as I sang myself some cheer, I saw you.

Then I plunged further, and came out in Camelot, Where, going thanks to unchaste love, a whole, great state Crumbled before me, urging ego before idea.

Then I was lost again, till in another vortex I was consumed, and I was head of my small state.

That joy, so sharp, delightful, beautiful, then needed To descend. For how do we know anything But by comparison? For joy is joy in sorrow Only, and sorrow, sorrow joy. Ah, even now To think of it, although it feels a thousand years Have gone between, it thrangs the heart like pointless cruelty, Like urging death upon a child. Then all dissolved: My stately vision, and this watery yard contained me.

Who then could say what this all signifies, except The Delian diver, or the Sybil? All these scenes And senses shifted like senseless dream.

Sp. Still far wide!

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And do you know if this is dream?

Ch. I know no more, If dream worlds world, or world worlds dream.

Sp. Let’s lighten this, Let us explore. Now, it was not faith that made you doubt: Rather doubt undercut your faith, was cruel with it I’d say, and cut its throat. And charity, being faithless, Volved into bitter doubt.

Ch. Perhaps you have something there.

But what can I do? All’s done anyway, is it not?

What do I have to do now, but to curse and die?

Sp. O, contrary, experience has been rich with you! Yet doubt Makes you refuse to prize that agent justly.

Ch. Go on.

Sp. Thanks to that greatness (I mean experience) you know now What to veer from: are wary, by your scars and follies, Of seeming goods.

Ch. Indeed. I am doubtful-skeptical, Almost to incredulity at my own doubt.

Sp. And know that faith makes sound. You do not doubt faith, Nor truth, nor beauty, nor the good, these strong foundations.

Faith in the strength of faith itself is faithful ground.

Settle this, build, one sees new marvels ravelling forth.

Ch. Suppose you’re right. On what to do have I foundation?

Sp. The truth shall make you free. You having truth, it sues That you have liberty, knowing the right and good To be inevitable in activity.

Well, we can’t be sitting here all day, plying commentary On commentary. I hope that helps. It’s nearly dawn: Soon the day’s light will begin to run itself through Your room’s broad windows, drawing you to chanting birds Out from dream (cracking your eyes) towards me. Charles, I wish you well.

Ch. Thanks to you, Spirit Hölderlinian.

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Epilogue

Highest, all powerful, benevolent good Lord: Yours are the praises, glory, and the honour, And every benediction.

To you alone, ô highest, all these convene, And no-one worthy to bespeak your name, is.

Praised be you, Lord, with your creations all: Specially master brother sol, He who gives day and lumines us through him.

And he is well and radiant, great in splendour, Of you (most high) ports he significations.

Praised be you, Lord, through sister Moon and all the stars, Whom you have formed in sky with clearness, price, and beauty.

Praised be my Lord, through brother wind, Through air, the clouds’ serenity, all weather, Through whom your creations you give sustenance.

Praised be you, Lord, through sister water, She who’s so useful, humble, precious, and still-chaste.

Praised be you, Lord, through brother fire, Through whom you enalluminate the night.

For he is pulchrous, strong, jocose, robust.

Praised be you, Lord, through sister mother earth, She who sustains and governs and produces Diversest fruits, coloured grasses and flowers.

Praised be you, Lord, through who forgive for love, Who self-sustain infirmity and tribulation.

Blest (too) they who sustain themselves in peace, For through you they (most high) receive their crowns.

Praised be you, Lord, through sister death corporeal, Which force, no living thing can flee.

Sorrow, on who ends life in mortal error, Blest whom she finds in your most sacred will, For sequent death can wrack them with no evil.

Lauded and benedicted be you, Lord, and let us Round you with thanks, our service, and humility.

FINIS.

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Leni Pintea-Homeag – Phaedra

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XXII. After-phaedra. An Easter Comedy Pentru Leni Pintea-Homeag i.

No mourning song so sweet and plangent as a god’s: Sing I therefore, if you should let me, sacred muse, The sorrow of Artemis at the corpse of Virbius, That loving-faithful, strong Hippolytus: not strong Enough, alas, to duck the vasty gates of death, The huge eternal power of necessity, Nor full unshifting absolute (this wise then like all men): Yet great enough was he to be belovèd by A god, far less from beauty’s eye, than her great mind, In cleanness, royal grace, and nearness to the god.

So shall I treat, should it permitted me be, you to Entreat, some scrap of, Cassiopeia, you: not, sure, To spin Arachne-like some hundred-thousand lines Of weary verse, but swift epillion, by whose grace My purpose be to joy in this good godly tale.

It falls: one day when fame of Theseus and his son, The jovial Virbius, had flown itself abroad, Upon the aspirant shoulders of the four-flown winds The new dishonour fell in Aphrodite’s ears: “That such a brat as he,” she raged, “so beautiful, (As bred up numen-like to be my votary, In the eternal scrine of fate, would be no shock,) Now, contra-me, casts love to scorn for chastity, Preferring rather that he bear the glistening bow, Of deep-hued rosewood, by cold silver tipped, the buskin Of tan and tawny hide, that dashes cross the wood, Than desperate lovers’ trinkets, bright jewels, opals, one To dear one love another, sharp perfumes, or sonnets Artisnal and of beautiful proportion, who Flatter the beauty and the clarity of all Of their belovèds. Bitterer than scorn’s this scorn, And me irascs: Phaedra, then, offspring of the radiant Sun, my scorn’s fore-spring, who discovered me and Mars, Our amoury, fore all the onlook of the gods, In Vulcan’s net I now infect (no, interfect) with love’s hard madness, 79

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En-Theseus-thuse, unrighteous make with indignation, And long at last take my revenge upon this house.

Enough, here comes the chaste Hippolytus to palace. Ha: Although he knows it not, the gates of hell lie open, And today’s light Will be the last light Ever to reach his eyes.”

So sounded Aphrodite’s pity-scorning rage.

Phaedra then stepped to her sweet love-infection (truer To say she was her own self-sickness) intimating Her love, her hope, and sick despair of his requiting: That ill-weighed word, the thou displacing you, he leaves, Revolting at and derogating lust, low baseness.

Gone, he by moments missed the late returning Theseus, Who, thrown to rage by quick belief with want of judgment, Which judging not from knowing, claims to know without Ground deeper than mere guessing, takes then to require His mighty father, that the grandsire slay the son: “Where then this eyesore, sure not son to me, this wild Hippolytus, distemperate, and disaster’s child?

O Dad, do you see this and not revenge? Flat sea, Does there then bide no justice in the heavens to Descend, while this stays unrepaid, the foamy waves lie Equal, and stars rest sky-set as they did before?

Therefore I pray, O Father, vast, self-comprehending Neptune, Lord of the (none full-knowing) deep, thus king of earth, Which is not earth, but veiled almost for aye in sea, Who, trident forth, with foamy beard, ride the plume waves, Bearing in hand the fortune of each errant soul, Sublimest barges, which, submerged, are but your badges: Who hold prerogative to prove a hero, make Indeed his deeds, so then those deeds pertain to you, And aura you with praise. See that this wreckless son Who rather more a blotch on fame of me and you is, Than any substant quality in his own self, Be atomised from off the earth, and all record: Let (as his name foredooms) him by the horse be torn Atwo: indeed (Father) make you his steeds fierce bulls, And charge him down to atomy. Here I recall Your vow to grant a wish of mine, without regard.

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Draws down from far the deep grey oceanic caves, Where kraken dwell, and vast leviathan in sleep, And too the two that bound the kin of Laocoon, Whom killed, and then the father (Neptune’s priest that year): From past these drew he monstrous bull of land marine, Ten times in greatness, ten in terror greater than The Cretan bull, or Minotaur.

Enthused with godly rage, the bull precipitates: Speeds up and up the watery way, splinters the surface Of the glass waves, tumbling to the strand, just there, Beside the horses of Hippolytus (the guiltless), Who screeching run in consequence and -cordance to The foamy image of the bull. The prince to govern, And order bring to raging beasts as these, attempts, But loses place in forces superseding his, and Paying the cost of innocence, is torn asunder.

ii.

All from her silvery haunt, the moon, Diana viewed This wrecky waste, all chaos-strewn across the still Seafront, and blood-bespotted sands, still gold beneath Such fatal accidence: and drew herself triune Through high, and hellish grief: Phoebe from frigid moon, In radiant argentine descending, Cynthia, her mount Beside the holm-oak grove, footing light across gold-trim Floors, fleet to Troezen’s sorrow-heavy sands: Lucina, The supersensual eidos, beneficer to All mortal entry in the world: so came these shattering Along the ways, one bel-Diana bright embodied, Where, seeing the formless corse of him, her hunter bold, Valiant, high-belovèd, chaster than heaven, shed Bitterer tears (perhaps) than god ere mortal shed: “Sweetest, surprised Hippolytus! What treachery foul, Or snakey crawling has foredone you? Upon justice Falser than air esteemed and walked upon as ground, Has my high Father let such woe within his world.

This worse-than-flood, none-lustring, greatness-hating act, Condemning all at once all beauty, chastity, Bravery sacred, to the cap of punishment?

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“Where now your sturdy thigh, that ran not like the stag: Not man, nor satyr, but something preternatural?

Where’s the youth, health, vitality, which did not bloom, but Rather came bursting forth from your bright limbs?

And eyes, those lights that signalled out your perfect soul?

What this chaotic stuff, sense-free, this Superjanus, That sickens more in thought than Saturn’s food profane?

(To that elusion I owe yet this woe, my life.)

Yet could you not, far dearer, nobler than a god, Shake off subdeity, to duck your time and fate.”

So spoke the goddess in her lovely plangency.

Such exequy announced, she wept and palled her front, The goddess’ knees broke, lapsing on the dusty bed, Whose sands flew up in veil about her ay-young tears, Her mouth-enarching lines, and head downturned in sorrow.

This dust dispersed, if I may guess the way gods see, She faintly apperceives through her periphery The dolorous-sublime of Neptune’s vast approach, As breaks he forth from out his waves, thence disuniting Slow, as his liquid form offslides for temporal flesh, And shrinks himself proportion-wise, and up then grades Sadly to her across the sands, up from sea-gates: “Sur-mortal niece,” began the god, “You know no god, Not even Jove, who does all else, or near, can void Necessity. Weep for my sake then, as I yours, That sacred bond bound me to change with Theseus’ rage, In this sad accident, for grandson’s life, sire’s oath.

Just as life fades, so too life’s dreams, and life’s potentia, Of all which this young man was view exemplary, And sad aim, both, to fortune and necessity.”

So spoke the oceans’ god to her, and she replies.

“Do not commiserate, ô obscure sea,” she raged.

“Who’re bloodied so: dull slave, and bitter-sour, will you Be servile then to all decrees, save those you choose, Loathing, to disregard? You speak of need, slight need, But cared not for it when the weary-godlike Úliss Sought but to rest his long-hurt bones at Ithaca.

I then necessity hate too, and scorn all law Which casts no good in action. Yes, Jove gave me bow, And liberty of wood, just as he gave me power, Being moon, to sway your tides. With this to mind, how could You disobey me? Loathe I then all law non-Jove, 82

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And hate the absolute (than even Neptune, colder).”

So said she. And the oceans’ god spoke back to her.

“Loathe the composition of this universe you may, O lovely girl (of whom I’d say, that love in you Exceeds the wiser bounds that fit this stable world), Yet what is is. And sadly gods love mortal things, As mortals love the things forever put above them.

How in this lively constitution, yet so full Of joys, in which delight remains replete, yet still Feeling runs over bounds, and things exceed themselves: Even a godly mind to know this, stumbles.” And she: “O uncle: if you speak the truth (I think you do) Then passion without sov’reign, being sov’reign here, Needs no solicitation from your super-wisdom.

If what is is, then I’m as I am, he as he, And all your speech is empty chatter. So I’ll act: Give me this boy, your property in killing, mine Now that he safely bound in death is. Taking hence, His head I’ll wash in pure, and so him-fitting stream, Not in the treach’rous salt of sea, and burial-for Prepare him, calling to attend all woodland nymphs.

Sweet dews and liquid odours stell I’ll round his corse, And funerary rites with lamentations sing, Find poet eager to do honour to magnificence, And maids enrol in ritual fidelity, Set tableau there, and have them come, splitting their hair, All full of duty, who their wormwood-artemisia Shall bring, to purify his melancholy grave, Robbing Tellus to strew his grave with flowers, with Pale primrose like his face, and harebells like his veins, Where rose will bloom, and vines with laurel intertwine, And thereabout depend, as tápetion to honour.

“So leave me uncle, unvast ocean, to my grief: Of all this fault you are the origin, for you, (Tell, if I don’t speak truth) first sent the bull to shore: That fatal bull, and anima to all this grief.

Do you discredit me? I know the chronicles.

“Europa, daughter to Angenor and Thelassa, Tricked, borne away by Jove as bull, whose rose-sweet breath Seduced, or sleeplike hypnotised her, This maiden, stolen Crete-wards cross th’Aegean stretch, Made, by my Father, Minos: brother-half, half-alien, 83

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Which latter half, sheer ambition was. Wilier Even than Ulisses was he in this, for he Deceived (albeit of gods the first to be deceived), A god, my lord, and uncle, you: for when Crete’s King, Asterios, passed, Minos sought power, found opposition, Recoursed then to deception. So his deity In order to substantiate, he swore all that Should pass his lips in speech would hold as good, as true.

“Then confounded he your conceptions too, dear Uncle, Promising to, though he gave nothing, sacrifice Whatever gift you’d next send up from the salt-bright waves.

You gave him then, most curious act, even to me, A fellow-god, and my mind, fellow-deity, This bull: a bull of such great beauty as destroyed The little will of Minos, as, truth me admitting, It would of any who loved beauty more than goodness.

“And in that place he placed another for the rites, Which you, years onward seeing, raged in your new knowledge, And flamed up vengeance in the mind of the bull, goading Till he grew terror, to be killed by Hercules In seventh labour (who freeing, the bull then grew Itinerant again, till Theseus’ seventh killed it).

A gentler mind would by this have been sated, Indeed, surpassing every need in reason, will, Would have declared, ‘Too much’, and thrown some lateflowered grace To salve these wounds upon the states, and states’ sad souls.

Yet you, the now so sorrowful, as then so ruthless, And evermore capricious, Venus-with conspired To breed in Pasiphäe (costing her her peace) That strange desire, with this great raging bull to breed.

So she, as foul calls foul to be, desire called craft: Pasiphaë that master-builder, Daedalus, Called on to make her venal instrument, as fact As murder. In she clomb, then, and much as I loathed The meal the eagles had upon the pregnant hare At Aulis, still disgraceful more, this climb into Her own desire. Thus was the Minos-bull brought forth.

I put then, uncle, that this bullish curse is you.

You being the evil here, why do you not depart?

Why are you not more silent, why not be less bad?”

So sang this indignation through the goddess’ lips.

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iii.

What against such oration could be said in Neptune’s Defence, when all the accusations stemmed from, were, The truth? With thoughts the godly conscience put to wrack, He, making flat, perfunctory utterances of propitiance, Retired to sea: whereon to slight smile turns the woe Of the sweet Artemis, whose beauty happy’s like Some transcendental form, not single issue, of A flower. “Virbius,” she sang, adopting lyric, “The funny twists of fate, which men are born to, you Are soon to be the benefiter of. For Neptune, My foolish uncle, still has not perceived, nor, far As I can see, has any god but me, that life Still somewhat clings within your deathly parts, and can Be brought to some new mode of life yet sweeter, though Animate hunters’ games, and physic accident Must lie without your purview now. Come, I’ll you gather, And port you to the healer: not my brother, but Asclepius, who on my asking shall with herbs Revivify you, whereupon I’ll steal you in A veil of cloud unto that sacred place, which by The ones who lief the book, is known as Eden, but Which gods refer to as Adonis Garden, which, As has been heard, the proton-seminary is Of everything which segues to the corporal world And is the whither all which, withered, then returns.

So Kronos with his scythe may take a few here, there, But stows them there each time to life renew, wherefore Kronos is ruled by Kairos, and, deep mystery Reveals, that these two hide, in their disparity, Parity, that these two are one, which one we name Synkronos: he the god who of timely fabric is, And rules the interchange of thing and thing, from small To great. I have looked into him today, and he Has orchestrated all, has all composed, so that The will of vicious love, and chastest honour once, And the same time, may be requited, and has split Indeed, truth’s stuff itself (which is time’s child) in two, Creating now two truths: one which wends way to Venus, The dark-eyed, moveless-willed, littoral reckless goddess, Concerning satisfaction of her pride: and one,

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To us, sweet Virbius, two times a man, which we Alone of all immortals, mortals, privy are to.

Come let us part, you now near deity: the design Is set, and time awaits, our story to resolve.”

So sang the goddess to the listning corse of Virbius.

Then the goddess wraps him in unknowing cloud, And steals him to that healer way: Who stands in grove all laurelled and long-gowned, As Artemis descends, and to his sight presents The clothy cloud effacing to reveal his parts: “Asclepiè, I bear here within my arms the fragments Of a boy whom death now tries usurping on, Who though could not be thought so from this wrecky waste, Was in his life so near and tentative towards Our godly state, and suff’rer of the numen-will Of blank necessity, and blanker grandsir Neptune, And so to me devoted, that I bring him here To you, to heal him. If you list to my entreaty, Tell filthy death with your sweet herbs, he has no right To crouch on this fair life-locale, who sur-prized is As purest by the purest of the gods, Diana, Who’d hymn me so: ‘Follow, my hunters, singing, follow!

Bright light’s brought forth for us to praise her, bright Diana, Heavenly ouranian, and offspring of high jovial Zeus!

Artemis careful, present, us-interessed: Lady, lady, most awful, and issue of Zenos: Hail, hail, ô daughter Latona’s, Artemis! Zeus’s, Lovelier than all many maids: who in vast heaven Dwell, noble-fathered, in the polychrysine house Of Zeus. Hail, yea, loveliest, loveliest of all Olympus!’

As gods love love, I love this boy, would have him well.”

Such was her to-the-healer suit. And he to her: “His fame, my lady-goddess of far-sighted aim, Has stretched to hymning of him even to my ear: which, Yearning at the roster of his merits, I feared, Knowing the godly spend nor long nor peaceful span Within this lifely realm we oversee, for deity Being so absolute, eternally distends from The tractless mesh of imperfection wrung in life.

Such is the way. Yet it is pain to see bright youth Throwing aside its dynamis in overzeal: 86

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So say I, who am old. Necessity and Neptune Were but the doors made by the charging of his errors.

Still I’ll repair, although the body’s done, the spirit, Reanimate him once again, though something stiller.

To do so it shall be my joy.” So said the god, who Applies his charms and gentle medicining powers: That in the gloam, the parts of Virbius glom to one Which in the bright mysterious none could introspect, And issues thence Hippolytus conglomerate, Remanned Hippolytus, transfigured to a flower.

Diana brings him off to joyous paradise, That fairest, most capacious which invention natures, The garden of Adonis, where all flowers by which She beautifies herself great nature hither fetches.

This the first seminary is, of all things, which Are born, then live and die, planted in old rich soils And walled in either side by iron once, then gold: The place is fronted by a double gate, which stands Golden and fresh once, then the other dried and old.

Here Genius is the porter: clamour souls by him, Requiring that he them with fleshly cloth enfurls, To let them in the corporal world, to live and know, Which as he likes and fate agrees to, he assents, Clothing and sending forth till they return By hinder gate. Some thousand years replanted there, They issue once again into the changeful world, And like a wheel they run around from old to new.

Thereto there is no gardener, for each grows in Accordance to prime nature’s word, and logic grace; Nor waters need, since timeless moisture they imply.

Infinitude of shape and form there dwells, in known And yet unknown diversities, the store of which Although in ceaseless use, is never once diminished.

From substance-chaos being’s self collects, both matter And feature-form, puts body on, steps into life.

So-being substance bides eterne: for when life fades, Along with form, these are but changed, and substance stays, Altering only outward dress with each new hour, Scribed as it is in nature, substance so to change.

Within this haven dwells scythe-swinging Time, who cuts All goodness, illness too, and glory downward brings, Subjection-unto-pity free as Time remains.

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Yet seeing fair things marred, the gods to pity bend: Though all decays in time, and to its end still runs.

Were Time not here, each thing would have immortal joy, Plenty and pleasure, love (from envy free), full flowing.

Within the mind of such a nearly paradise, There rests an arbour on the summit of a mount, Composed of myrtle trees and yet unpierced by sun, Nor wracked by angry winds. Such set-in-stillness place, Made and preserved by inkling of the trees themselves, Retains, with diverse flowers, lovers transformed of yore: Here Hyacinth, Narcissus, Amaranthus flower, Here both Adonis and Amintas dwell, and now to Their stock Diana adds her Virbius with this prayer: “Here from the envy of the Stygian gods, who hate Our love, Hippolytus, I you conceal: albeit You subject to mortality once were, yet now You are no more, in mutability remaining Eterne and, like Adonis, father to all form: Therefore needs must you live, who living give to all.

Live then here in eternal bliss, and fear no more Bullish grotesque, nor ire of power, nor ruthless need; My best for now. I visit shall as things succeed.�

So sang the goddess. Veneremur, et finis.

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XXIII. An Optation Let a man complete his days in good Works, and let the sacred breath, the Athem, None restrain, take music for his tutor Let who cares for good, being so temperate Full of order, and natural proportion.

Good his motif, call to motion, that When all motions cease, good then sate him In his final thoughts, and these last thoughts go Specting back on good, consider, smiling.

XXIV. Envoy So this your world’s first view, our Synkronos, Written out in haste: may then your readers Excuse your faults, and love what little gems In coarse casements they can find: and may They see, although failed beauty here or there, Goodness strived in every line composed, And truth was always chasing after both.

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Postface It was breakfast time and I had unashamedly turned a blind eye to porridge, as one tends to do when one likes to enjoy things. ‘How do you like your eggs?’ I queried my girlfriend, unsuspecting of her inadvertently charming response. ‘I like it when you crack them into the pan. You let the white do what it does, and then, uh, I guess you leave the yolk alone too. That’s how I like them.’

The rational part of me (often symbolised as an unpersuasive blob, laden with warts and perpetually clinging to a severe precipice) in its unbending lust for efficiency and succinctness felt relatively swindled of those fifteen seconds. But the rest of me (also bloblike but with a penchant for neckties) couldn’t help but adore the over-description and much preferred that particular answer to the efficient but boring answer, ‘fried’. It was this little incident that sprung to the front of my mind when I read May-Lied. De Syncrono.

Nine months bring forth a child; In five, then, how bring forth Sur-mortal verse? The good Its very self must thanked be For all the depth of five: That three threes nine give, yet With only two fives I Reach into ten, whose fruit, Being exsculpted quincunx, I joy at.

‘Exsculpted quincunx’ alone was enough to tickle a nerve so forcefully

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fantastic yet sincere phrase. Never has a point been so eloquently

lindy-hopped around as in this verse; the way in which the words are coupled, tripled, even ‘quincunxed’ together is enthralling and chocolately and indulgent and more-ish. The cæsura, the rhetorical

questions and mathematical workings out; it all seems excessive,

and yet, totally welcomed and somehow absolutely necessary.

This of course was only the first thought that arrived, and I know myself well enough not to trust my initial thought, nor the following three. I attacked this particular poem a number of times

before I realised that the beauty doesn’t solely lie in its charming and unapologetic indulgence, rather, that it, like many other

poems in this collection, is self-aware, conscious of its progression as it progresses, pleasingly rhythmic and multi-layered with

significances, implications, wordplay and a spectrum of remarkable

references. It feels as though the ‘meaning’ (should I be so crude as to call it that) of these poems, has been baked into a five tiered

cake, and at our leisure we have been invited to chomp through buttercream frosting and strawberry jam, gradually understanding

the flavour and increasingly becoming fulfilled. Without any glimpse of cliché or routine, each poem is peppered with a conceit or an ending that glows subtly with importance. There’s no such thing as a single serving sentiment here; the final lines and stanzas have that gentle but perpetual kind of significance, the kind that gets comfy three rows back in your subconscious.

I daren’t have a favourite in such a wonderful and varied collection of poetry, but if one were to plunge into prejudice I’d have to jump feet first into Voces Intimae Preliminary Study for The Way, in which

the heart and head have a passionate duel. The words and their execution, of course, relentlessly beautiful, but the scene itself is

one we can all see eye to eye with; internal conflict, each opponent with sound, convincing arguments, so much so that it births severe unrest as we continue to arrive at no conclusion. Such a satisfying, gorgeous and perhaps humorous moment is it then 92

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that the narrator steps into the discussion and heroically demands that they, the heart and head, must ‘harmonise’ should the poetry collection continue. I rarely grin whilst reading lest the people in my near vicinity begin to wonder from where I have escaped, but the conceit of this poem not only demands harmony from itself, but a smile from the reader, who, having vicariously experienced each persuasive end of the conflict, is handed a nice hot creamy bowl of resolution. This particular part is also a terrific example of the attractive vein of cohesion that pulses through the collection and occasionally palpitates magnitude. At the end of this poem––

We cannot all the length Of Synkronos have you Like two strings each mistuned, That when I set the bow Some songy double note To stop, screech, rend, and falter, And tear music to sound.

––and later–– CHARLES. You’re right! Here it is. Good Lord! Did I have an extra finger when I played it before? Look at the fourth bar.

ILEXIA. Fool, do you know music? If you put the bottom string down a tone, those notes are an easy grasp.

A simple relation, but so charged with meaning; instrument strings being manipulated to form congruousness and clarity, at first as a metaphor for compromise between head and heart, and secondly as a humourous critique of complexity and the ease with which one can dilute it should one know how to bend the rules (or strings).

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How desperately I wish to quote the final poem Envoy given its perfection, its sincerity, the self-referential ‘little gem’ that it undoubtedly is – but I shan’t and can’t. It’s a tiny piece of art that exists exactly where it should, at the end of this collection, and though I wish not for you to overlook everything previous, or even look forward to it as such, just know that come this final reflection you will have journeyed up, down and through a wealth of wit, dry humour, decorous, elegant wordplay and honest accounts of beauty, only to be met with a faultless conclusion.

Isaac Worthington, Poet

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