into the air,
you who are occupied
in the bewildering
sand-heap maze
of present-day endeavour;
you will be, not so much frightened
as paralysed with inaction,
and anyhow,
we have not crawled so very far
up our individual grass-blade
toward our individual star.
[15]
Too old to be useful
(whether in years or experience,
we are the same lot)
not old enough to be dead,
we are the keepers of the secret,
the carriers, the spinners
of the rare intangible thread
that binds all humanity
to ancient wisdom,
to antiquity;
our joy is unique, to us,
grape, knife, cup, wheat
are symbols in eternity,
and every concrete object
has abstract value, is timeless
in the dream parallel
whose relative sigil has not changed
since Nineveh and Babel.
[16]
Ra, Osiris, Amen appeared
in a spacious, bare meeting-house;
he is the world-father,
father of past aeons,
present and future equally;
beardless, not at all like Jehovah,
he was upright, slender,
impressive as the Memnon monolith,
yet he was not out of place
but perfectly at home
in that eighteenth-century
simplicity and grace;
then I woke with a start
of wonder and asked myself,
but whose eyes are those eyes?
for the eyes (in the cold,
I marvel to remember)
were all one texture,
as if without pupil
or all pupil, dark
yet very clear with amber
shining …
[17]
… coals for the world’s burning,
for we must go forward,
we are at the cross-roads,
the tide is turning;
it uncovers pebbles and shells,
beautiful yet static, empty
old thought, old convention;
let us go down to the sea,
gather dry sea-weed,
heap drift-wood,
let us light a new fire
and in the fragrance
of burnt salt and sea-incense
chant new paeans to the new Sun
of regeneration;
we have always worshipped Him,
we have always said,
forever and ever, Amen.
[18]
The Christos-image
is most difficult to disentangle
from its art-craft junk-shop
paint-and-plaster medieval jumble
of pain-worship and death-symbol,
that is why, I suppose, the Dream
deftly stage-managed the bare, clean
early colonial interior,
without stained-glass, picture,
image or colour,
for now it appears obvious
that Amenis our Christos.
[19]
He might even be the authentic Jew
stepped out from Velasquez;
those eye-lids in the Velasquez
are lowered over eyes
that open, would daze, bewilder
and stun us with the old sense of guilt
and fear, but the terror of those eyes
veiled in their agony is over;
I assure you that the eyes
of Velasquez’ crucified
now look straight at you,
and they are amber and they are fire.
[20]
Now it appears very clear
that the Holy Ghost,
childhood’s mysterious enigma,
is the Dream;
that way of inspiration
is always open,
and open to everyone;
it acts as go-between, interpreter,
it explains symbols of the past
in to-day’s imagery,
it merges the distant future
with most distant antiquity,
states economically
in a simple dream-equation
the most profound philosophy,
discloses the alchemist’s secret
and follows the Mage
in the desert.
[21]
Splintered the crystal of identity,
shattered the vessel of integrity,
till the Lord Amen,
paw-er of the ground,
bearer of the curled horns,
bellows from the horizon:
here am I, Amen-Ra,
Amen, Aries, the Ram;
time, time for you to begin a new spiral,
see—I toss you into the star-whirlpool;
till pitying, pitying,
snuffing the ground,
here am I, Amen-Ra whispers,
Amen, Aries, the Ram,
be cocoon, smothered in wool,
be Lamb, mothered again.
[22]
Now my right hand,
now my left hand
clutch your curled fleece;
take me home, take me home,
my voice wails from the ground;
take me home, Father:
pale as the worm in the grass,
yet I am a spark
struck by your hoof from a rock:
Amen, you are so warm,
hide me in your fleece,
crop me up with the new-grass;
let your teeth devour me,
let me be warm in your belly,
the sun-disk,
the re-born Sun.
[23]
Take me home
where canals
flow
between iris-banks:
where the heron
has her nest:
where the mantis
prays on the river-reed:
where the grasshopper says
Amen, Amen, Amen.
[24]
Or anywhere
where stars blaze through clear air,
where we may greet individually,
Sirius, Vega, Arcturus,
where these separate entities
are intimately concerned with us,
where each, with its particular attribute,
may be invoked
with accurate charm, spell, prayer,
which will reveal unquestionably,
whatever healing or inspirational essence
is necessary for whatever particular ill
the inquiring soul is heir to:
O stars, little jars of that indisputable
and absolute Healer, Apothecary,
wrought, faceted, jewelled
boxes, very precious, to hold further
unguent, myrrh, incense:
jasper, beryl, sapphire
that, as we draw them nearer
by prayer, spell,
litany, incantation,
will reveal their individual fragrance,
personal magnetic influence,
become, as they once were,
personified messengers,
healers, helpers
of the One, Amen, All-father.
[25]
Amen,
only just now,
my heart-shell
breaks open,
though long ago, the phoenix,
your bennu bird
dropped a grain,
as of scalding wax;
there was fragrance, burnt incense,
myrtle, aloes, cedar;
the Kingdom is a Tree
whose roots bind the heart-husk
to earth,
after th
e ultimate grain,
lodged in the heart-core,
has taken its nourishment.
[26]
What fruit is our store,
what flower?
what savour do we possess,
what particular healing-of-the-nations
is our leaf? is it balsomodendron,
herb-basil, or is ours
the spear and leaf-spire
of the palm?
are we born from island or oasis
or do we stand
fruit-less on the field-edge,
to spread
shade to the wheat-gatherers
in the noon-heat?
[27]
Is ours lotus-tree
from the lotus-grove,
magnolia’s heavy, heady, sleepy
dream?
or pomegranate
whose name decorates sonnets,
but either acid or over-ripe,
perfect only for the moment?
of all the flowering of the wood,
are we wild-almond, winter-cherry?
or are we pine or fir,
sentinel, solitary?
or cypress,
arbutus-fragrant?
[28]
O Heart, small urn
of porphyry, agate or cornelian,
how imperceptibly the grain fell
between a heart-beat of pleasure
and a heart-beat of pain;
I do not know how it came
nor how long it had lain there,
nor can I say
how it escaped tempest
of passion and malice,
nor why it was not washed away
in flood of sorrow,
or dried up in the bleak drought
of bitter thought.
[29]
Grant us strength to endure
a little longer,
now the heart’s alabaster
is broken;
we would feed forever
on the amber honey-comb
of your remembered greeting,
but the old-self,
still half at-home in the world,
cries out in anger,
I am hungry, the children cry for food
and flaming stones fall on them;
our awareness leaves us defenceless;
O, for your Presence
among the fishing-nets
by the beached boats on the lake-edge;
when, in the drift of wood-smoke,
will you say again, as you said,
the baked fish is ready,
here is the bread?
[30]
I heard Scorpion whet his knife,
I feared Archer (taut his bow),
Goat’s horns were threat,
would climb high? then fall low;
across the abyss
the Waterman waited,
this is the age of the new dimension,
dare, seek, seek further, dare more,
here is the alchemist’s key,
it unlocks secret doors,
the present goes a step further
toward fine distillation of emotion,
the elixir of life, the philosopher’s stone
is yours if you surrender
sterile logic, trivial reason;
so mind dispersed, dared occult lore,
found secret doors unlocked,
floundered, was lost in sea-depth,
sub-conscious ocean where Fish
move two-ways, devour;
when identity in the depth,
would merge with the best,
octopus or shark rise
from the sea-floor:
illusion, reversion of old values,
oneness lost, madness.
[31]
Wistfulness, exaltation,
a pure core of burning cerebration,
jottings on a margin,
indecipherable palimpsest scribbled over
with too many contradictory emotions,
search for finite definition
of the infinite, stumbling toward
vague cosmic expression,
obvious sentiment,
folder round a spiritual bank-account,
with credit-loss too starkly indicated,
a riot of unpruned imagination,
jottings of psychic numerical equations,
runes, superstitions, evasions,
invasion of the over-soul into a cup
too brittle, a jar too circumscribed,
a little too porous to contain the out-flowing
of water-about-to-be-changed-to-wine
at the wedding; barren search,
arrogance, over-confidence, pitiful reticence,
boasting, intrusion of strained
inappropriate allusion,
illusion of lost-gods, daemons;
gambler with eternity,
initiate of the secret wisdom,
bride of the kingdom,
reversion of old values,
oneness lost, madness.
[32]
Depth of the sub-conscious spews forth
too many incongruent monsters
and fixed indigestible matter
such as shell, pearl; imagery
done to death; perilous ascent,
ridiculous descent; rhyme, jingle,
overworked assonance, nonsense,
juxtaposition of words for words’ sake,
without meaning, undefined; imposition,
deception, indecisive weather-vane;
disagreeable, inconsequent syllables,
too malleable, too brittle,
over-sensitive, under-definitive,
clash of opposites, fight of emotion
and sterile invention—
you find all this?
conditioned to the discrimination
of the colours of the lunar rainbow
and the outer layers of the feathers
of the butterfly’s antennae,
we were caught up by the tornado
and deposited on no pleasant ground,
but we found the angle of incidence
equals the angle of reflection;
separated from the wandering stars
and the habits of the lordly fixed ones,
we noted that even the erratic burnt-out comet
has its peculiar orbit.
[33]
Let us measure defeat
in terms of bread and meat,
and continents
in relative extent of wheat
fields; let us not teach
what we have learned badly
and not profited by;
let us not concoct
healing potions for the dead,
nor invent
new colours
for blind eyes.
[34]
We have seen how the most amiable,
under physical stress,
become wolves, jackals,
mongrel curs;
we know further that hunger
may make hyenas of the best of us;
let us, therefore (though we do not forget
Love, the Creator,
her chariot and white doves),
entreat Hest,
Aset, Isis, the great enchantress,
in her attribute of Serqet,
the original great-mother,
who drove
harnessed scorpions
before her.
[35]
Let us substitute
enchantment for sentiment,
re-dedicate our gifts
to spiritual realism,
scrape a palette,
point pen or brush,
prepare papyrus or parchment,
offer incense to Thoth,
the original Ancient-of-days,
Hermes-thrice-great,
let us entreat
that he, by his tau-cross,
invoke the true-magi
c,
lead us back to the one-truth,
let him (Wisdom),
in the light of what went before,
illuminate what came after,
re-vivify the eternal verity,
be ye wise
as asps, scorpions, as serpents.
[36]
In no wise is the pillar-of-fire
that went before
different from the pillar-of-fire
that comes after;
chasm, schism in consciousness
must be bridged over;
we are each, householder,
each with a treasure;
now is the time to re-value
our secret hoard
in the light of both past and future,
for whether
coins, gems, gold
beakers, platters,
or merely
talismans, records or parchments,
explicitly, we are told,
it contains
for every scribe
which is instructed,
things new
and old.
[37]
Thou shalt have none other gods but me;
not on the sea
shall we entreat Triton or Dolphin,
not on the land
shall we lift rapt face and clasp hands
before laurel or oak-tree,
not in the sky
shall we invoke separately
Orion or Sirius
or the followers of the Bear,
not in the higher air
of Algorab, Regulus or Deneb
shall we cry
for help—or shall we?
[38]
This search for historical parallels,
research into psychic affinities,
has been done to death before,
will be done again;
no comment can alter spiritual realities
(you say) or again,
what new light can you possibly
throw upon them?
my mind (yours),
your way of thought (mine),
each has its peculiar intricate map,
threads weave over and under
the jungle-growth
of biological aptitudes,
inherited tendencies,
the intellectual effort
of the whole race,
its tide and ebb;
Trilogy (New Directions Classic) Page 3
