| (The Mass) | 26 | |
| Section I | 30 | |
| Section II | 35 | |
| Section III (The Agent) | 38 | |
| Section IV | 50 | |
| On The Traverse of the Wall, I | ||
| (The Wall) | 53 | |
| Section VIII | 86 | |
| The Celtic Insertions | ||
| The First Celtic Insertion, I93 | ||
| The Second Celtic Insertion, I | 103 | |
| The Third Celtic Insertion | 111 | |
| The Second Celtic Insertion, II | 119 | |
| The First Celtic Insertion, II | 122 | |
| On The Traverse of the Wall, II | ||
| Section VIII | 124 | |
| Section IX | 129 | |
| Section X | 137 | |
| Section XI | 139 | |
| Section XII | 143 | |
On ‘The Traverse of the Wall, I’ contains versions of ‘The Wall’, ‘The Dream of Private Clitus’ and ‘The Tutelar of the Place’.
The Celtic insertions present versions of ‘The Hunt’ and ‘The Sleeping Lord’.
‘On the Traverse of the Wall, II’ contains versions of ‘The Narrows’, ‘The Fatigue’ and ‘The Tribune’s Visitation’.
Section XIII was used in the construction of The Anathemata and also for insertions into ‘The Fatigue’. Section XIV is in rough form and published as ‘The Roman Dinner Conversation’. The absence of Sections VI and VII simply denotes that no sheets specifically marked Section VI and Section VII were located with the manuscripts, although narrative continuity is not broken as a result of their absence.
Inclined in the midst of the instruments
and invoking the life-giving Persons
and in honour of the former witnesses,
et istorum,1 dusty in the cist,
he kisses the place of sepulture.
He turns to ask of the living.
Those round about answer him.
He turns again and immediately
toward the tokens.
He continues and in silence
inclined over the waiting creatures
of tillage and of shower.
Ceres with Liber and
the dancing Naiad
have heard his: Come, who makes holy2
and now so still
between the horns of the mensa
they wait awhile
his: ratify, accept, approve.3
You are his special signs
and you’ll be doubly signa
before he’s at the Unde et memores4
O no! — not flee away
but wait his word
not to the infernal jail
(as blind makers tell
by Cam stream)5
not troop off — not you, nor
Peor’s baalim
but wait on him
not brutish you,
but you his dear forerunners
each of you — and his figura too.
Need peculiar powers forgo their stalls?
He’s no doucer of dim tapers
and why should Anubis hasten
except to glast the freeing of the waters.
So stay
but when they sing
QUI VENIT
here all of you
kneel
every Lar of you
numen or tutelary
from terra, pontus and the air
or from the strait bathysphere.
Now constellate
are all your brights
of this lifted Lode.
What light else
brighted you ever?
He stands upright now in the weeds
of the young-time, of the sap years.
Under his fair-worked apparels
the tubular blacks of the mean years
of the dead time.
In file of two
the patrician tunicas
move up in support.
(They’ve stitched the laticlave
so, since the year that measures all
the years.)
He hunches free of wrist
the gothic folds
(O, give us a Roman planeta any day!)
Loudly he clears his throat
brother ass must neigh for all his
May Day rosette
the belly murmurs though it serve Melchisedec.
Full and clear he sounds his vowels
when he says Per omnia
but his full chin crumples to the
pectoral folds at Gratias agamus.
And now he sings out
and alone
the gleemen and the Powers take the cue
he has the Nine Bright Shiners at his beck
when he stands substitute
to the Man in the Mock.
(you, dark-membraned
awned in dim sanctus-pent
softly flit, cum angelis exult
and with clerestory concelebrants
mix your shadowy webs
they sometimes make you
signa of the evil thing
but laugh at them
and stretch again your fragile pinions
high up and over the meal spread
tumbling our Faustian spaces
where the stone creatures grin.
You are the proper image
and very figure
of us all
purblind, yet, somewhat winged.)
He thumbs a page or so
smooths the violet marker out
swift on, professionally
minding his Roman step
seems to search for what mislaid
tilts this ever so little
with a sensitive deliberation
backhands Miss Weston’s leaning lily
clear of the instruments.
You can hear her penny stop
or a beads drop or rope slack
chafe staple in sanctus-pent
high up and over the table spread
or cat call
from pleasure-go-round outside,
other side urbs.
His recollected fingers now
his supports close in
each to his proper station.
Madeline in fox
lets her hair-net bide
and in her pew
deep calls to Mrs. Calypso Fortescue.
The movements peculiar to the transfigured man
cause bells to be rung.
You can hear now the whine from the
south porch where Mrs. Fripp has
chained the dog
for a thousand quarantines.
The worn bronze toe
of the Capitoline Fisher
(who holds the troia keys)
you can just avoid, and
between
the Miss Bodkin’s equinoctial hat
and the devout shoulders of Colonel Cornelius
you can see the work
done at the tumulus.
And does the sacristan
fetch out the jackal’s head?
He does well
for all must die
who would eat the Bread
and where is he who said
I AM BARLEY?
In the north porch
West-wave Launcelot
beats against that
varnished pine
his Aryan pommel
fractures the notices for the week
he would see
right through the chamber door
he would be
where the Cyrenian deacon
leans inward
to relieve the weight
he too would aid the venerable man
surcharged with that great weight.
In the south porch
Argos the dog
howls outright.
Why’s he elect between his paps,1 are we not all illumined, is the gnosis his prerogative, he’s first whoever’s least despite the manifesto.
It’s always Benjamin’s mess!2 Whose right hand he fondles, whose left hand is under his head.3
I’ll lay he’ll put it in a book some day with a fine Hellenic twist —
Then up step-ped one: O indeed it is not I,
then leaned across another
in rivalry:
d’you mean by me, or me.
O sir, it’s not me.
Nor me, that I declare:
on aught yon cross
on book or attested fragments.
By each especially sacred tie we’ve trothed often.
Haven’t I said it over so often
and ever again.
I’ve done my best by the Party.
I’ld turn all my cheeks for the Party.
Stint that — less now of that, ever to all contention, brother, would you grant.
Is now the fellowship wholly mischiefed:4
is this the wounding
at the love-board
in the house of friends.5
Time’s turn: there’s no help now.
The baleful shiners on the night she cried: Manchild! — they determined my way.
I might have known — but I too, I would have had some part.
Is his sweet morsel given the zero sign?
Who’s he that enters now my heart
and yet’s without
who has me in the small
his persuading knuckles closely pressed
wriggle I never so
who now quietly commands, his breath so close:
get out, get on!
wring feathered necks as you go
to stifle in his dung hill servitors
the vatic crow.
What lags you now?
They’re pious men
that hand the wages bright
who sits in Moses’ seat traffic aright
they’re elect of the nation
and learned men also.
To question Jacob’s senate
who are you?
See prevenient Yahve
guiding their expedience
what’s from you
but strait obedience?
In any case the bargain’s struck and ordinary contract now compels deliverance of the goods and honour itself would have you do what is to do.
Moreover
the counted silver waits you
Up! Praise of Kerioth
Up! Zimri’s greater son
steady the articulations
do what must be done.
I see the devil knows how to rhyme, that we remember easily his doggerel. He’s always had a turn for the rhetoric and that’s infectious and upon me now: it goes with situations — we speak to tighter measure in tranquility.
What of these words of ice
of lead and ice
that he himself should seem
to echo?
Yes, echo, ascribe to and make urgent:
Do what you have to do
and do it quickly.
How they’ll put it
down the history maze
Ariadne, lend your twined clew to sacred exegetes who’ld seek to worry out how Love Himself should seem to speak so harshly.
O truth, O fact, what maze you tangle
in the night I tread.
Is Gnossus to Judaea come for me alone
to walk in?
Be still: all this is over-drawn and far too flustered.
This is no mood to cast accounts —
how does it stand?
My nation’s curia, and so, my nation’s Jove, hold me to what’s convened
but I’m bound to him
who is the merchandize
I traffic in.
Nor he nor they
leave me time nor grant a middle way
but force a reckoning.
So, I’ll elsewhere for argument and — bless their subtle minds, they’re gentlemen, who trace these matters out with some give and take.
From what I’ve heard ’em say
in the Ten Towns1
Zeus and Prometheus change attributes
and so are one.
So still, perhaps, I’ve part with him
some part
the other half
to work the drama out.
Perhaps?
Why, must be!
How other.
Bride Ishtar!
Hamans don’t hang on every tree
they’re key men
and most integral to the pattern
so would I be.
If not with the eleven
that make the haven2
… if not to drink his cup
new at supper on Olympus
I’ll drain whatever vintage
this lamb’s wraith
permits in Tartarus.
More, I’ll take a rise
out of the Morning Star
and learn the Covering Cherub
his own trade
I’ll sell him as well
and lead a faction war in hell.1
But no — won’t do — we’re still on the dramatic tack: heroics leapfrog phantasies — we’ve each a fancy for the crucial role. These chancy speculations fever us — what are the probabilities? What has dull likelihood to offer?
After all, more than one opinion is received and exegesis knows more than one way.
Let’s fetch our precepts from the Sadducees and fur our tippets in the Zadoc school, let’s go to college with the sacred swells and hear what comfortable words these cynic doctors tell who’ve made a job of eschatology, who leave imagined angels to waken Shammai’s dead, stiff as their texts of needlework and bid ’em blow improbable trumps in Hillel’s noodledom.
That’s goodish sense — they’re men of fact and dress our antique dogmas up to date.2
Shall the god of the living burn among the tumuli for wanted debtors?
Do not the under silences keep interminable jubilee?
Beyond the eyeless sarcophagi they know perpetual Sabbath and all their emancipated years are sevens of cancellation.3
That smells more factual and suits me well.
Let sweet oblivion lull me where acts no longer generate their opposites.
We’ll take our cue from canon and from deutro-canon: what says our chrism’d Daphnis — supposing he’d a finger In Exitu4—and what old Baruch in his jeremiad?5
I’ll be their man when they sing
of those gone down to silence:
these praise thee not
why then!
nor curse thee not
because they are not.
That serves me best
where Sheol’s hollow synthesis
sets final term to all antithesis.
The wary Didymus tries the shutter; if it be firm, he says, against the wolf wind from the potter’s flats, if it be firm, he thinks, against the eye without, against the hooded eye against the chink: the eye that guides the hand that jots the dossier.
The steer-board lord eyes the twin sons of thunder, eyes, in the plastered recess behind the low entry, where the salt tackle hangs and the troia keys, bundled in shadow under the duffle coat the two sword hilts.
Eyes again the vacated place that mischiefs the pattern:
the napkin fallen, the spilled concomitants, the seat-board left askew — just like a bloody landsman — the festive petal bruised that felt his turning heel, the little cat to corner gone that hates commotion.
All from the Tetrachate now and best part wharf-side1 bred — I never could abide his Juda-looks.
I wonder who’ll benefit from the common purse tonight … and here’s a marvel:
where’ll he buy
with shutters up ’gainst passage ’o the god?2
Refolds and folds again a linen cloth
sees within the dish’s pentagon, under
the storm-light that sways from the
central thwart
his tribal manna
and the sweet flesh of quails
sees the green lettuce
and sniffs the spring
sees the two fish gleam.
Looks to his feet that garboard-strake had hardened,
that are so clean from Maundy flood
that on a contrary flood
had chanced it for a pace or so
but, not for long.
Shifts this half a turn, takes up, puts down, handles this, now that, regards again the wrapped weapons that thrust from the weathered cope:
doubts if they be sufficient.3
Remembers what on hilly Thabor
once he saw
that was the hour — the bright hour
to see the tribal lords
and him between.
O happy would we be
to wattle the green booths there
for the metamorphosed three
and him between, extra high and garnished
between mound and cloud.
It was good for us to be on that hill
under the mound
sleeping or sentinel.
The lights were uncreate
on all that mountain
the voice rang very clear
on that hill
O these brief hours — then the valley-way
down to demoniac dell.
Looks to his horny dukes
splayed awkward on the fairé cloth:
as the wiped feet,
so these are brighted —
every whit.1
Looks to his board mates:
each looks every one from
one to another and either to other seems
more fair-bodied than ever they saw.2
But now they look, everyman, so dumb —
and him already so heavy3
now the shadow —here the storm way
the dark meander now,
the way deepens here.
Under the faltering wick
this one folds the used napkins
here the side-light is put out
now the concluding ablutions
he sets the book convenient
for the post-oblation chapter —
the routine drags out
the fourth libation drained
the terminating rubrics are
obeyed — the final versicles
somehow got through.
Must be the eight night hour — close on.1
Soon then: go, you are dismissed.2
And then without
by night-way
night now — what meander now?
Is it gutter way? — if it’s brook-way
where is Achitophel?
But, may be — you can’t tell with him
y’r Grace — maybe he’ll take high-path
to the turn of the wall, close in under
run o’ the wall, by great Golden Gate
past Aurora’s door, ’long sheep-walk
toward where the naiad walks that troubles
the Probatica — then right and down,
’cross bridge,
where Nutting Dell narrows
at the God-bearer’s megalith
up far stepped-way, straight
to the oil press
through garden wicket to known-copse,
the ascertained place.
Can’t swear on that, y’r Grace,
we often resort to it, but you
never can say with him.
No, no fear o’ that, he’ll not
leave the prescribed zone — not
on Passage night — he’s a rare
one for the full observance —
y’r Grace’s informants
not withstanding.
By y’r Grace’s leave, the bargained
silver’s in exchange for facts,
and, in a humble way, y’r Grace,
I’m fond of facts — dreams are
m’ bugbear — that’s why I’m here.
Begging y’r Grace’s pardon,
if you think good, let’s have the price:
if not, forbear.1
Though I barter him for your coin bright
I’ll not paint black
what’s lily white.
I know the man, I have
the facts, and I’m disposed
to sell — as for the rest, let
propagandists deal.
No, yr’ Grace, no —
I’ll wait below
at fork of tomb-way,
that tapes him both ways
that’s where I’ll be
in sight of sleeping Zachary
that foretold the silver
in the shadow of the hanged duke’s
monolith — that’s where I’ll
wait y’r Grace’s gentile file.
And soon, maybe, his beauties
too, we’ll tangle — he’s in the
duke’s collateral line, as his
gilté tresses clearly tell1 — that’s royal
David’s mark — he’s very fair
to look upon, y’r Grace, in all
his members.… he’s shining
fair, y’r Grace.
He’s more than any other one
he’s ruddy among a thousand
— he’s as strong as
the cedars when he takes off
his coat —
O m’lord Pontiff
and saving your pious ears
that’s the bugger of it!2
Man, so was the Prince of Tyre fair
that walked the aboriginal hill, sealing
up the sum of beauty, the first born
of morning who made himself equal
with Yahve.
Bar Simon,3 what says your Beauty of
himself?
‘As Yahve is, I am.’
So we are credibly informed by
our more reliable agents.
The cap fits both, my son: these
two are as like as Janus-heads and so
indeed are one.
She that bore you named you the Praised
and how rightly: the praise of you
shall rebound to Jacob wherever this
Good News is told.
Why! Here’s a chance to make of
neo-Judas a greater than his noised namesake,
a Judas to cock a snook at Judas:
for Simon’s son the plummet drops
to crucial and chthonic myth
the shallows of mere history
he leaves to Judas Maccabee.
Here’s a role with some recession
to it!
Our score has promise of undertones.
Let’s play it.
Son of Kerioth,
our son, and now co-actor in this
ritual dance
you see in us no Pharisee with Beulah
on his chart where mirage is, but
one who loving our nation would
guide it to the inclinations of that
rod which registers where actual
water is.
Factuality is our lode: her beam
is chilly but cannot be illusory.
We do not, as some others do,
intermeddle phantasy with fact,
but we who sit in office, seeing
in detail and that unconsciously
close, the present shape, foresee in
part the shapeless future — nor
is it pleasant — no, it’s hideous!
But were we the last to wear the horned bonnet
for glory and for beauty1
and the last to offer at the Omphalos
with efficacious rites
being that year’s abominable elect
we’ld yet both prophecy and be part cause of
that year’s terminal desolation.
Though judgment is of our office and measure of prophecy
we’ld not presume where wise Daniels
discover in figure.2
Nor would we measure with him who
though of a proscribed rite, and from
a suspected hill-site — even from
Abiathar’s rock — was indeed yet
raised up to lament his generation1
—and ours, to probe where it
most hurts,
to arraign us all
and, with what discernment!
with what a sensitivity his
mantic genius lent him.
We make no such pretense:
these were the selected tools of Yahve:
great artists of a great period —
Old Masters in fact — that’s gone
for good, technique and all
and the requisite conditions.
We are not an upstart, Iscariot,
unaware of the turn of destiny
that makes a present other than
a past.
How should we try on the grand
manner in an impoverished age?
As for our times, they are so
narrowed, where’s room to swing
a cat in style?
There’s some would strain a pamphleteer’s
muse, and scribble of neo-Deborahs:
what issues?
Stuff as poor in form as inflammatory
in content:
not bringing the land
rest forty years
but bringing to Skull Hill
four, forty or fourscore
(one can’t gauge to a nicety
in matters of reprisal);
and, of course
bringing to as many Rachels
the accustomed role of Rachel
also — a small matter no doubt —
bringing to us ourselves as many hours
of tedium as our exercise of tact
can run to — lest worse accrue.
But why all this?
Because, Iscariot, few’ve the wit
to perceive
that a greater than Sisera is here!
Our pseudo-Jaels — pseudo, yet true
enough to the myth-type in dirty techniques —
were well advised to stop at
the butter milk — when it comes to hammers
it’s Jacob’s coffin and not a trustful
war-duke’s sleeping head that’s pegged
for good!1
Our contemporary Jabin’s legates are
seldom fugitive. If they lose skirmishes,
they never lose battles.
Caesar never sleeps.
Mark the changed fact world!
For, to be sure, the change will demark
and determine what is possible in deeds
and so what is formally possible in songs of deeds.
Have you, Iscariot, a sense of history
— I wonder — little of humour,
from the looks of you.
You’ll need both tonight and more.
When we, Iscariot, begin to prophecy,
as it is required by our office that
we should, we do so, as we’ve already
said, making few pretensions and
none as to form.
We are not a poet, Iscariot:
don’t speak of poetry, not — not
after the ducal son of Amoz —
for us — between ourselves, you know
— they can have much of the rest —
canonical or no.
Do you, Iscariot, read?
Why yes — all are literate, these days.
We read only the great authors.
Not all the great authors are
ours, Iscariot — that’s no part
of the promises, I warn you —
or Yahve lies — that’s daylight
clear. But there was one and one
of the greatest who was ours and
doubly ours — one of us — of our
own order — of The Society in
fact. It takes a bit of the priest
to make the best prophet and
as we see the best poet
too —
Poetry?
‘Woe to Ariel to Ariel
the city where David dwelt:
add year to year,
let them immolate what is oblated,
yet will I distress Ariel.
There shall be heaviness and sorrow,
and it shall be to me
as with Ariel.’
It’s grand, Iscariot, it’s grand!
We can’t run to that, Iscariot
— no we’re far from that
far, far and as far from the Lesser Twelve
as the mighty four.
What do I see this night?
But what night is this!
For what, this night, now,
we seem to see
would shake these pious meddlers
up:
sculptured in marble at a
south gate, the snouted beast,
that chewing no cud divides
the hoof.
Antiochus Epiphanes had much
to learn!
Why’s here all best part leveled?
I see nothing stir
bar here a contractor’s mate
and here, two beauties from a
haulage squad — and these but
kick heels,
and poke the indolent smoulder —
now it fires again the cordoned
litter
and I see across the thinning drift
a chalked board that cautions:
Lithostratos Dump Tilt V
The Property of Jupiter
Keep Away
Zone-praefect et custos
Demolitions Control.
But who’s this larking plough-hand
tunicled like a rogation boy:
his share-beam’s bladed antique bronze
and pitiless and all.
His team’s but two, but white and chosen:
she garland-horned and his bull-neck gay
— they circle the cumbered slope.
Must be heavy going:
he’d do better on cisalpine wheels.
Yet he’s plenty breath for bawling
as if this were his Latin spring
this calcined waste his lapsed
vervactum.1
Yet’s no March tilling
no mould-boards fixed?
then not last.
But’s gillyflower month,
and round the hot nones of it
near on when General Nebuzardan
lent these same nones in these
same parts a fiercer heat.2
But do I catch the burden o’ this
Georgie’s song:
For Athena to gain
Quirinus must till.
Let’s plough their palladia
into their hill.
We’ll turn the fossa deep
for Farmer Rufus
he bids ’em reap
not almond-fronded rods, but fasces.1
I now see new-angled courses
rise and dress themselves at once
on new and squared alignments —
they’ve three vaults already soaring.
Not Nehemias returned nor any neo-Ezra
restores to this tune:
a restitutor of practice it seems
a world-restorer perhaps?2
but one hand
adjusts the stella — so;3
which hand we’ve cause to know.
And who is this:
so we’re within doors and very still — yet
through his narrow lattice I think
I recognize, without, a shape or so:
that terraced contour’s not forgot, once seen
from Ain Karim side — whoever he
is he’s come to find it in the fields of
Ephrata, and he looks to
have stalled himself well — our
Elohists and rabbins shelved convenient,
at hand reach, yet, from his hat on peg
I’ld suppose him wrangler of an
idolatrous collegium.
Why yes, and there’s his lucid first loves
— well dog’s-eared, thumbed, now pushed aside
he yet half-eyes ’em as he writes
— that gets his goat — hot tears for
his Tullius wet our Pentateuch.
God save us, but I like him.
He’s of an Arya as are we
and with bad grace endures
the changing needs, yet he must to his
contemporary task.
His most unlikely companion from the
Hebron bush looks less irascible
than he — yet he himself looks less hard-eyed
as he makes joy of that beast.
His pillow’s hard enough
but what he now begins to transcribe
is hardest
AELIA AB AELIO HADRIANO CONDITA1
Can you, Iscariot, recall
a town of Aelia, and where
sited? — you were last at school.
But ah — now we tread yet more familiar
contours — and the time-terrain shifts too —
our foreseeing angel turns very recorder and
orders back as well as fro:
very far times: and of anabasis, of genesis
what meander? whose beginning?
Out of Sumer has he called our sire!
One of us then — very much so — the
pair of ’em. O blessed sight,
how my blood calls now to the
prince of soil finders — the
twice-named lord and his Sarah’s boy
with carried fire in his old fist.
Surely the gaffer of us all —
the bagman dux
from the intersected land
where the Mother sits in the
midst of the fertile-grid fields
she of the kultur-dispersal urbes:
— no wonder for this multitude of horns
I see the tumulus and the
claved wood laid trim
this same black rock,
this same Moriah hill-site — and
’cross wady, the provided anathema
masculine and young
that stands in his thicket by appointment.
I see five fresh briary roses
bright the strong members
and the spiked briary bough
forces the meek head askew
— nor not so meek.
God save us this he-lamb’s
horns of wrath.
Old Man — it’s by his
permit that you use him so.
They’ve closed the canon too soon
and shall need to add to Malachi
a deutero-Malachi if Caiaphas prophecy
and,
he does more than vaticinate
a fit oblation,1 who, this night,
would take that, in that same cedron
thicket,2 already bound against tomorrow’s
immolation.3
But let’s not tire our privileged eyes
more than need here — let’s focus on the
workaday and the immediate — there, too, the lines
narrow on the same mark.
But here, necessarily and first, we’re faced
with Caesar’s interests:
accommodate we must — or, be what
no man can effectively be — Caesar’s enemy.
Such farce, being men concerned only
with the effectual, we need not
entertain: did others not, then our
far purview might, happily, be as
much phantasy as is their present
policy.
Yet, in spite of all and for awhile
we keep the thing quiescent:
but elimination there must be.
We start with all irritants
and make a good start tonight.
Therefore tonight is terminal: this night,
this pasch is terminal
not that he’s of consequence — but an
irritant — Caesar’s peace and ours.
This skin of Juda suffers ichthyosis enough,
ours is a physician’s work.
We have long been credited with an opinion
—received by but few but now by many
seen to be opportune:
we need an azazel.
A goat’s a goat,
the lot’s on him.
You see, Iscariot, we’re both
fond of facts — let’s face our
facts together and our remembered
names shall together tell of this
night’s rememorable act —
memorable, yes, commemorative — yes
and immemorial, too.
Come, come, when we, God’s elected
and chief offerant, choose as his
and our instrument a marked
delinquent who comes unasked, begging
to turn despair to some account,
we’ld have him greet his turned
and unique good fortune with a
smile.
Instead of cells — pending enquiry,
we raise you up from vagrancy to
state employ — obliquely you serve
Caesar,
for the apprehension we envisage
is for the quiet of Caesar — but
more, for the quiet of Israel.
Yours is a double role
granted to few. To few? To few indeed
but to you, to none so wholly as to you
and you wholly of Juda.
A complex dance, significantly
masked — one to be stepped-out
with skill, this foot moving by
destiny, that by interest. A solemn,
effective and immemorial ritual
describes the figure, policy
determines the pace — such is
our dance: we would have you
for partner.
Not so sour-mouthed then!
As the silver, so the prospect’s bright
and this shall prove through you
our new deliverance-night.
Obscure Kerioth shall be blessed
in you and enter history.
Come near, my son:
we give you our peace,
Yahve’s peace, of course.
He knows his own.
Amen.
May he award you
as do we, and handsomely.
Go then:
here’s not all night to spare.
Get doing what is to do.
See that you’re there.
Captain — a word.
What’s now? — the rendezvous is fixed.
What’s more, get forward —
the first vigilia’s all but through.
There’s work to do — and
little asked of you
for ample pay.
You bring your batty’s kiss.
We’ll do the rest.
To numbers.
Get forward.
Sir!
Corporal? — another chit?
Let’s see;
full half-section, patrol order,
side-arms and staves
one coil of rope and manacles
(should he be truculent)
carried lights.
By your Jews’ Christ!
Does he issue from Dung or Skaian Gate?
Do we chase Hector round the wall or is
a new Mars come?
Or do we chase the Old Mars out
as Spring by Spring in Latium is done
at these ides of the first month?1
Is he a potentate with twelve dukes
for bodyguard that he must have
flamboys?
Is he a robber2 well digged in?
Do his picked threes watch the approaches?
I’ll wager they’re asleep — I’ve posted many picquets.
But has he lorica’d shiners in reserve?3
Best wait the Greek calends
and bide till absent Aelius
can dock ’em their passes to Laodicea-on-the-Sea
and march a toughened Ferrata from Pella
—or, draft us the Jovian Twelfth
or post from Cyrrhus the equivalent:
a single cohort of the Dandy Tenth
(they’ll yet fetch their washing
from Dubris beach-head)
they’ld take on six of his dozen legions
though marshaled by the Heavenly Pair.
But let’s be actual: let’s SOS the Gallica —
they’ve the hang of mopping-up in groves
and know the tactics of a war on cojurors.1
A full half-section!? A windy cornicularius2
with a scratch squad of batmen and chitties were ample.
But, carried lights
for the god o’ the grove
who’ll be his censer-boy
to go before?
who’ll sing his introit hymn
when we fetch him in?
who’ll respond to
his Judica3
when we drag him bound
to the steps of Gabbatha4
who’ll lend his issue sagum5
or what tribunus militum will loan
his tailored paludamentum
when we crown him
Jack O’ the Bean?
Who’ll garland his skewered limbs with
flower-of-May, for the solemn entry?
Who’ll chant his trisagion
but the Cock of Gaul?
Last Sol’s morn:
he came to town cum floribus et palmi.6
This Jove’s night:
we’ll stick a feather in his cap, and
call him Purpuratus!
But let’s away
this pantomime must be advanced
before the light of Venus-Day.1
On night-gust, for the night relief, at
the night-wall, inimitable, known for no
other, that tin throat that alone can
sound the classicum,1 cuts
quadripartite the shadow-hours, disciplines
the slack durations into columns of time.
Directional and absolute, the shrill convoking
chord penetrates back tenement, shakes
the sleepers under the low entries,
flusters the grey cock before his hour,
disturbs the private dream of Private Aulius,
gladdens him that his shift is done,
but breaks his sweet vision of his own far Ferrentium,2
breaks upon the shutters,
vibrates the vessel on the fair cloth,
obliterates, in the small room, the
instituting words.
The full clear call degenerates — above the
last flat note and the failing pitch,
breaks the sharp efficient word & the
butt-irons grounding & the heel-irons on
the flagged beat, & the clipt courtesies
exchanged. Muted, across the
recovered silence, the stomach cough
of Private Oenomaus,3 where he hugs close
the medium ballista pent, for the
enfilading winds that get
you nicely if you’re detailed for
the middle vigilia — and you
straight out of the guardhouse fug.
Their buggering sacramentum, signs
you on for half a life of this.
Two decades with the signa — fourteen
more years of nights, fourteen years of
nights of four vigiliae to each
night — you’d need an
abacus to figure out the sum
of hours you’re like to be
told-off for this middle-watch,
the watch between, the watch beyond
the ebb of yesterday yet this side
the changing tide that floods what
was tomorrow with to-day — the
empty watch, the middle silence,
it always was a sod of a watch.
Fourteen more years of nights to
watch with skinned eyes, rigid along the staked
mound, until you think it’s him whatever
small thing shifts outside the wire. To watch
from this dressed wall, by this arse-ways, kicking
onager,1 torsioned at the ready, & aligned
on Christ knows what — unless they reckon
keeping of new moons at the transit of
the god, the barley cakes, the mingled
sop, the libations, the lamb’s flesh given
and the recitation of the Praise,2 can turn, twixt dusk
and dusk, these fellaheen that weep for
their dead baals,3 or sing their fabulous
deliverances at the vernal turn, into
something to be reckoned with — as tough
a proposition as the Belgae,4 or those
flax-headed bastards at the West Wall.
Not on your life. But still — they’re right
enough to take no chances — plumb right.
That’s what the old hands used to say — back
at me first station — I can hear ’em yet
puttin it over on us rookies:
“Remember, the army never takes any chances,
the active ad-ministration — we won’t speak of
‘Q’ department — seldom underestimates the
requirements. The gen’ral always first considers
if he be able with fifteen maniples, or as they
say now, five cohorts, to meet him who with
half that personnel but with unknown
fire potential, comes against him — always
remember that — the big heads aren’t such
greenhorns as you’ld suppose — it’s not
out of love of yer body remember — if a
balls up was advantageous — well they’d
arrange a balls-up — but they’re not stiffs
not by a long journey and they know the
job — always remember that and thank your
stars you’re in the Roman army.”
That was at the station at Durostorum1
(where they guy the king in the purple cloak
to make the anemones grow)
that’s six years since — seen a bit since
then:
by way of the Sea
by way of our interior limes
from the traverse of the agger, from
the circuit of the wall.
Six years of nights of four vigilia to
each night — fourteen more years of
nights on the circuit of the agger
from the traverse of walls.
Roll on duration — Private Oenomaus, time-expired
can legally walk-out on the bleeders
hand in his kit
throw in his mitt
then, for an honourable hero, adequate provision
— at a subsistence level.
Fortuna Augusta smiles, Fortuna Publica
is all smiles. The magnates smile as
broad as the fisc, and no broader.
They cough up the bonus,
we all smile.
And then
an awkward deficit in the Dacian
returns, a sell-out in Illyricum,
an extra nasty packet in the
Teutoburg — like before.
And then
for your failing members
the cut dole
the necessary retrenchment, as they say
in the first leader.
Fortuna Plebeia takes her tip and hops it.
You light a votive taper at the Lucky Chance,1
down stream, below the city, at her
holy and aboriginal shrine, — she turns a
backside on you.
Fortuna Dubias, that’s the proper and
generic name of the bitch.
And then
beneath the architrave at the angle of the
cornice on the lee side the box office, at the swell
entrances, with the pinned-on battle-honours,
a Carr’s splint, an induced limp,
hold out the cadger’s palm for the small
change, that once grasped firm the small of
the butt, extend the trembling fist that
once made taut the ballista-stays, drove
home the agger-stakes, held tight the
bright Vexillum.
Reach out the hand, when
Madame Sosia comes to see if
spotted cat from Africa or
painted man from Thule
draws first blood at the afternoon
performance.
Get the right inflection
Get right under her jingo dugs:
Here comes an old emeritus from
Berytus Bay
What have you got to give him
today
for keeping his sacramentum
for leaving his nerves on the Frisian wire
for losing an eye to a Sythian sling
for keeping twenty years of nights
the middle vigil, with a gripe in his gut,
without a snug paludamentum
against the wet wind on the west wall
against the dry wind from Moab
the vatic wind from Edom
that stirs
by way of the sea
by Galilee of the nations
by way of the peoples
by way of the senate and the people of Rome
who keep the interior lines
who keep the extended limes
who keep our universal peace
for you, secure behind the wall
to drink the wine to break the bread?
Private Oenomaus is a stone in the living
wall that circuits the city that built
the house that has in it the room that
holds the table that supports the vessel
that flows with the food that tastes to each
of what each loves best in all the world,1
[one sheet of manuscript missing]
for the optio,
and to cut out a lot besides that’s because
the legate has it in for the procurator.
He’s always had it in for the procurator.
That’s because the procurator don’t exercise
elementary discretion — you can’t operate
that sort of thing here, it won’t work in
these chosen parts, master race or no —
you must respect their cult-taboos,
eagles or no eagles.
Like we did in Transalpina,
Celtica, in Belgica?
Ah mate, sure enough, but
Lutetia Parisorum ain’t Jerusalem —
that’s alright for the Carnutes, for the masters of the
secrets in Lugdunensis, who
fetch their oral code from White
Britannia — where Cronus sleeps
in a glass tower, outside Thule —
between wind and water, back side Thule,
in the unstable place — where bright Arcturus
from his icy constellation rules the
shifting insulae and the walls of mist,
where is airy nothing, where no logic is,
where is fancy bred, where March hares
are sacer, where come burning wood to
dance a game and the hills play Troy
with the chalk horses.
Beyond the sea horses, the hill horses
beyond Poseidon’s vallum
with Poseidon’s hook to stir the damp vapours
of their demi-paradise, the matriarch on
the chalk rostrum sits.
She’s next on the agenda.
And so will me and you be on the agenda.
We’re always on the agenda.
Liquidate them? — we always liquidate ’em.
But the vatic enchantress of Celtica,
insular or continental is one thing –
the masters of the Torah is another.
You can’t treat the cult priests of
the Judean Jove like that — they’re
a very solid proposition, and what’s
more, they won’t stand for it.
Who won’t stand for it?
Why they won’t stand for it, the administration
won’t, the comptrollers of the Fisc won’t,
nobody won’t. They don’t want trouble
in these parts, and they don’t intend to
have it neither — not just yet,
Procurator or no Procurator, agitators
or no agitators, precursors in skins
or the new Baal himself — when
they want trouble, they’ll make trouble, and
they’ll use the selected instruments of
trouble to subserve selected ends — there’s
the Pax Romana for you simplified
for tiros.
Sometimes I think we’re the Heavenly Pair
moving in the army – I hope we’re
together for the duration – a man needs
a friend in our trade walking his
twenty years by day by night from
polis to urbs, from caer to burg
in our inter lande
watching the god die.
We don’t know the ins and out
how should we? how could we?
It’s not for the likes of you and me to cogitate high policy or to
guess the inscrutable economy of the pontifex
from the circuit of the agger
from the traverse of the wall.
But you see a thing or two
in our walks of life
walking the compass of the vallum
walking for twenty years of nights
round and round and back and fro
on the walls that contain the world.
You see a thing or two, you think a thing or two, in our walk of life, walking for twenty years, by day, by night, doing the rounds on the walls that maintain the world
on the tread of the silex
on the heavy tread of the mound
up in the traversed out-work, stepping it at the alert, down on the via quintana stepping it double-quick by the numbers to break y’r tiro-heart …
dug in wrong side the limes
or walled in back at depot?
it’s events, more or less
as far as jumping to it goes.
But what about the Omphalos
there’s the place for the proud walkers
where the terminal gate
arcs for the sections in column
stepping their extra fancy step
behind the swag and spolia
o’ the universal world
… out from The Camp
in through the dexter arch of double-wayed Carmenta
by where Aventine flanks The Circus
(from ARX the birds deploy)
to where the totem mother
imported
Ionian
of bronze
brights Capitoline for ever
(from the Faunine slope of creviced Palatine
does the grey wraith erect her throat to welcome lupine gens?)
Erect, crested with the open fist that turns the evil spell, lifting the flat palm that disciplines the world, the signa lift in disciplined acknowledgement, the eagles stand erect for Ilia
O Roma
O Ilia
Io Triumphe, Io, Io…
the shopkeepers presume to make
the lupine cry their own.
The magnates of the Boarium leave their nice manipulations. You may call the day ferial, rub shoulders with the plebs. All should turn out to see how those appointed to die take the Roman medicine. They crane their civvy necks half out their civvy suits to bait the maimed king in his tinctured vesture, the dying tegernos of the wasted landa well webbed in our marbled parlour, bitched and bewildered and far from his dappled patria far side the misted Fretum.
You can think a thing or two
on that parade:
Do the celestial foreclosing
and the hard journeying
come to this?
Did the empyreal fires
hallow the chosen womb
to tabernacle founders of
emporia?
Were the august conjoinings,
was the troa’d wandering
achieved,
did the sallow ducts of Luperca
nourish the lily-white boys,
was Electra chose
from the seven stars in the sky,
did Ilia bear fruit to the Strider,
was she found the handmaid of the Lar.
Did the augers inaugurate, did the Clarissimi steady the trans-verse rods, did they align the plummets carefully, did they check the bearing attentively, was the templum dead true at the median intersection,
did the white unequal pair
labour the yoke, tread the holy circuit,
did they, so early
in the marls of Cispanda
show forth, foretoken
the rudiments of our order,
when the precursors
at the valley-sites made survey of the shifting loam, plotted the trapezoids on the sodden piles, digged the sacred pits, before the beginning …
did they shelve the hill-sites
for the rectagonal hutments, did the hill groups look to each other, were the hostile strong-points, one by one, made co-ordinate
did Quirinal with Viminal
call to the Quadrata,
did the fence of Tullius
embrace the mixed kindreds,
did the magic wall
(that keeps the walls)
describe the orbit
did that wall contain a world
from the beginning
did they project the rectilineal plane upwards
to the floor of heaven
had all
within that reaching prism,
one patria:
rooted clod or drifted star
dog or dryad or
man born of woman
did the sacred equation square the mundane site
was truth with fact conjoined
did the earth-mother
blossom the stone lintels
did urvus become urbs,
did the bright share
turn the dun clod
to the star plan,
did they parcel out,
per scamna et strigas
the civitas of God
that we should sprawl
from Septimontium
a megalopolis that wills death?
Does the pontifex, do our lifted trumpets, speak to the city and the world, to call the tribes to Saturnalia to set missrule in the curule chair, to bind the rejected fillet on the King of the Bean?
It’s hard to trapse these things
from the circuit of the agger,
from the traverse of the wall,
waiting for the middle watch to pass
wanting the guardhouse fug,
where the companions nod
where the sooted billiken
brews the night broth
so cold it is, so numb the intelligence,
so chancy the intuition, so alert the apprehension for us who walk in darkness in the shadow of the onager in the shadow of the labyrinths of the wall, of the world, of the robber walls of the world-city, trapesing the macrocosmic night.
Or, trapesing the night within, walking the inner labyrinth where the deeper night is, the night within the microcosm, under the tortoise of the skull, where the endless meander leads to the blocked traverse, where the mocking convolutions trapes the fixed orbit for every man walking? Under the legionary’s iron knob, under the tribune’s field crest, under the very distinguished gilted cassis of the Legatus himself?
We don’t know the ins and outs,
how can we? how shall we?
We remember only what our mothers told us
what their mothers told to them? what the Earth-Mother
told them. But what, did the queen of heaven
tell her. What happened between knees and
breast, by the fire flame, to the spindle side
over the griddle, by the white porch where our
sister sang the Sabine dirge …
or what the lash said to the cold quadrangle.
… they used to say we marched for Dea
Roma behind the wolf sign to eat up the world, they used to say we marched for the Strider, the common father of the Roman people, the father of all in our walk of life, by whose very name you’re called …
but now they say the Quirinal Mars
turns out to be no god of war but of armed peace. Now they say we march for kind Irene, who crooks her rounded elbow for little Plutus, the gold-getter, and they say that sacred brat has a future …
now all can face the dying god
the dying Gaul
without regret.
But you and me, comrade, the Darlings of Ares, who’ve helped a lot of Gauls and gods to die, we shall continue to march and to bear in our bodies the marks of the Marcher — by whatever name they call him …
we shall continue to march
round and round the cornucopia:
that’s the new fatigue
mounting guard on the tight-packed cellae
picqueting the gabine vaults,
stepping it round the damp course,
policing the abundant store the she-wolf’s
litter garnered in the long wolf-nights
behind the walking shields.
But in our hard day Jove’s eternal son
sits back and takes the air
— at Capri, it’s a fine place is Capri to
watch the god die, to watch the renewal,
to watch the assets pile. The uplands are
well lit on Capri, I’ll be bound.
Go easy chum, they crucify ’em for saying
less than that about the emperor.
They crucify ’em for dumb insolence now a days.
Who said what, about the emperor, or
the movements of the emperor.
I say where Apollo is the emperor is, where the
emperor is Apollo is, where Apollo is
all things feel the sun, all things
fructify. The she-wolf’s flanks grow sleek,
her long jowl has quite a chubby look.
She lies back with fleece about her
shoulders, stretches a generous paw,
the talons well drawn in, to grasp the caduceus.
She contemplates the tumbled fruits the
cornu spills, is quite the matriarch
and foster mother to the universal world, offers all
that store to all — who take the she-wolf’s name.
That’s the great idea.
And you and I comrade, the Darlings of Eirene,
we shall continue to march, in convoy, to
safeguard the distribution, to see to it that
all who would eat from her hand, have
her mark on their foreheads, that all who
would buy and sell have her mark in their hands.1
That’s about the length of it, comrade.
And another thing — and but, they’ll be needing
to reshuffle the formulas pretty soon.
Get y’r ear-hole close to hear what the
Sibyl of the wall would say —
closer mate, very close — the wind from Edom
carries far — get to me wind ward,
I’ll tip you to her dope as between brother
and brother:
the Sword bringer has left his cave, a beast from
byre, like Argos the dog, perceives the child in
the man, the one-eyed man,1 treading the
wine press. The maimed king ascends to
hill-without-the-castra, through the wall,
across the forbidden vallum, beyond the orbit
to take the auspices outside the prescribed
boundaries. The barrier-breaker goes to break
his rod called beauty2 on the hill.
Within the pomerium the timeless corridors mirror
the signators, the sub-reguli, the delgates, the notables
the negotiators, who with the love-cups celebrate the plan,
pledge the pax, who with the golden style signature
the draft, with the golden pen ratify the formula,
promulgate the edict of deification, pledge with the
golden cups the triumph of the Ram, and of the opulent
queen, the Ram’s wife, who with the Ram sustains
the megalopolis, generates death within urbs
throughout orbis.
Wherefore the man in the cloak, the blind-fold butt
of the bean-feast, the guy in the fretted crown,
the bait of the pavement, the King of the
Masquerade,3 the true Bar-Abbas, the baal on
the ass, the goat with the scarlet fillet that
leaps the traverse of the wall, weeps for urbs
weeps for orbis.
Wherefore he goes without the pomerium to
single combat on the hill.
On the waste land the lord of the two marches
plots his strange dimensions, squares the circle.
Dead at the median intersection he plants the
signum stave. Deep down on the line of axis,
Tellus, the Mother, smiles for that fertile thrust,
deeper still the iron butt splinters casement
where the secret princes, the holy captives, wait
the counter-raid. Upwards, to pinion the seven
stars, upwards the projection strikes dead centre
the celestial omphalos.
Arbor and arbour, both — seasoned axle
and yet a green tree.
Within the crux form the tensions now begin, the
standing stones strive at demarcations,
the axial lines deflect, the points of magnetism
shift, within the new polarity the colliding bodies
group, re-group or cease to be, the ancient
symmetries, the new asymmetries panic to the
crutched plan.
On the hill-site he throws up the mound, digs
the hill-fosse, like one of the Britanni, like
West-wave gwledig1 on his dun, like
north king at the burg ditch
for a refuge for the teulu,2 for the
kindred, for the volk, in sturm-time,
for drang-day, for winter-flight to
the help height, when the corridors
that mirror the signators fracture
from plinth to cornice…
As yet he sets on the hill the signum
of struggle, as a legionary he bears his
bundle of agger-stakes to the place of struggle.3
He inaugurates tension at the median
intersection, gets at the navel the Labarum
of Offence.
Tension at the interior lines, tension
at the walls of the world, at the walls of the
world-city, at the walls of the civitas of
God infiltration by violence.
Times turn — the vatic times and times and
half-times begin to be accomplished.
The years numbered from the foundation of the
wall draw out — a new arithmetic
measures the duration, from the transit of
a new star they calculate a new day, not now
by the new moons from urbs-day, not by the water-date,
nor from any of the anabases, or when they sang the song
In exitu, nor by the generations of the war dukes
out from Ur, nor by any of the initial marvels,
but by things late in time, by the showing in the cave,
by the execution on the hill, from the date of the
inception of struggle, to the times when the
ends of the earth shall come upon the West.
From the middle sea his bride is named
and when they have done her violence
they shall number the years after him no more,
except they do it on the hill sites, or under the
caves of the rocks, or in the disused conduits, or
between the broken stanchions in those days.
Do y’r like the shape of that mate?
Not kipping are y’r mate? Don’t y’r find the oracle
of the wall conducive to general alertness?
It was a bit on the long side, a bit flowery for my
liking, couldn’t get the hang of much of it
but I heard best part of your uncovering tale, Oenomaus,
don’t see it signifies, comrade. It’s much
the same old story it seems to me. The wind
stirs that sort of dream on the sun dry walls
at the diverse watches in this procuratorship, in
each of the tetrachates and all over these parts.
It’s the wish that thinks the cracks into the fabric.
Plebians always dream themselves into patricians.
Depot-wallahs are good at leaping the parapet — from the
barracks’ blankets. Heroes on hill-sites that split
the world — that’s the sort of thing your
fellaheen would think up, who sweat all day
splitting the stones for the courses of
the wall with which we secure the world,
them included. Deliverers? no wonder they
dream of deliverers. I dream of deliverers
all the time, day as well as night
on the traverse of the wall, but I dream I’m m’own
deliverer. I dream I’m a centurion sometimes,
a centurion prior, of number I Cohort, the principilus
of the regiment sometimes, with a couple of bars to
m’ mural crown, sometimes, why I can dream I’m
the Divine Emperor if I snore off
sound enough, but the bucina’s
convoking chord, or old Brasso rounding
on the tiros soon terminates that
Saturnalia, quick changes my dream Crixus
in his dream insignia, into waking
Crixus, fumbling to lace his issue boot,
late as usual for the middle watch,
with half the trumpets of the legion
sounding the double and all the N.C.O.s
of all the legions singing out his
name and number, flashing his crime sheet
as though it were a praetor’s edict.
The carrion dog at the Five Porches circuits the piscena’s rim nozzles from doss to doss, paws each bandage for decay, the sleeping beggar smiles and thinks the naiad of the pool is come to him, but when he’s stark awake, there’s the wall-eyed cur fouling the piscena’s lip, same as tomorrow, same as yesterday, there’s the grinning cripple ready with his vicious crutch, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow, underneath the wall. That’s more the normal shape of things comrade, to my way of thinking.We can all dream a power of wonders comrade, there’s no end to it, nor to the transmogrifications in motion.
Once, on the limes Germanicus I dreamed: after a rearguard, one of many extricating ourselves we were from the gods of those parts, no unusual thing, and in my dream the phantoms seemed all big bodied and bigly proportioned that leaned over me where I lay in my bivvy with my battle-mate, Panthero.
In our bivvy in reserves we were, well supports actually, after five days in this rearguard, flank-guard to be precise, with the gods of these woods pressing on us in among the trees of the woods and where we lay in our bivvy it was as if we lay in a type of peristyle as you might say builded of the tall trees, an atrium deep in the shadowy labyrinth of those woods, and colonnades of trees in long corridors of arches stretched all ways, smooth straight boles they had and no low growth, with the ground space clear between each, and the swards as it were like a pavement.1 And as if the rounded arches of our basilicas were suddenly to reach up and the genius of each column to exert itself and reach across to the numen of the column opposite, for all is thrusting and directional in the labyrinth of those parts and each striving limb of each tree struggles for mastery, high up.
Leastways as I lay in my bivvy with my mate Panthero, that’s how it seemed to me to be; and looking up at the moving vaults, the tangled cross-trees at their intersections seemed to make pointed arches.
Now that’s a thing you don’t see in stone, Oenomaus a pointed, arch, and I don’t suppose you ever will.
But it’s a fine thing, a pointed arch made of the striving branches of the living wood.
And homing eagles winged above those windy arches, and this, some of them, reckoned an auspicious sign, and Panthero said: see the Roman bird.2 But I said: Don’t talk wet. Don’t talk like a civvy who’s arranged another war. And fell asleep.
However as I say, we lay, me and Panthero, and as I lay I slept and so I dreamed and in my dream — well it’s no marvel I dreamed of large bodies, considering the sizable stature of the Cherusci and the Lugobardi and the rest of em that engaged our flanks for five days — and when I say five days I mean the last five days of this particular action. Five days, five weeks, why five months we’d been up in those parts a good five months before we got into this historic jamb.
At all events there we lay and there I dreamed and in my dream as I dreamed of the large limbs it seemed in my dream as if I no longer lay with Panthero in our bivvy in supports under the pointed arches, but now, in my dream, with Panthero and all fast sleeping — for in a sleep-dream you can dream of a man sleeping and of a man waking — there’s no end to these recessions nor to the super-impositions neither in these dreams. At all events, now, in my dream-making we lay in Mars Field, being carried thither by virtue of the genius of the dream — that’s where we lay — outside the Ara Pacis1 in Mars Field, on the east side, flush under the outer wall, left of the door of the east vestibule as you come from the Flaminian Road. There we were in my dream in our bivvy him sleeping and I waking, under the white pentelic frieze, and the moon full on the sizable limbs of the marble goddess and on the marble ox, aslant on the sculptured twins and on the chiselled folds of her marble stola. Have you seen the Ara Pacis, mate, when you come in by the Flaminian gate? It’s a fine job of work is that. Especially the relief work between the pilasters, especially that left hand one of the Terra Mater, especially in full moon, especially in the Ides of April when they sacrifice the heavy-bellied cows on her behalf, under her moon, and such was the precise time in my dream-calendar, there’s no end to the precision and exactitude of these dream-data —well anyhow, in my dream it was the round moon of the Fordicidia and none other, as shine bright on the marble works.
You get a good relief in the moon of that type of work. It’s a bit of a marvel how they contrive that sort of work, and that’s a job you’d be a fine duffer at, Oenomaus, mason-work. But that was as fine a work as I’ve ever seen in the moon and that’s a thing I should never have seen in the ordinary run of things, but in these dreams the fates arrange no end of comings together, heavy bodies can sail the air with the greatest of ease in these dreams, there’s no end to the unions these sleep-dreams can lend to things separate enough in wake-a-day.
And so it was that I, Private Crixus, in the first year of my service sleeping in my bivvy with my batty — raw troops we were from the last draft —in our flank-guard post, detached from best part of our unit, fed up and far from sweet home, a hundred miliaria beyond the walls of the world, — a hundred or more we were from our transports in the estuary, we were based up there on Lugdunum at the river mouth well round beyond the Fretum, half way to Thule — poor bleedin’ orphans of the Mother of Cities out there in the Teutoburg Wood, at the fall of the year, was privileged to be shown by the genius of sleep the Mother of us all, depicted in marble, under her own moon, on her own special day, at the gate of the city, in the lent of the year.
This lune-light of my dream-night seemed to shine on the marble zephyrs depicted there drifting a swan-back and on dolphin, in signification of the twin waters of the world, both marine and upstream, narrow and wide, all the water weirs and the netted seas that Jove’s Augustus fenced or our perpetual help, shined also on the leaning ears of the marble wheat-stalks and on the heaped fruits, on the peaceful ox, on the ewe sheep browsing and on all the fertile signification of the sculpture-work, and on her centrally seated, proud on the sculptured rock, majestical and large and fruitful, with her marble veil back from her brow and the twin fruit of her body clambering her calm lap, like the proper mother of us all, from whose belly we come to whose embrace we turn.
Twice as large and twice as natural she seemed under this moon — have you ever noticed that, Oenomaus? these moons always make things twice as large, and so it was with my dream-moon, all was as large again. Why that outer-wall at the precincts has no more than eighteen feet drop from the cornice, I’ll be bound, but in my moon it seemed a good thirty foot looking up from our bivvy and the sculpture work proportionately big and the shadows very deep and the contours firm.
It was a fine sight to see, and what’s more, and now we’re coming to it, out from the still marble, larger yet in her gradual appearing under the moon, she herself leaned in my dream, and lightly her marble boys seemed yet suspended in the marble air, her seeming movement, for I saw no motion, seemed not to disarrange the placid forms depicted there — and that’s a poser for waking-thoughts, but there’s no end to the possibilities of these dreams. So at least she did appear to lean, detached, as it were from the relief work and more bodily perceived, yet still in her static element of stone, nor yet disturbing the balance of the mason-work and so she herself gravely inclined herself and seemed to reach her sizable marble limbs toward me and my mate in our bivvy, and him still sleeping and I waking, and the large uncertain phantoms of my dreams that leaned over me up there in the Teutoburg, became concrete in the proportioned limbs of the Tellus, Our Mother, leaning living from the east wall below the cornice and all the world seemed at peace deep within the folds of her stola as she leaned over our bivvy and all but touched our bivvy sheets with her strong marble fingers.
And now in my dream-thinking, and by virtue of the vision or by chancy ebb and by flood of these dream-tides that Oceanus charts, it seemed that me and Panthero were caught up unto that peace, whether in a marble body I cannot tell, if as Dioscuri of flesh and blood I can’t say — the genius of the dream knows, but such ones we seemed to be as merited her large embrace, for keeping, so it seemed to my dream-thinking, the middle watch at the traverse of the wall. It seemed that surely now for ever, me and my battle-mate would be forever at the breast of Tellus, high on the wall within the gate, ageless emeriti, as a perpetual signification of Roma and her sons, and there we should watch from her bosom the rookies sweat by each day to exercise up there at Mars Camp, and that’s what pleased me most in my dream, I laughed right out at that, a last dream-laugh.
There’s no end to the rapid convolutions and thought-mazes of these dreams. For now —not that there is any now or then in these dreams, not that this is seen to change into this other, but rather, now, what was, no longer is, and what is seems always to have been. There’s no surprise awaits you in these dreams. Cares now, for caress, or sweet what bitter was before, but no surprises, however strange the metamorphoses, that’s what beats me in these dreams.
And so now, at my sleep change, at the third transforming of the vision, at the final showing of the genius of the dream, at the cycle’s end, at the horn gate almost ajar, the chiselled folds of her stola that had seemed so white in the moon were now, in the twinkling of an eye, become the coarse-woven folds, rucked at the lap, of just such an apron as the women wear as part of the gear of their trade, in the parts where I was born, and now the browsing marble sheep next the marble ox, was now, at the turn of my dream, the identical ewe lamb they took and trussed up for the March Lucina feast one windy morning when I was so high.
It was a great day always in our part of the country was the Juno feast, but on this particular keen morning of her feast on the first of the lent of the year, I was playing Greeks and Trojans with my brother behind our byre under our pent, for t’were pissing with rain — when they came to take her away and I bellowed for that lamb, I well remember that and so I seemed to bellow now, like a bull, in my dream-ending next Panthero sleeping, but my dream-bellowing turned out to be the bawling of old Brasso, standing over our bivvy, bawling out our names and numbers for the middle watch. There’s no end to the metamorphoses of these dreams.
Brasso? — Brasso Olennius, the reg’mental?
Why yes, of course — who else but Brasso would shake a man from such a dream? Of course he was up there with us, he’s always been with us — he always will be with us. There’s always a Brasso whether you’re a half-section in a forward cubby-hole or half a cohort back in reserves — there’s always a Brasso to shout the odds, a fact man to knock hell out of these dream-truths — that’s the bugger of it. Why certainly old Brasso was up there — why we called him Brasso Germanicus after that show and then we called him Brasso for short and that’s why he’s called Brasso unto this day. There’s a bit of domestic reg’mental history for you — why you ought to have known that with your six years with the colours come next October games.
Why old Brasso reckons he was a lance-jack under the Divine Julius, some say he was born shouting the odds in the year that Marius reorganized the maniples and put the whole works on a proper professional footing.
There are those that say
his mother laboured with him
in Anno Urbis Conditae,
the year that measures
all the years.
They say his wet nurse
had iron dugs
and gave him suck by numbers.
His face is purple to match the legate’s plume, he’s part of the fabric, he is, he’s on the permanent establishment, if ever a bastard was. When Rome falls you’ll know that old Brasso must have fallen previous.
That’ld be a difficult thing to dream, Oenomaus: the empire without old Brasso,
there are some things
that can’t be managed,
even in these dreams,
and that’s one of them.
He’s a sacramental man is Brasso, and should his signa fall the signification will be all too plain, he’s a formative type he is, and he’s formed us all who hold the walls of the world — that’s about the size of it, comrade.
It isn’t love
what secures the world Oenomaus, but
authority, that’s what holds the walls of the
world, not your dream-wallahs on hill sites
nor in caves neither, nor none of these
firstlings, knived like my ewe-lamb,
nor yet the likes of me neither, who
can dream a power of marvels
as I’ve shown, but remain, late as usual,
for the middle watch. That’s more the shape
of things, comrade. Your sibyl’s dream,
the oracle that speaks for the walls
of this procuratorship, and from the walls of the
tetrachates,1 and from beyond Regnum Panthorius
and Media, all the Magian walls, and the caverns
where the logos lapped in hay, shines between the
beasts, in the houses of bread, all the dreams
from the crannies of these sun-walls, from
the parched lands, tell the same tale, comrade.
The jail-bird vicars in the scarlet cloaks,
the saviours on mule back, the sons of the
Father, the slain rejuvenators, the vicarious
baals, all who lead captive the captains
and who break the rods of fact on the
back of truth, the cheek turners who
turn the world upside down. All this parched dream-world
produces a succession of deliverers. Suns
rise from the hidden grottoes of these parts
whose fierce rays shall crack the brittle
earth of the shallow fact-men, so they
imagine, whose fires shall consume the
factual day-by-day beast-life of the men
of Empire, the men of prey, who’ve made
their pact with actuality and know the
ropes and get the gain and die like
beasts, maybe, but beasts in clover.
Who lie under the solid monuments of stone
Who trod so solidly the fragile truth world
when they strode the world
themselves like men of stone that no
saxifrage could fissure, no cave-star
find a cranny to illumine, they’re the
bastards who gain immortality, Oenomaus,
a solid, enduring, immortality of inheritance
an immortality you can clap eyes on,
and finger like, you finger y’r donatium
when they shell it out.
Whose immortality is safe as houses,
permanent in their assigns, in their sons
and their son’s sons, all schooled and nurtured
in this technique of rule, whose lackeys
we are, whether bond or free. But, bless me,
these dream-deliverers don’t know what they’re
up against, or leastwise not their followers don’t.
They, the genuine illuminati, know their own alignments,
there’s no files on them, they know whose business they’re
about, they walk the inner labyrinth with
the same indifferent resolve as the men
of fact walk theirs, and pay the price in
their own bodies, but all the lesser fry, the yearners,
the devotees, the would-be initiates who
would have the translucent pearls and the hog-wash as
well, it’s these that must be accommodated when
you hold the imperium. These, if the cult
grows strong, need hope and hope is only given
by the men of rule for their purpose, and so
it will be with your sibyls, baals, the lord
of the gibbet who would free the world.
Let them plant his signum where they choose —
let the empire acclaim him Rex, let Caesar
be the vicar of a Syrian mathematici, let
Roman Jove go hang, call the Great Mother
by some other name — what’s the odds?
The men of rule know all about such
trifles and how to accommodate, if needs
must. What’s in a signum crest?
Above the gilt aquila, above the
flat palm that smites the world set
some new initiation sign — a job for
the metalsmiths, a bit of fat for the contractors
of insignia.
We’ll march out under the eagles and
we’ll march back under your Sibyl’s
Labarum, maybe, who cares so long as we
march? So long as our marching secures
the inheritance of the men of rule.
We shall continue to march, comrade
under the heavy clobber, in the loricas of
Quirinus, with the agger-stakes shouldered,
and the gladius slung, not to speak of
one saw, one basket, one axe, one spade
and one sickle and the three days rooting, not
to mention the spare pair of caligulae,
and the extra bivvy sheet, not forgetting the
perquisites of the trade. So we shall march
you and I comrade, and our son’s sons will march with
a weather eye on the hastatus prior in his
column-discipline mood, with his vine-rod
in pickle under his arm, itching to let fly at the
two-legged mules of Marius. That’s the way they
shift through the sixty grades, to be Primus Pilus the
Legate’s fancy, with a say in the council of
war, Primi Ordines indeed, prime
crawlers, that’s what they are, and successful
crawlers too.
What’s that Oenomaus? Something out there
half-left by the water gate it looks
to be. It must be near toward the turn
of the watch, so long our
testimonies have we exchanged as
between brother and brother. We’d better
get along the beat a bit. Old Brasso
’ill be stirring soon, at least soonish, they always
have a dekko soon toward the turn
of the watch. Just when you’re settling
for a cat’s doze, snug at the angle of
the traverse, with one eye wide and one eye
closed, when there’s nothing like to be doing.
He’s often all but caught me out at that,
but I know his amiable foot-fall on
the traverse of the wall, a mile off,
gives you just time to straighten up and adopt
the regulation posture, to skin y’r eyes
and sing out the night liturgy. Ferial or
feast, it’s all the same, always the same,
never other, at the middle watch. In the
midst of the vigilia, at the turn of the watch
it’s always: All quiet, sir, nothing to
report, sir.
The counter sign, my man — and what’s this, what’s
No. 1 doing, twelve paces past his beat — the countersign
give me the countersign.
Sorry sir,
sir, pass sir.
And another thing,
keep those shoulders square to front
and tighten that side-arm frog, d’you
think I’m blind in this bat-night.
Don’t stand there gasping in dumb insolence, d’you
think I can’t see in this watch-light
the smirk of insubordination on a
mule’s face. D’you think I don’t know
the pair of you loll here half the vigil
through, more than half-asleep, and other
half like two gammer gossips queued
all day for unearned bread, each inflaming each with
circus-tales, this imagined grievance,
that bull-cock fable, to importune hardworked officials
to harness the executive with spindle-woes. D’you men
think I can’t read your hearts
as plain as I can read a parade-state
and what I read would make a man sweat blood,
what I see in your hearts would make the
second Pleiad hide her light in anticipation
of a second Troy-fall. Do you think that
the walls of the world can be held when the
watchers who watch the walls ruminate all the
watch-night long on disillusion and complaint,
sounding the cud they chew till all tastes of grievance,
till their own bile acids all they see and hear and think,
or think they see and hear.
I am a man subject to authority, having under
me, so, at least, I thought, soldiers, and when
I say, go, or come, I expect the coming
and the going and when I say, do this, I
mean to see you bloody do it. Now both of
you, let me see you shape, at least one
night of all on the traverse of the wall.
Keep that butt down, man, keep it down.
Orderly, get forward — Post Z4, yes, back
to 4, we’ll take ’em all tonight,
tonight our visitation is full-dress,
meticulous, we’ll skip nothing,
not a sub-post
our rounds shall be plenary to-night, no
doubt they’re most of ’em half-sleeping
this watch, on this night of all, with the
procurator up from Caesarea, and anything
like to happen at this moon, in this command,
in this province — just the night when
Caesar’s auxiliaries would sleep – now-a-days, but
I’m resolved to be a friend of Caesar,
Caesar needs friends in these parts, and to
render all things to Caesar.
Yes sir.
In as far as I am anything it is by virtue of Ceasar.
Yes sir.
By Caesar I am, yet nor could Caesar be, but
for me.
No sir — nor Aelius Sejanus neither, sir.
Get forward, man — put out that guard-link
I would come on them sudden, in the midst
of the middle vigilia, before the routine hour,
without light, without advertisement, without the
usual forms —move on, I’ll follow, no, I’ll
go before … I am very heavy for the state of
Rome. I too could weep, if men of fact, if
soldiers knew how to weep, I too would weep,
weep for urbs, weep for orbis.
Well, the cowson’s gone. Better get along though –
that’s quite enough for one vigilia.
So the procurator’s up, d’you hear him say
that, the procurator’s up. Said to his short-arse
confidant, the little crawler, the procurator’s up
from Caesarea. The procurator, the junior centurion,
and the batman, what a trio, what a cross-section
of the state of Rome, what an illuminating bleedin’
trio of the differing strata of the res publica.
Crawlers all, the vulture, the jackal and the
jackanapes, feeding on our carcasses all in the
name of authority. I too could weep, and
strike and weep and weeping strike, from
behind if need be, to bring down the whole
fabric, in urbs throughout orbis.
So the procurator’s up, is he, must have come
up pretty much on the quiet, on some
urgent business. It’s healthier down in
Caesarea Philippi in more ways than one.
He’s got a nice place there.
Anyway he’s up, and he must have come up
for something.
He’s always up this moon, everybody’s
up this turn of this moon, for one reason
or another, and some are up for reasons
best known to themselves, but everybody’s up,
everybody’s up for this moon, for these ides,
everybody’s up on Skull Hill to see the god die, and so
are we up, we’re detailed to be up, by the men of rule.
Some’s wolves and some’s sheep and some’s
very wolves in fleeces, and some’s baaing
sheep in the she-wolf’s pelt, for the gods to
have a fine laugh. And some are lambs of
the flock as would redeem the sheep and some
are cast for the particular part of playing
the wolf whose job it is to chivvy the lamb
as redeems the sheep. They must needs call
in some for the chivvying role, for the actual
fact-world deed, but it’s far from always your genuine
wolf as gets the job of actual immolation
who’s detailed to handle the instruments of
fratricide — of deicide.
It depends what your cast for, and we are lambs
enough in our own way, me and you, Oenomaus,
but we’re like to be cast for some
slaughtering. We wear the she-wolf’s pelt
by way of trade and must needs play
the wolf and do the wolf-master’s bidding, and
history’ll know us as wolves, and call
us wolves, ravening wolves, regular rapers,
the vile praetorians, the brutalized soldiery,
the scum of the barrack-room, —1
Who wants to be in a
bleeding barrack-room anyway?
but the men who make the writings, who
fudge up the annales from the back chat
of tribune’s clerks, have never seen inside
a barrack room for the most part
or they might gauge our wolfish preoccupations more precise.
It’s not how to give the prisoner an extra
twisting that occupies our thoughts, but
rather how to get off being detailed
escort to the bleeder, how to get a polish on
the brasses of the shoulder plates, in time for
the dampness of the middle watch to dull ’em
again.
Take our barrack-room, take the scum as
inhabits it — not much of a wolf’s cavern.
As far as I can see, more like a pen for
orphans — orphaned by empire — listed into
the wolf-pack to the four quarters of the world for
reasons of pure economics
out of work from Rome and all the provinces of Italy,
[one word illegible] from Lybia, Celts from beyond the provinces,
sixfooters [three words illegible] at Castra Vetera,
all up to see how the god dies
[three lines illegible]
What’s the pleasure to be got from the traversed wall
what from onerous picquet-duties down there
across there far-side the gully, back-side Cheese Valley
and thereabouts. Why comrade, any night, me, or you
comrade, or our china, Big Ginger,
might get it nicely between the shoulder blades
just above the top rivets of the back-plate, that’s where
you could do with an extra metal — not in
front — they can’t even design a field-lorica
without making some bloomer, everybody knows
it’s ten to one you’ll get it in the back —
in these parts, from some Jesus bar abbas with
a stolen sword who thinks himself
Dux Judas Maccabee restoring the kingdom of
Israel. In every kennel and sewer, at each
circuitous street-turn, at every bent narrow,
there’s like to be one of ’em, as like as not,
taking steady aim for the tell-tale glint at the turn of
your shoulder-plate — might be yours, might be
mine. You can’t step in that sug, night
or day but what the middle notches of your vertebrate
come over all prehensile, long before your
thinking thoughts have thought of anything
untoward. Have you ever noticed that
Oenomaus? There’s no end to the curious
tricks of the body of this death. Your brave
lips may entone the baritus, and you feel
the swell of it potent in the blood, but when
you leave the parapet y’r bowels turn
none the less, under the plated cingulum, as his
bolt-heads wing low for thigh-bone and viscera.
But that’s in tactic combat, here it’s lag’s
technique, but your bowels turn just the same,
worse, if anything.
I dream of a dorsal kiss from a
Keriot knife, day as well as night at
picquet under the wall. I can feel it,
even as I speak of it, like I can feel
this toothed wind from Edom,1 just where
the neck meets the shoulder, and it’ll
come like a packet o’wind at a sharp street
bend. Some brother’s Jacob, some Janus-faced
Rebecca’s chosen son, has my number on
his knife, and yours as well comrade, I don’t
doubt, for I dream often, very often,
the death-dream for the pair of us, and so
die many times suffering the death of both
of us, as a batty should in my
barrack-philosophy.
From Ass Gate to Water Gate past Virgin Conduit,
up Totem Arches down Kosher Cat, at
stumble-stepped backway, at steep alley twist
by Stair Street,
where the cobbled camber brings you a parley
if you don’t take care: where the dark
byes intersect, he’s waiting on you.
Flitting the whited door-jambs asperged of the lamb,
her skirts drawn close against the touch of us, like
bat that hovers cranny, the zealot’s Rachel hovers.
From her teeth she lets her signal-veil fall, the eye
at the masked spear-vent in the blind wall, gauges
it nicely — and that’s another one off ration-strength.
Mightn’t be me — mightn’t be you, might be that cissy Greek
from Attica, might be Big Ginger from Autricum,2
for all his gamma charms,3 for all his
memorances to the grottoed virgin who shall
bare the Son. The benign west-wave influence
won’t save her druid in these parched far
corridors — not if his number’s on it.
It’s too far afield, we’re all too far afield for
the protecting reach of those who watch, who
have ward of our vaginal traverses, the powers
tutelar who preside over all that flowers
from the viscerae of the West, our side Our Sea.
The genii of the green mounds, of the water courses
of the standing stones, Ginger’s mother, Ginger’s
cavity of earth, the numina that guard
the reed of fire on Ginger’s gaffer’s hearth
that multiplies the sheep that Ginger’s sister keeps.
Ginger’s grottoes goddesses are far, very far,
in his sweat Celtica where the islands of
brume drift in from the sea. That’s the cost
of empire, Oenomaus, that is. You can’t stretch
the navel string indefinitely and empire is
a great stretcher of navel strings and a snapper
of ’em, a great uprooter is empire – it’s
a great robbery is empire, it robs the
pieties, you can’t have the pieties to my way
of thinking, unless you’re rooted.
What’s that Oenomaus? Looks to be
something beyond the Water Gate — well round
to the left, from this traverse of the wall
you have to stretch y’r neck a bit to get it — it’s gone.
Town picquets most likely — I heard say there
was a bit of a job on tonight.
There’s always a bit of a job on at
the passage of the god, at this moon,
in these parts.
They say he’s a bit of an agitator of sorts.
There’s always agitators of sorts at this
moon in this city.
They say he’s one of those mathematici of sorts
There’s always mathematici of sorts,
Chaldei and kinds of conjurors, under
all the moons in these parts, the
whole place crawls with ’em, like it
crawls with creeping Joshuas,
saviours, lags on the run, sons of the
father, who’s to know half-wit, whose
in-wit is whole wit, a balaam from the hills,
a gnostic on a white ass, from
a wanted sicarius with a crime-sheet
a mile long?
Proselyte Hellenes from the Ten Towns,
Yokel illuminati from Galilee, locals
who know their own troia
like we know the rectilineal lay-out
and the holy circuit. All sorts
and every sort from everywhere from
Alex to Pontus and beyond, both ways,
from Mespot to the Pillars — blackamoors
and all, from the furthest coasts of Our Sea, speaking
every lingo under heaven,
each up supposedly for the turn of the moon,
each to eat his tribal cake, to truss the lamb,
to see the god die.
The zealot locals’ld knife the lot of us in the
name of local autarchy — that’s understandable
enough, however jim crack and forlorn the
aspiration. The mongrel proselytes would
do the same, for some nebulous imperium
and consensus that passes a man’s wit
some universal graft that makes a man
throw off his fatherland and despise the gods
and hold in contempt all the pities, to be without
roots, to love no byre, no steading, to work
the same mischief in a man as does empire,
only worse, for empire tears only our bodies
from our earthly patrias, Caesar’s Jove
works that through the men of rule, there’s
no denying it.
But this Syrian Jove
whose very name their cult-priests make taboo
denies to a man’s spirit a local habitation
and in the name of brotherhood
would orphan all the world and make the Great Mother weep,
she who loves place, time, demarcation, hearth, kin, enclosure, site, differentiated cult. Although she is but one mother of us all — one earth brings us all forth, one womb receives us all, yet to each jack son of us she is other, named of some name other than that name which is sweet mother for some other jack son, beyond hill, over strath, or never so neighbouring by night field, or near crannog upstream. No co-tidal line can plot if nigrin or flax-head marching their wattles, be cognate or german of common totem.
Tellus of the million names answers to but one name. From this tump she answers Jack o’ the tump only if he call: Great-Jill-of the-tump-that-bore-me, not if he cry by some new fangle moder of far gentes over the flud-far-goddess name from anaphora of far folk won’t woo her; she’s a rare one for locality. Or gently she bends her head from far-height when tongue-strings chime the name she whispered on known site, as between sister and brother at the time of beginnings. When the wrapped bands are cast and the worst mewling is over, after the weaning and before the august initiations, in the years of becoming, under the petticoat regiment:
when she and he ’twixt door stone and fire-stane pre-figure and puppet on narrow floor-stone the world masque on wide world-floor.
When she and he behind the settle, he and she between the trestle-struts, mime the bitter dance to come.
Cheek by chin at the childer-crock, where the quick tears mingle, and the quick laughter dries the tears, within the rim of the shared curd-cup each fore-reads the world-storm,
till the spoil-sport gammers sigh:
now come on now little
children, come on now, it’s past the hour. Sun’s to byre, brood’s in pent, dusk-star hovers mound, lupa stalks lode-flats, grey coat sniffs the greying lode-damps for straggler late to fold.
Cot’s best for babes.
Here’s a rush to light you to bed
here’s a fleece to cover your head
against the world-storm.
Brother by sister
under one brethyn
kith of the kin warmed at one hearth-back
seed of fair gaffer fair gammer’s wer gifts
truckled int’ knoll that knoll-Jill guards.
Though she inclines with attention from afar fair-height outside all boundaries, beyond the known and kindly nomenclatures, where all the names are one name, where all stories of demarcation dance and interchange, troia the skipping mountains, nod recognitions.
As when on known-site, ritual frolics keep bucolic interval, at eves and divisions, when they mark the inflexions of the year, and conjugate with trope and turn the season’s syntax, with beating feet, with wands and pentagons to spell out the Trisagion.
Who laud and magnify with made, mutable, and beggarly elements, the unmade, immutable begettings and processions of fair-height, with halting sequences and unresolved rhythms, searchingly, with what’s to hand, under the inconstant lights that hover world-flats, that bright by fit and start the tangle of world-wood, rifting the dark drifts for the wanderers, who wind the world-meander, who seek some hidden grammar to give back anathemata its first benignity. Gathering all things in, twisting the differing each bruised stem to the swaying trellis of the dance, the dance about the sawn lode-stake on the hill where the hidden stillness is, at the core of struggle, the dance around the green lode-tree on far fair height, where the secret guerdons hang and the bright prizes nod where sits the queen im Rosenhag eating the honeybread, where the king sits, counting out his man-geld, rhyming the audits of all the world-holdings.
Yet when she stoops to hear you children cry,
from the scattered and single habitations
or from the nucleated holdings,
from walled civitas,
treble-ramped caer,
or wattled tref
stockaded gorod or
trenched burg,
from which ever child-crib within whatever enclosure, demarked by a dynast or
staked by consent where ever in which of the wide world-ridings,
you must not call her but by that name which
accords to the morphology of that place.
Now, pray now, little children, pray for us all now, pray our gammer’s
prayer, according to the disciplina, given to us
within our labyrinth on our dark mountain.
Say now little children:
Sweet Jill of our hill hear us
bring slow-bones safe at the lode-ford
keep lupa’s bite without our wattles
make her bark keep children good
save us all from Dux of far-folk
save us from the men who plan.
Now sleep, now little children, sleep on now, while I tell out the greater suffrages not yet for young heads to understand:
Queen of the differentiated sites, administratrix of the demarkations, let our cry come unto you.
In all times of imperium, save us
when the mercatores come, save us
from the guile of the negotiatores, save us from the missi,
from the agents,
who think no shame
by inquest to audit what is shameful to tell,
deliver us.
When they check their capitularies in their curias,
confuse their reckonings.
When they narrowly assess the trefydd
by hide and rod
by pentan and pent
by impost and fee on beast-head
and roof-tree
and number the souls of men
notch their tallies false
disorder what they have collated.
When they proscribe the diverse uses and impose the
rootless uniformities, pray for us.
When they sit in Consilium
to liquidate the holy diversities
mother of particular perfections
queen of otherness
mistress of asymmetry
patroness of things counter, parti, pied, several
protectoress of things known and handled
help of things familiar and small
wardress of the secret crevices
of things wrapped and hidden
mediatrix of all the deposits
margravaine of the troia
empress of the labyrinth
receive our prayers.
When they escheat to the Ram
in the Ram’s curia
the seisin where the naiad sings
above where the forked rod bends
or where the dark outcrop
tells on the hidden seam
pray for the green valley.
When they come with writs of oyer and terminer
to hear the false and
determine the evil
according to the advices of the Ram’s magnates who serve the Ram’s wife, who writes in the Ram’s book of Death.
In the bland megalopolitan light
where no shadow is by day or by night
be our shadow.
Remember the mound kind, the kith of the tarren gone from this mountain because of the exorbitance of the Ram … remember them in the rectangular tenements, in the houses of the engines that fabricate the ingenuities of the Ram … Mother of Flowers save them then where no flower blows.
Though they shall not come again
because of the requirements of the Ram with respect to the world-plan, remember them where the dead forms multiply, where no stamen leans, where the carried pollen falls from the adamant surfaces, where no crevice is.
In all times of Gleichschaltung, in the days of the central economies, set up the hedges of illusion round some remnant of us, twine the wattles of mist, white-web a Gwydion-hedge
like fog on the brynian
against the commissioners
and assessors bearing the writs of the Ram to square the world-floor and number the tribes and write down the secret things and, by which we call on thy name, sweet Jill of the demarcations,
arc of differences,
tower of individuation,
queen of the minivers,
laughing in the mantle of variety,
belle of the mound
for jac o’the mound
our belle and donnabelle
on all the world-mountain.
In the December of our culture ward somewhere the secret seed, under the mountain, under and between, between the grids of the Ram’s survey when he squares the world’s circle.
Sweet Maia devise a mazy-guard
in and out and round about
double dance defences
countermuse and echelon meanders round
the holy mound
fence within the fence
the wood within the wood
pile the dun ash for the bright seed
(within the curtained wood the canister
within the canister the budding rod)
troia within the shifting wattles of illusion for the ancilia for the
palladia for the kept memorials, because of the commissioners
of the Ram and the Ram’s decree concerning the utility of the
hidden things.
When the technicians manipulate the dead limbs of our culture
as though it yet had life, have mercy on us. Open unto us, let us
enter a second time within your stola-folds in those days —
ventricle and refuge both, hendref for world-winter, asylum from
worldstorm. Womb of the Lamb the spoiler of the Ram.
Should ever the men of rule with
the masters of the covenant come to a profitable
pact, should universal Caesar kiss the
indivisible baal, then farewell hearth and farewell
home for all the genii of the place and the sweet
name-numina. Unless some Lars names of all
the names and master of them in very flesh on
known-hill drags their convenient abstractions
down and with five hooks pinions the sky plan
to place and time.
Then in such a one on one hill the hill-war
gathers to itself all struggle ever, denominates
the site by which all sites are named.
Now is restored to each help-height to each
dear site the ancient efficacies.
Not on fair-height, unbodied, where men
of mind clamber the steep concepts, grope the
damps of unknowing, but now on named
tump, known to this kith where this kin
made this mound without this tun, beyond
this vallum — now is he lord of this locality
who lets blood of this body moist here this cranny
of this rock on this parched alien hill
far side Our Sea. Not on any hill nor not
on unseen unknown other-height the
masters of concept postulate, but
here in this demarcated place to touch
and cross with iron, to see with this flesh-eye.
(Back to the womb of Tellus drips the fertile
flood.)
When the young hero strips him on help-height
death-height is fair-height, far-height is near.
On parched east hill the audacious contact is,
west hills in all the three-world ridings, the stirring is,
westward in wapentake, diocese, cymrwd, where the
confluences tumble the racing sea-troughs for the
mind that gins the weder clere, the wind from Edom,
the learning stones deploy to the crutched plain.
But is she smiling Mair of far star-height
who spreads her mantle for the folk
for cubby from world-storm beneath the
crutched tree, or is she older Moder,
ochred with earth, still as the hill stones
where the last furrows run at the gate of
the flock-walk.
Weeping at furrows weeping at seed sown.
She his seed on far star-height.
He her seed on hill-site.
Now is known hill become
marvel mountain, unknown height to
clamber the steep mysteries, not seen
now, no longer known, to my flesh-eye.
They say he cuts signs in his skin.
They say he makes signs on the ground.
They say he sees signs in heaven.
They say he is both sign and
thing signified.
They say he can raise a gale o’wind and
still one.
They say no tree can hang him but
a cabbage tree.1
They say he put a spell in his fierce anger on
all trees, because no tree bears, no grass and
no fruit nor in the water no fish in urbes
throughout orbis.