Trilogy (New Directions Classic) Page 3

  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;