In the itinerant gyre of the Age of the Sinquel Memorial:
The clouded child marked with royal wounds and
Grievous wonder,
Born in subdued circumstances to a wedded pair of captains
During the ice-locked border-war between winter nations,
Will unshaken bear the assault of glorious engines,
Their rude throated noises become his summer lullabies.
When twelve years older, the boy will meet with much
Injustice;
All quality, pride and circumstance becomes counterfeit.
The narrow line of ambition fails with unlucky deeds;
Faith nailed down hard to a well-worn place can yet be lost.
In solitude, with tranquil mind, fate recovers the gentle skill
Of three silent virtues felt along the heart of the man,
Immortal richness greater than the tribute of all his tribe.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
XXIV. Lightened by one alone
In the gyre eclipsed of the Shielded Immaltant:
The congregated powers of heaven's antique empire,
Built on eldest faith, tainted by cruelty, stained by blood,
Will make garden cities into a lampless unpeopled world
Lightened by one alone, whose fierce reproach and
Reluctant prayer
Hurls up a tinge of gray in the void world.
Thirty witnesses will return, with thirty infants,
Nameless vagrant dwellers in houseless woods
Walled with witchcraft and flower-inwoven jasper,
Green to the very door of the long absence.
Seven common names of the unextinguished fire,
Stamped onto the frame of twelve windows in one form,
Usurp the codex vigilans of the unremembered throne.
The congregated powers of heaven's antique empire,
Built on eldest faith, tainted by cruelty, stained by blood,
Will make garden cities into a lampless unpeopled world
Lightened by one alone, whose fierce reproach and
Reluctant prayer
Hurls up a tinge of gray in the void world.
Thirty witnesses will return, with thirty infants,
Nameless vagrant dwellers in houseless woods
Walled with witchcraft and flower-inwoven jasper,
Green to the very door of the long absence.
Seven common names of the unextinguished fire,
Stamped onto the frame of twelve windows in one form,
Usurp the codex vigilans of the unremembered throne.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tsitao-utna's pencil
The smallform of Tsitao-utna is invisible, but her herald, her sigil, is a small blue bowl. When she wishes to speak to me, I take the bowl from its place in the cupboard and set it on the table and put a pencil beside it. Her voice comes from a place 14 diumalks above the bowl. A diumalk is approximately a half-inch, according to Tsitao-utna.
Through a period of trial and error, I discovered that Tsitao-utna prefers a Turquoise drawing pencil with a soft dark lead, 6B. With this sort of pencil, she seems to converse longer and more naturally, with less distraction. She often seems hurried when she speaks and I believe I can perceive a certain tension in her voice. I think she is intimidated by Ga-ukogomen. Sometimes when she speaks to me, I imagine her looking over her shoulder, afraid she will see the na-awult. I imagine her as a young woman, with long dark hair, very straight and waist-length. I have no real reason to picture her this way, but that is the image her voice sounds like.
One day, a few hours after she had spoken to me, I picked up her pencil and began to doodle. The marks I drew are represented below in figure 1. This has happened to me many times since. I don't know what they mean, just as I don't know what the ecteiroglyphs mean, but I have ideas. I think the first doodle represents Tsitao-utna in some way. I believe figure 3 is a representation of Ga-ukogomen and figure 4 is about Nihr Avna-attu. I don't know if these doodles are their names in written form, or if these figures tell a part of their stories, like a lineage or a history. I have to conclude that these forms are for the future to decipher and are not for me to know. I am just the stenographer.
The forms that are closed are filled with yellow color because I feel it is somehow important to emphasize that those forms are closed. The forms that are unclosed, that have gaps between the lines, have a different significance than the closed forms.
Through a period of trial and error, I discovered that Tsitao-utna prefers a Turquoise drawing pencil with a soft dark lead, 6B. With this sort of pencil, she seems to converse longer and more naturally, with less distraction. She often seems hurried when she speaks and I believe I can perceive a certain tension in her voice. I think she is intimidated by Ga-ukogomen. Sometimes when she speaks to me, I imagine her looking over her shoulder, afraid she will see the na-awult. I imagine her as a young woman, with long dark hair, very straight and waist-length. I have no real reason to picture her this way, but that is the image her voice sounds like.
One day, a few hours after she had spoken to me, I picked up her pencil and began to doodle. The marks I drew are represented below in figure 1. This has happened to me many times since. I don't know what they mean, just as I don't know what the ecteiroglyphs mean, but I have ideas. I think the first doodle represents Tsitao-utna in some way. I believe figure 3 is a representation of Ga-ukogomen and figure 4 is about Nihr Avna-attu. I don't know if these doodles are their names in written form, or if these figures tell a part of their stories, like a lineage or a history. I have to conclude that these forms are for the future to decipher and are not for me to know. I am just the stenographer.
The forms that are closed are filled with yellow color because I feel it is somehow important to emphasize that those forms are closed. The forms that are unclosed, that have gaps between the lines, have a different significance than the closed forms.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
XXIII: Books of a feather-robed sage
In the sixth gyre of the Age of Four Wandering Moons:
A new mood stirs under those yellow leafed boughs
Which shake
Within the impressed abstraction of scrolls from both
17th centuries.
A spring of words overflows the closest drawn goal in steel—
Poetry generated in a wide range of free-given street noise,
Raising delicate hopes for the strength of the resolved city.
The first two lines of the books of a feather-robed sage
Written on a thousand rolls of silk kept for all good:
Elusive time immediately experienced is frequently unfair.
Question or believe, but light travels slowly within the grave.
From the tale of the count who has not yet named a successor:
The countess arrays her daughter in her most resplendent robes
Clear-cut as laquered satin, gently shaped as the lining
Of a seashell.
A new mood stirs under those yellow leafed boughs
Which shake
Within the impressed abstraction of scrolls from both
17th centuries.
A spring of words overflows the closest drawn goal in steel—
Poetry generated in a wide range of free-given street noise,
Raising delicate hopes for the strength of the resolved city.
The first two lines of the books of a feather-robed sage
Written on a thousand rolls of silk kept for all good:
Elusive time immediately experienced is frequently unfair.
Question or believe, but light travels slowly within the grave.
From the tale of the count who has not yet named a successor:
The countess arrays her daughter in her most resplendent robes
Clear-cut as laquered satin, gently shaped as the lining
Of a seashell.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
XXII. Illuminating the lotus spirit
In the fortenth gyre of the Age of the Nascent Vaunthald:
The hooded frog, a great silver boss on its iron forehead,
Stands above the red cedar temple for seven hundred years,
Guarding the imperial headdress wrapped with silk wires.
Granite clouds coiled and dusky loom over balanced pools
Illuminating the lotus spirit before the perception of every eye.
A rough devouring entity with no rules or principles
Will live unknown and dominate the hollow crown;
According to true etiquette he had vowed his constancy
To an allegiance lost not in fire nor earth but in water.
Black rain sickness will lay siege swift as a shadow,
Livid outlines forming round the mark of measuring metal
Stamped in the reddened throat of the secret usurper.
The hooded frog, a great silver boss on its iron forehead,
Stands above the red cedar temple for seven hundred years,
Guarding the imperial headdress wrapped with silk wires.
Granite clouds coiled and dusky loom over balanced pools
Illuminating the lotus spirit before the perception of every eye.
A rough devouring entity with no rules or principles
Will live unknown and dominate the hollow crown;
According to true etiquette he had vowed his constancy
To an allegiance lost not in fire nor earth but in water.
Black rain sickness will lay siege swift as a shadow,
Livid outlines forming round the mark of measuring metal
Stamped in the reddened throat of the secret usurper.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
XXI. A fatal child
In the ladder gyre in the Age of the Bunin Kings:
Behold, in a field thick inlaid with yellow patines
Of summer roses,
The flower of men, a fatal child driven by the deep power of joy,
Indifferent to restless violence surrounding the pendant world,
Ignorant of the bright sunset gold of painted pomp and blind
To the glare of glass thrones charged with mystic change.
A long entwisted circle of allies bound by sympathy in blood
To this Queen, will stand in her proper greatness and hold out
Against great thousands, when monarchs play the tyrants
In the barren mile of the Mediterranean's common age.
The Kindly Race, never-resting, with gentle work
And endless care,
Diffuse the false art of ancestral sermons wreathed
In golden theaters,
Unloosing the chained foot of cold winged Oumesan.
Behold, in a field thick inlaid with yellow patines
Of summer roses,
The flower of men, a fatal child driven by the deep power of joy,
Indifferent to restless violence surrounding the pendant world,
Ignorant of the bright sunset gold of painted pomp and blind
To the glare of glass thrones charged with mystic change.
A long entwisted circle of allies bound by sympathy in blood
To this Queen, will stand in her proper greatness and hold out
Against great thousands, when monarchs play the tyrants
In the barren mile of the Mediterranean's common age.
The Kindly Race, never-resting, with gentle work
And endless care,
Diffuse the false art of ancestral sermons wreathed
In golden theaters,
Unloosing the chained foot of cold winged Oumesan.
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