95. Enochian Translation #6: “You get want I mean now?”

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Well, this is fun. I can remember last winter now, with all its crises unresolved. Don’t you? Nothing changed where we are, but after it all, something ridiculous had burst. This first verse is all about the problems of writing poetry in English; true language of the dead who don’t know it yet.

Things, as always, deteriorate, whether left to themselves or fucked up by us; no escape from out of here. The debris of all this, let’s call it culture. Think how desperately far we are from the beginning of time. Unfortunately, there is only this imperfect record of what has led us to this place.

Everyone hopes for personal survival – at the highest order only. They haven’t experienced it yet is the reason: everyone in heaven a princess, a bard, a warrior, a Red Indian chief – the high status elites have taken over eternity too. Stinking rotten mackerel the lot, minimal joy to them always, then off we go, as it’s Monday, again and again.

Are we turtles or men? mice or mandarins, or talking horses & bleeding heads? These compulsions must be uttered by someone, reader. Is it you? the Veer Book Collective (OK, lads, I forgive you & love you)? a small congregation of ale-drinking bibliophiles in Kent (& on our left . . .)? all the young poets in the basement room below (all slightly older)? Just voices then. The laws of avant-garde poetry must be broken up by now – please!1

 

 

1 More stanzas are given in some rather dubious MSS, which can be rendered thus:

88bis. Enochian Translation #4bis: Aryf angkynnull? Angkyman dull?

In the presence of the blessed ones, before the great assembly, before the occupiers of the holme, when the house was recovered from the swamp, surrounded with crooked horns and crooked swords, in honour of the mighty king of the plains, the king with open countenance: I saw dark gore arising on the stalks of plants, on the clasp of the chain, on the bunches, on the sovereign, on the bush and the spear. Ruddy was the sea beach, whilst the circular revolution was performed by the attendants, and the white bands, in graceful extravagance.

The assembled train were dancing, after the manner, and singing in cadence, with garlands on their brow; loud was the clattering of shields, round the ancient cauldron, in frantic mirth, and lively was the aspect of him, who, in his prowess, had snatched over the ford, that involved ball, which casts its rays to a distance, the splendid product of the adder, shot forth by serpents.

But wounded art thou, severely wounded, thou delight of princesses, thou who lovedst the living herd! It was my earnest wish that thou mightest live, O thou of victorious energy! Alas, thou Bull, wrongfully oppressed, thy death I deplore. Thou hast been a friend of tranquillity!

In view of the sea, in the front of the assembled men, and near the pit of conflict, the raven has pierced thee in wrath!

88. Enochian Translation #41

188 estrangelo treated copyNothing solid left to return to – that could be a relief. Everything that has happened is irreversible: it’s to do with entropy, rather than iussive poesis. Maybe the triumph of the bourgeoisie, turning out to be the zombie slaves of our new aristocracy (recte: kleptocracy). It is a return, but to nowhere. Think of it as being in hell forever.

Another thingy ran no process on. And what thingy was that? An improvisation of sorts. It can’t work any simple change: it wants the wonder of utter novelty, where something enters from the outside that isn’t there (they tell us). It is gross, disturbing, static in terms of here – in terms of there, a light, casual, generative verb: oh, to tapir, to gryphon, to bleeding head of a dog on a stick, to bird fly out & off at dawn, this dawn, the one that is now. An utter affront to the cryptic smear of events.

A homeless migrant out of nothing is all we are. There are no rights – only the duty of collaborative action to build ourselves a new home, preferably eternal. We’ve landed here, pushed off the boat, & struggled up through the mud & debris of this beach. The first thing we must do is hold a carnival on the quayside to celebrate we are here. Ignore the rain – rather, enjoy how our lights sparkle & waver. Such now is living.

What natural membranes outside to something? Think of sticky interfaces rubbing against your cheeks. It’s at the breaks & cracks, the splits & mirrorings, that something happens. Involutions of boundary layers establish new dimensions, new modes of being. These events form & multiply – OK? We are penetrated utterly through nothingness. What’s here, not here – what isn’t here haunting us & surrounds us. Time to dance thru the wet streets, each single one.

Always the same abased elements here – we don’t care. All our ideals are based on elaborate fakery – hunh? You want divine revelation? Only human, only ever human. Making it up as we go along – tauromachy upon the strand, incantations in the chambers, prayers & ale within the chapel. Bread of heaven, and the people’s beer. These the only materials we’ve got, here in Albion Street: up through the strait gate, turn left.

Again these brief warped children now. Who will they grow up into? Us, us and you. If you’re resigned to this – OK. Let it all breathe as the wind changes & we accept. A friendly cloud blots out the cruel sun. The children still play their violent games. Whoever survives shall be king; but the slaughterer will be the one remembered. It’s hard work, building a civilisation upon this brutish shore. The record is mainly one of massacres & betrayal: all the old giants, ones who’d helped us, put to death. Very well. Here we are. It’s never the right time or place or language. It’s what it is: one actual moment.

 

 

1 Out of the most vulgar of Old Sogdian, I’m afraid, and a very free rendering indeed. Translations do vary widely, especially as the MS is extremely worn & well-rubbed. There is a major alternative reading following.

77. Some Sloppy Debris, Unabased, Yet as Tragically True as Everything Else

And then in a paradise of sea & boats
the surf ran its sloppy debris up
OK, not dark native mud, just sand
polished clean as words, as bones
we play upon once and ever

Cast up at Broadstairs yet again
oh, family things – you know, that compulsion
paint peels then slowly renewed
but the foreign students wander yet
                                – lost on the same maps
                      circumstances do come round again
edges softened & removed through rolling erosions
picked over continually by gulls & ravens
fr a late-blooming career at Thanet Cat Shelter
helping run workshops in the new Town Shed
yes! all boons to elderly gentlemen & blokes
the sea & the sun cast us all up here
daily patrolling The Esplanade w/ ice creams
childhood repeated more slowly this time
even français: oo-where is thee boating-poule?
please sirr? no matter
stick w/ the seagulls & do what you do

Let’s play on the bouncy castle first!
it’s a fine tall young giraffe we see
tenderly holding us & uplifting lightly
I could believe
                (if I wasn’t dead
it was just birth I’d come through not
all the slow mucky stuff at this end

Let’s catch the bubbles though!
they’re birds & worlds & words & brief
yes, like all of this, fat slippery
membranes holding nothing from nothing

Time – – no, not for nothing here
it’s all gone, long gone, a dream
that this wasn’t a dream, or that praise
will still buy us out from somewhere where
there isn’t an out:
                    the world here
alone & fragile now as always

Brutish it is, then brutish it must be
we can all start again at Totnes – oh
real mud along the Dart, smelling of nutmeg
are we lowly or just the dead giants?
yeah, both I guess & the mud not
as much spicy as oozily vital

Poets, you poets haven’t any age
not any more than tidal litter
it’s a grand life beached up here
planning on our next break through
we’re all food for sandhoppers, son
daughter, all the other people gathered up
is this the really The Esplanade?
at last & at here, attention then

74. Enochian Translation #3 1

Enochian Translation #3: The Opening of the Blue Book

Look we haven’t come through: the boat
took us back home, of course, how silly not
to realise these truths: only here, only now
this misty island marred first by glaciers then people
why didn’t we realise we’re free of gods but not trouble
no one left to save us but our selves, each soul
bargaining in vain not to be taken home, Ukanian Ingerlund
where the longest dead control the language & the mind
why didn’t we realise we’d be wading thru this brutish mud?

So then, it’s time as always, to start again
another poem, another struggle: like the old sun
reborn but wavering and knowing it’ll end up diving down
what can we do but pull ourselves up on the beach of dark surf
don’t you recall this now? oh you were born here if memory serves
& if not, each site, each sacred site, is really just the same
don’t trust this but try it – test out & discover what
that works upon you & casts you up on this abandoned side
where the water runs out then back, leaving you heavy and almost dead

 

 

1 The Opening of the Blue Book: at last the epigraphs are written in