I would like to add another disclaimer: while the original text itself is an admirable and enlightening work, it is very much a product of what could be described as the Italian esoteric milieu, and while I agree with many of the authors’ conclusions, I certainly do not agree with all of them. (As we shall see in a forthcoming article).

The subject matter here will possess the odor of familiarity for any of my readers who have gone over my translations of Luigi Valli’s Linguaggio Segreto. And my own feelings on this present work are the same as Ezra Pound’s feelings towards Valli’s work:

The work of Luigi Valli has been a stimulant for me in recent years. I do not agree with many of the details of his explanations, but I am truly sorry that he died before I had the opportunity to discuss them with him. He was not always convincing, but that is no reason to ignore his intuition that there is often a hidden or indirect meaning in these poems. The most materialistic of critics concedes there are incomprehensible allusions.

__________________

Cecco d’Ascoli and Frate Elia were alchemists. This is what we intend to demonstrate in our present work. This information will undoubtedly arouse surprise and interest, but based on hints and indications detectable in many ancient codices, the alchemical knowledge of both figures is in our minds beyond dispute. After all, it should come as no shock if Aquinas himself wrote a treatise on the Philosopher’s Stone and the Alchemical arts.

We are well aware of the criticisms leveled at the authenticity of the work accredited to Aquinas, and we predict the same criticisms being leveled at ours, but whoever judges this work with a lucid and objective mind will come to the conclusion that both the successor of St Francis and the Ascolan poet possessed knowledge of the alchemical arts, and were perhaps outright practitioners.

First, we must clarify a fundamental question: who were the alchemists? “Enamored with alchemy, they were seen in their laboratories bent over fantastic furnaces and retorts, but the enigmatic smile that radiated from their lips made it clear that such apparatuses existed only to mask their profound study of the chemistry of emotions. The necessary acts of completing their Great Moral Work, that of transmuting base roman metals into the pure gold Christ’s Heart.”

There are many Italian works that deal with our present subject; some of these are quite difficult to grasp and digest due to the special phraseology employed in such esoteric compositions.

The jargon or code deployed by these writers is very strange, curious even, and to have any hope of comprehending it, one must possess an exact understanding of the coded words and phrases, often composed in the manner of the rebus.

The search for the Philosopher’s Stone has made more than one supposedly erudite scholar smile with scorn, as they are utterly incapable of understanding or investigating the subject beyond the most superficial assessments. The nut of the alchemical texts cannot be digested without first understanding the special meanings of the numerous technical words and phrases. After all, every science and field has a special phraseology that differs from subject to subject, whether it be algebra or alchemy.

The ultimate aim of alchemy is to obtain the Philosopher’s Stone, which facilitates the transmutation of base metals into gold. Nicholas Valois warns that while this stone of great virtue may be called a stone, it is in truth no stone. As it is said in the “Dialogue between Mercury and the Alchemist,” the true mercury is that of the Philosophers, and not the vulgar mercury, his bastard brother. And likewise the same must be understood of Gold or the Sun, Sulphur or Fire, for we are not concerned with their vulgar siblings, but those of the Philosophers.

We are of the opinion that the alchemical-hermetic poems we publish are fragments of an initiatic tradition, our initiatic tradition, one native to Italy and the Mediterranean. It is here that we find a distinct Hermetic-Alchemical phraseology, one that remains constant throughout the ages. The symbolism of the Great Work, although veiled by conventional language, manifests in a precise and poetic mode in the verses of Cecco and Friar Elia.

Cecco d’Ascoli, pen name of Francesco Stabili, was born in Ascoli in 1269. One of his biographers reports that after devoting his youthful energies to both the secrets of nature and the refined arts, he offered his fellow citizens a demonstration of his powers. Cecco claimed that by utilizing his mathematical erudition, he could bring the Adriatic Sea right up to the walls of Ascoli, a distance of some 25 kilometers. The citizens dared not accept the proposal.

So great was the man’s fame that his reputation reached Avignon, where Pope John XXII resided, and the aforementioned Pontiff summoned the Ascolan and appointed him his personal physician. Cecco first taught at the university of Florence and then at Bologna. He was an intimate of Dante Alighieri, whom he later antagonized in both his correspondence and in his poetry.

Giovanni Villani claims that Cecco was the astrologer to Duke Charles of Anjou, Lord of Florence, and revealed to the Duke many future things which indeed came to pass.

In 1324 he was accused by the tribunal of the Inquisition and condemned by the Domenican Fra Lamberto da Cingulo. The first condemnation stipulated that he was to make a general confession of his sins, replete with fasts and obligatory Sunday sermons. He was deprived of his astrological books and was forbidden to teach astrological sciences either publicly or privately, and, even more insulting, his title was stripped, and he was forced to pay a fine of 70 lire.

While his first condemnation in Bologna was little more than an extortion racket directed at university professors, the second condemnation in Florence was far graver and certainly more definitive.

The Florentine decree reads: “Friar Accursio of the Orders Friar Minor, Inquisitor in Florence, having reviewed the process sent to him on 17 July 1327 by Friar Lamberto of Bologna against Master Cecco d’Ascoli, having been cited as present in the choir of the church of the Friars Minor of Florence on 15 September of the said year, has declared him a heretic and has handed him over to the secular tribunal of the ducal vicar, present and accepting, so that he may be subjected to the penalties due to him; he has condemned the Latin book of Astrology which he is the author and another in the vernacular entitled L’Acerba, he has decreed that they shall be burned and has excommunicated all those who possess such or similiar books.”

On the same day, the aforementioned vicar sent Cecco d’Ascoli to his death. The Ascolan faced the pyre with great courage, refusing to abjure his philosophical ideas and repeating in the face of the extreme punishment the famous words that reveal his character and spirit in full: “I have said it, I have taught it, and I believe it.”

It is believed that the Latin astrological treatise cited in this sentence is his commentary on the Sphere of Sacrobosco, later printed under the title: Commentarii in spherams Joannis da Sacrobosco (1485); there is also another edition entitled Sphera mundi cum tribus commentariis Cicchi Esculani Franc. Capuani da Manfredonia. Jac Fabri Stapulensis. And then there is a work of Astrology authored by Cecco d’Ascoli entitled Praelectiones ordinariae astrologiae habitae Bononiae; and according to Father Sarti, there is a manuscript entitled Incipit scriptum de principii astrologiae secundum Ciccum dum juvenis erat electus per universitatem Bonariae ad legendum.

In Cecco’s poem L’Acerba, there are several conspicuous references to alchemy. L’Acerba is an enigmatic poem composed in terza rima explicating physics and natural history, mixed with philosophical and astrological musings. The original title was Acerbo, from the Latin acervus, which signifies a heap of things gathered together. The first edition was printed in 1476 in Venice by Filippo di Piero.

The great Leonardo da Vinci held the unfortunate man from Ascoli in great regard and studied his work, in particular, L’Acerba. Leonardo, it seems, took an interest in Hermeticism, as attested by an alchemical sketch of his that is still preserved in the library of Christ Church College of Oxford.

Petrarch also held Cecco in the highest esteem, addressing him in a sonnet that begins:

Tu sei il Grande Ascolan che il mondo allumi.

per grazia de l’altissimo tuo ingegno.

You are the grand Ascolan that illumines the world.

For the grace of your highest genius

Popular legend later took hold of Cecco’s personage and transformed him into an enchanter and magus. The painter Giulio Cantalamessa painted a magnificent picture that currently resides in Cecco’s native city, depicting a lesson given by the great Maestro in the university of Florence.

In the valuable work of Luigi Valli, Il linguaggio segreto di Dante e dei Fedeli di Amore, there are numerous references to Cecco d’Ascoli, who, according to many researchers, belonged to an initiatic centre that included other stilnovisti such as Dante, Petrarch, and Francesco da Barberino. In Chapter 10, titled “The mysterious Lady of the Acerba of Cecco d’Ascoli,” the relations of the man from Ascoli with Dante and other Fedeli d’Amore are examined. The end of this chapter is quite interesting:

“The close bond between Cecco and the other “Fedeli d’amore” along with the terrible torment inflicted upon him by the Church cast a tragic light upon this whole movement, or rather they illuminate the tragic elements that accompanied his poetry and which must certainly flicker in the verse of Dante… Perhaps the true title of the uncanny and enigmatic work of Cecco is La Cerba, that is La Cerva.”

What is certain is that for reasons never completely clarified, exactly six centuries ago the Ascolan was burned alive by the Church. He was a “Fedele d’Amore,” friend and correspondent of all the “Fedeli d’Amore,” he was a lover of the same mystic woman whom Dante and Cino had pledged devotion, of the same “Amorosa Madonna Intelligenza” whom Dino Compagni had loved; he who roared and lamented with anguish beneath the black mantle of simulation, but who proclaimed that he died happy for he died for “the beautiful sight covered by he veil.”

The sonnet of Cecco d’Ascoli that we publish here was found in Riccardiano manuscript no. 946, in Magliabechiano manuscript II-III 308, and in the fifteenth-century edition of the Summa of Geber. In the Acerba of the Ascolan edited by Rosario, already mentioned, there is within the appendix the sonnet entitled “The Philosopher’s Stone.” However, besides reading variants, the three final verses are missing. Zenatti reports it by transcribing it from the Riccardiano manuscript; we have preferred to transcribe it from Magliabechiano manuscript 308 because it is more complete from the hermetic point of view.

Chi solvere non sa, nè assottigliare 1

corpo non tocchi, nè argento vivo 2

per chi non può lo fisso el volativo

tenere chi non sa de duo un fare. 3

Fatelo dunque stretto abbracciare

con acqua viva e sal disolutivo,

tere bène e coque piane si che sie privo

della terra mama la qual lo fa celare 4

Allora vedrai fuggire la morte obscura

et ritornar lo Sole lucente e bello

con molti fiori ornato in sua figura. 5

Questa è la pietra,6 questo è quello

delli filosofi l’antica scrittura

Che sull’incudine batte lo martello.7

He who knows not how to dissolve, nor to subtilize
let him not touch the body, nor quicksilver;
for he who cannot hold the fixed and the volatile
knows not how to make two into one.
Make it therefore tightly embrace
with living water and dissolving salt,
grind well and cook gently so that it be deprived
of the mother earth which makes it hide.
Then you shall see dark death flee
and the shining and beautiful Sun return
adorned with many flowers in its form.
This is the Stone, this is that
of the philosophers’ ancient writing
which beats the hammer upon the anvil

____________________

Frate Elia was born in Beviglio, a suburb of Assisi, but he is better known as Frate Elia da Cortona or simply as Frate Elia. He was the foremost companion of St Francis and later his successor, elected head of the order in 1232 while attempting to substitute the despotic system for a republican one. He was the head of the conventuals for seven years until Saint Anthony of Padova succeeded in having him deposed with an order from Pope Gregory IX. Frate Elia embraced the cause of Emperor Frederick II and continued to live a free and tranquil life unimpeded by Papal or episcopal obedience. It is claimed that Frate Elia was a poet, and the Crescimbeni recall having seen an alchemical manuscript authored by him which contained sonnets, published in his Commentari sulla volgare Poesia.

Among the sins he was accused of were alchemical experiments, related on page 72 of la Cronaca di Fra Salimbene, “In fact, when he (Frate Elia) discovered that some Friar in the Order had studied that science or swindle, he would send for him and have him lodged in the Gregorian palace.”

In these apartments there were many rooms and secret places in which Elia lodged these friars, and many other individuals who seemed to flock there as if coming to consult the Pythoness… When Gherardo da Modena went to the convent of Celle in Cortona to find Frate Elia and reconcile him with the Order, he spent the whole night without a wink of sleep, claiming to have heard demons fluttering all night through the house like bats, accompanied by cries that made him shudder down to his marrow… Finally, when the sun rose, he hastily departed with his companion and reported all that transpired to the General of the Order.

Castets asserts that one of the sonnets attributed to Friar Elias is in fact authored by Dante, as appears from manuscript H. 493 of Montpellier, which is a collection of treatises on Alchemy written in Latin but compiled in Italy, as appears in folio 192, which is dated to 1456 in Naples. The sonnet is entitled “Motivum vel sonetum Dantis philosophi et poetae florentini,” but until corroborating documents come to light, we will continue to attribute it to the Friar.

Some writers wish to affirm that the alchemical sonnets are in fact authored by Frate Elia da Canossa, and not Frate Elia da Cortona. To which we respond that the epithet of “distinguished and most excellent philosopher” clearly indicates which Friar Elias they refer: for Canossa was neither an excellent nor a distinguished philosopher.

In manuscript L-VI-20 existing in the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena, entitled Birelli — Cielo dei filosofi, on page 124 there is: “The most noble work and most lofty magistery of the Philosopher’s Stone according to the distinguished and most excellent philosopher Friar Elias”; likewise, in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence, in manuscript 567, coming from Santa Maria Novella, among the series of treatises on Alchemy there is one entitled: “Speculum perfecti Magisterii excellentissime artis alkimie Fratis Helie ordinis Fratrum Minorum.” And it seems to me the reference to Friar Elias of Cortona could not be more clear.

Again: in the manuscript of the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena entitled “Raccolta di Segreti e ricette,” shelf-mark L.X.29, there is one of the poems that we report under the title: “Sonnet of Friar Elias, follower of St. Francis.”

Salimbene, who was received into the Franciscan order by Friar Elias, and who was defended by the aforementioned Friar when Salimbene’s father appealed to the emperor to have him sent home, was in fact one of Frate Elias’ most relentless accusers. Yet the particulars he reports add a dimension of certainty to the alchemical workings of Frate Elias. One must also keep in mind the fact that Elias had the Basilica of Assisi built in the form of a tau; such a symbolic reference to an initiatic sign is quite symptomatic. Indeed, we know that among the Egyptians, that sign symbolized Divine life and was therefore hung from the hands of Isis and Osiris.

In the Bible, according to certain exegetes, the tau was the sign with which the Angel of the Eschaton would mark the foreheads of the predestined, and in the earliest years of Christianity it symbolized the cross. The reliquaries of Monza are inscribed with the Tau, and Constantine consecrated the emblem to Christianity.

Crescimbeni attaches some biographical notes to copies of the Friar’s sonnets which we gladly reproduce:

“Friar Elias, one of the companions of St Francis of Assisi, is claimed by chemists and alchemists as an excellent philosopher that discovered the means of composing the Lapis Philosophorum; concerning which he wrote a treatise that we have seen in manuscript in the possession of the celebrated Ippolito Magnani, philosopher and distinguished surgeon, who, after having served three pontiffs in his procession, died while in the service of Innocent XII on January 20, 1699. Among other things, there are some sonnets of the Friar containing recipes in jargon for the aforementioned composition, one of which we shall put a sample in the present volume. If they have not been retouched by some modern professor of chemistry, which we strongly doubt, they seem far superior to the manner of rhyming that was used in those times in which the Friar lived, that is 1256.”

In the book Della Trasmutazione metallica by B Nazari (1599) there are some titles in alchemical poems attributed to Friar Elias, and P Borel likewise in Bibliotheca Chimica (Paris 1654) cites Friar Elias in the 1500 edition of Geber’s Summa perfectionis magisterii; there is an alchemical sonnet by the same Friar.

After an active life as a Franciscan, and following the excommunication brought down by his many enemies, he joined Emperor Frederick and finally withdrew to Cortona, where he had a great church built in imitation of the one he erected in Assisi. Despite the excommunication, he continued to wear the habit and lived in open rebellion with his group of followers. He died on 22 April 1253, after reconciling with the order and being absolved from the excommunication.

The companion and successor of St Francis, the man so envied and opposed for his grandiose conception of the Franciscan Order, famous for his wisdom, could this man have been an alchemist? If he did not succeed in the composition of the Philosopher’s Stone, he was certainly at least a devotee and student of the Alchemical arts, and composed sonnets on the subject.

A sonnet of Frater Elia, according to the version of Crescimbeni.

Solvete i corpi in acqua e tutti dico
Voi che cercate di far Sole e Luna
Delle due acque ne prenderet’una
Quel più vi piace e fate quel ch’io dico:
Datela a bere a quel vostro nemico
Senza darli a mangiare di cos’alcuna
Morto lo troverete in veste bruna
Dentro del corpo del Leone antico
Poi gli farete la sua sepoltura
Per intervallo tal, che si disfaccia
La polpa, e l’ossa e ogni sua giuntura
Questo poi tanto fate che si faccia
Della terra acqua senza far dimora.
La pietra havrete e questo non vi
spiaccia. In un fornello si fa tutta l’arte
Con lento fuoco si dissolve e stilla
In cera, putrefà, calcina, fissa,
Quivi s’uccide, e suscita te ipsum
Questa è la vera pietra, questa è essa.

Dissolve the bodies in water8, and I say to all
You who seek to make Sun and Moon:
Of the two waters take one,
Whichever pleases you more, and do as I say: Give it to drink to that enemy of yours9
Without giving him anything at all to eat.
You will find him dead in a dark robe
Inside the body of the ancient Lion.10 Then you will make his burial
For such an interval that the flesh,
The bones, and every joint of his fall apart11. Do this then until it happens
That earth becomes water without delay.
You will have the Stone, and let this not displease you. The whole Art is done in a furnace12:
With a slow fire it dissolves and distills
Into wax, putrefies, calcines, fixes.
There it is killed, and te ipsum is raised.
This is the true Stone; this is it.

Biblioteca Comunale di Siena, segnato L. X. 29 a foglio 142 (missing most verses but the end)

Della terra e dell’acqua si vuol fare
così la pietra sua multiplicare.
E chi intenderà questo sonetto
sarà signore a chi lui è suggetto.

Of earth and of water one wishes to make
thus its stone multiply.
And whoever shall understand this sonnet
will be lord over him to whom he is subject.

Codice Magliabechiano della R. Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze segnato II - III - 308 a carte 406

Colui che sa scoprire del sole e raggi
che il ventre della luna tiene ascosi
farà perfetti tutti i suoi viaggi.
Ma se vuol fama aver fra i più famosi,
cominci a cimentar Saturno, e faccia
che alcuna umidità più in lui si posi.
Col Zolfo fisso et minerale t’impacci,
nè per nulla sprezzare di cipri il sale
et fa che ognuno de dua spirti
s’abbracci.
Del qual la terra assai minuta vale
per che nel fuoco calcina. la stella,
se l’arte tua fra noi niente vale.
Un simil peso fai di questa et quella
et poi riduci in corpo come mai,
e vedrai cosa sopra all’altre bella.
Per che questo fia oro se tu farai
nell’acqua forte l’uno dall’altro torre,
et contento da me ti partirai.

He who knows how to discover the rays of the Sun
that the womb of the Moon holds hidden
will make all his journeys perfect. But if he wishes fame among the most renowned,
let him begin by testing Saturn,13 and see to it
that no moisture any longer rests in him14. Busy yourself with the fixed and mineral Sulphur;
do not in any way despise the salt of Cyprus,
and make each of the two spirits
embrace15. Of which the very fine earth is of worth,
because in the fire it calcinates16 the star,
if your art among us is worth anything at all. Make an equal weight of this and of that,
and then reduce them into a body as never before,17
and you will see a thing beautiful above all others. For this will be gold if you do
in strong water take the one from the other,
and content you will depart from me18.

Magliabechiano della R. Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, segnato: II - III - 308 a carte 39

Spiritum volatem càpite
et in radium solis traite
ut fixum debite
et fixum fiat volatile.
Et ipsum suaviter coquite
et de parte terram facite
quam in humido ponite
ut humidetur optime.
Cito humidam coniungite
cum hamalgama terite
super durissimum lapide,
tunc in vase proprio ponite
ut calcinetur optime.
Post ipsum suo lacte imbibite,
ut moltiplicetur utime
quando assatum pro tempore
vestitur alba clamide
et multiplicato regimine
reducitur in cinerem
cui sudorem suum redite
donec regali diademate rex coronetur debite
et disolatum facillime
ingrediantur in corpore.
Et si subtillius vis agere
fac fixum volatile
cum impetuoso flammine
deinde in terram reddite
cum ignis moderamine
e tali servato ordine
protraetur debite
donec flaut levissime.
Et sic lapidem habebitis
ex quo semper gaudebitis.
Amen.

Take the volatile spirit
and draw it into the ray of the Sun19
so that the fixed may duly
and the fixed become volatile. And cook it gently
and of part make earth,
which place in the moist
so that it may be thoroughly moistened. Quickly join the moist
and grind it with the amalgam
upon a very hard stone;
then place it in its proper vessel
so that it may be thoroughly calcined.20 Afterward imbibe it with its own milk,
so that it may be multiplied to the utmost;
when roasted for a time
it is clothed in a white mantle
and, the regimen being multiplied,
it is reduced to ash,
to which restore its own sweat
until with the royal diadem
the king21 is duly crowned
and, most easily dissolved,
they may enter into the body. And if you wish to proceed more subtly,
make the fixed volatile
with a vehement flame;
then restore it to earth
with moderate fire,
and, this order being observed,
let it be duly prolonged
until they become most light. And thus you shall have the Stone
from which you shall always rejoice.22
Amen.

codice Riccardiano N. 946

Sonnet 1

Voi pellegrini che andate in romitaso
cercando la scientia excelente,
la vostra serva va con lui in viaggio
monaco bianco pare a chi non sente;
Ma lo re dell’universo spatio
di sciamito d’oro veste la sua gente,
chollui si contrò e folle e saggio;
colerico bianco fa el suo sergente.
Et è così benigno a chi l’uccide
che gli fa lume nella casa oscura
e di tristesa fallo ingiovanire.
Chi fa questo è di grande ardire:
Non altro che colui dal quarto (cerchio)
posto in lo inferno sotto il so martire.

You pilgrims who go into hermitage
seeking the excellent science,23
your servant goes with him on the journey:
he seems a white monk to him who does not perceive; But the King of the universal space
clothes his people in gold samite, 24
with him both the fool and the wise met;
the white choleric he makes his sergeant. And he is so kind to him who slays him
that he gives him light in the dark house
and from sadness makes him grow young again.25 He who does this is of great daring:
none other than he of the fourth (circle)26
placed in hell beneath his torment.

Sonnet 2

Io son la vera luce a diradare
del sommo archinia ogni rustico e sodo
animo, son colui che senza frodo
dell’arte mostro ciò che si può fare,
Io son colui che chi mi vuole usare
da povertà lo spicho e da suo nodo
co’ l’arte, colla regola e col modo,
col suo bel fine, col suo coequare.
Corpo disfò e poi rifò un corpo
rimosso da (sua) materia, e dogli forma
sempre sguardando al velenoso scorpo.
Traggo da sua materia e metto in forma
                  (manca un verso)
coagolando con fuoco e con norma.
Giammai non si disforma
dal tuo intelletto, se ben hai inteso
per questi versi quel ch’io ti paleso.

I am the true light to clear away
from the highest alchemy every rustic and dense
mind; I am he who without deceit
of the Art shows what can be done. I am he who, for whoever wishes to use me,
unsticks him from poverty and from its knot
with the Art, with the rule and with the method,
with its fair end, with its equalizing.27 I undo a body and then remake a body
removed from (its) matter, and I give it form,
always looking to the poisonous scorpion. I draw from its matter and put it into form
                  (a verse is missing)
coagulating with fire and with rule.28 Never does it lose form
from your intellect, if you have well understood
through these verses what I disclose to you.29

Sonnet 3

Quest’è la pietra magna benedetta
la qual tractò Ermete et Gratiano,
Elit, Rosir, Pandolfo e Ortolano,
Pictagora con tutta la sua secta.
Questa non si concede a gentilesa
nè a bellesa, nè a essere humano,
di questo ogni pensiero torna vano
a chi per sua virtù la gratia aspetta. Di gratia speciale, da Dio recetta
basse vivande, vivere mesano,
sua residensa sta in piccole tetta.
De’ tu che miri la figura picta
riman contento, e bastite sapere
quanto el balestro la saecta gitta.
E nello amore di Dio sta felice
e non voler saper quel che non lice!

This is the great blessed Stone
which Hermes30 treated, and Gratian,
Elit, Rosir, Pandolfo and Hortulanus,
Pythagoras with all his sect. This is not granted to gentility
nor to beauty, nor to being human;
of this every thought turns vain
for him who by his own virtue awaits the grace.31 By special grace, received from God:
humble fare, a mean living;
its dwelling is in a small teat. You who gaze upon the painted figure32
remain content, and let it suffice you to know
as far as the crossbow casts the arrow. And in the love of God stay happy
and do not wish to know what is not lawful!

Sonnet 4

Questa è la pietra che si va cercando
dagli alchimisti per ogni sentiero
da color che hanno l’animo sincero,
ma non da quei che vanno sofisticando.
A tutti quanti loro vo’ dare bando,
però che sono tutti ingannatori,
e non cognoscono e loro errori:
per tutto il mondo vanno trapolando.
Di solfo e di mercurio (ti) farò, quando
io vorrò, tutto l’arte a punto;
e co’ l’arsenico imbeverando farò di tutti quanti un congiunto,
putrefaciendo e poi lor calcinando.
E fassi un corpo, et è Elisir perfetto; (2)
dicoti el vero, per Dio benedetto! (3)

This is the Stone that is sought
by the alchemists along every path
by those who have a sincere soul,
but not by those who go sophisticating. To all of them I wish to give ban,
for they are all deceivers
and they do not know their own errors:
throughout the world they go setting traps.33 Of sulphur and of mercury I will make, when
I wish, the whole Art to the point;
and soaking with arsenic
I will make of all of them one conjunction,
putrefying and then calcining them. And a body is made, and it is the perfect Elixir;34
I tell you the truth, by God blessed!35

Sonnet 5

O alchimisti ingrati, incredula gente
più che non fu Thomaso della fede,
andate sofisticando e nessuno crede
la verità mostrata a voi presente.
Al petto vostro recate la mente,
chè, come dice Cristo, più beato
sarà colui che non arà tocato
col dito la ferita tanto ulenta.
Quest’è la pietra ch’è tanto lucente,
la qual trattò la gran Turba magna,
e dimostrasi a ciascuno intendente;
la bella Rosa (3) tratta certamente
delle scritture di quella compagna,
la qual parlò sì scuro a ogni gente.
El sole colla luna intendi il mio parlare
E col nostro mercurio seguitare

O ungrateful alchemists, incredulous people
more than Thomas was of the faith,
you go sophisticating and no one believes
the truth shown present to you. Bring the mind to your breast,
for, as Christ says, more blessed
will he be who shall not have touched
with the finger the wound so foul-smelling.36 This is the Stone that is so shining,
which the great Turba magna treated,37
and it shows itself to every understanding one;
the fair Rose38 treats certainly
of the writings of that company,
which spoke so obscurely to every people. The Sun with the Moon, understand my speech
and with our mercury to follow

Sonnet 6

Intendi e nota ben quel ch’io ti dico;
l’anima non entra se non col suo corpo
là donde ell’è cavata, senza corpo;
questa è la verità o caro amico.
Se un altro congiungi al suo nimico,
lavori invano e perdi el tempo tuo,
però che l’altro non è fratello suo
E l’opera tua non varrà un fico.
Ma quando si congiunge col suo antico
e tutti due fanno conjuntione
nel ventre del lione a te saputo,
allora ti puoi tocare sotto al belico
e dire: i’ son maestro certamente
e nessun altro non vale un lombrico.
Sarà Elisir perfetto in fede mia,
e potrai combattere la Saracinia.

Understand and note well what I tell you:
the soul does not enter except with its body
there from where it is drawn, without a body;
this is the truth, O dear friend. If you join another to its enemy,
you labor in vain and lose your time,
for the other is not its brother
and your work will not be worth a fig. But when it is joined with its ancient one
and both make conjunction
in the belly of the Lion known to you,
then you may touch yourself beneath the navel
and say: I am certainly a master
and no other is worth a worm. It will be the perfect Elixir39, upon my faith,
and you will be able to fight the Saracenry.40

I doubt many will give it the attention it deserves, but those willing to put in the mental energy will find their efforts rewarded tenfold.

Amphora

Papal Palingenesis, Part II

Read Papal Palingenesis, Part I: A prelude to apotheosis…

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a month ago · 3 likes · Pope Head

When I wished to bring to light the science of the mystery and modality of Creation, I came upon a subterranean vault filled with darkness and winds. I saw nothing because of the darkness, nor could I keep alight because of the violence of the winds. Lo and behold, a person then appeared to me in my sleep in a form of the greatest beauty. He said to me: “Take a lamp and place it under a glass to shield it from the winds; then it will give thee light in spite of them. Then go into the underground chamber; dig in its center and from there bring forth a certain God-made image, designed according to the rules of Art. As soon as you have drawn out this image, the winds will cease to blow through the underground chamber. Then dig in its four corners and you will bring to light the knowledge of the mysteries of Creation, the causes of Nature, the origins and modalities of things.” At that I said, “Who then art thou?” He answered: “I am thy Perfect Nature. If thou wishest to see me, call me by my name.”

So goes the Recital of Hermes in the Ghayat al-Hakim, known in the West as The Picatrix. “The same account also appears, word for word, in a text attributed to Appollonius of Tyana.”1

In the autumn of 1968, the Romanian esotericist Jean Parvulesco entered into a subterranean realm under the city of Rome.

At the end of October 1968, 15 days before my forced departure from Rome, Julius Evola decided to show me direct evidence of the existence of a “other world”, a world parallel to our immediate conventional reality, our daily life, moreover, a world parallel to this parallel world itself. In Via Vittorio Emanuele, almost directly below his apartment, there was a rather peculiar cafe called Daponte Blue, which, among other things, was distinguished by the fact that it was open all night. I was confidentially invited to go down there by Evola. The place was filled to capacity with ghosts, swarming killers, degenerates in the final stages, whores of both sexes and shadows of anxious dead not understanding how to get back to their place, lost half way or even at the very beginning. They were the dregs of both worlds, silvery, purple flashes, sheer horror in one word. But this did not prevent the fact that from time to time there appeared “liberated in life”, beings belonging to the “race of the saved”, overcoming human boundaries, “individual beings”, hidden in the mass of delinquents staggering at night, completely fearless, burned by inner fire .

In fact, Daponte Blue was a metaphysical hatch that opened the way to the “other world”, a threshold of ontological transition, an occult living room in the service of two worlds.

In the vicinity of Rome, on the vertical of a sacred mountain, on top of which the almighty sanctuary of the ancient Goddess Victoria is awake, the metaphysical hatch “Daponte Blue” opened a dangerously steep road leading to a forbidden valley, locked between two high walls of red soil, where rose a garden of red marble statues of a mysterious Roma Principia, representing the sacred number of Roman families prior to modern European history, constituting the original imperial divine race; each of the statues was decorated with a family coat of arms. It was the Hall of Arms.

But this antecedent race…is it not represented in its later totality in the final Great European Empire of the Hohenstaufen, which reached its climax and its end with Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, whose sacred remains still lie today in the courtyard of the Cathedral of Palermo and whose kingdom is symbolized in Castel del Monte?

Here I must recall the conclusions I reached on this subject in The Return of the Great Times: “The monumental units of Roman imperial assertion that adorn the Hall of Arms are not burial mounds, not mausoleums, not archaic tombs, as might be assumed if consider them apart from the current of liturgical visits, but, as I quickly understood, this is a transcendental inventory of the Roots of Blood, which is the original, archetypal supertemporal receptacle of the Imperium Magnum, as well as an ensemble of commemorations that constitutes the Dogmatic Historical of religious, metahistorical events, secret marriage, hermetic and highly heroic level, which marked the formation of the blood of the first Race and the principle projection of this constituted – and meaningful – formation as a continuous occult continuation of the Divine Destiny, the bottomless calling of it and its Final Crown. Because the Coronation is here.

And I might wonder: why did it have to happen that Rome opened itself to me? What was the last hidden purpose of this therapy of the abyss, these so dangerous visits to the timeless dwellings of Rome at its origins, in which I was involved in 1968? I ask myself, but still do not find the answer.

The thing is, I think I get it now.

There is no longer any doubt: the origins of what Miguel Serrano called “the secret of Julius Evola” is something that has nothing to do with human nature.2

I have spent many hours searching for the remnants of this metaphysical hatch, circumnambulating the base of the building in which the Baron once lived. There are no records of Daponte Blu, no archival testaments or living memories among the locals. Where was this ‘threshold of ontological transition,’ one connected to an occult pocket under the earth of the Eternal City? I do not doubt the existence of such liminal fjords, and I had every reason to believe that such a portal could exist in this very spot, on both metaphysical and topographical grounds. It is clear from the account that a physical opening gave way to a spiritual one, that the sinkhole was at least half-existent in the realm of matter.

Directly adjacent to Evola’s apartment, separated by only a street, stands the Palazzo della Cancelleria. Commissioned by Cardinal Riario at the end of the 15th century, it is one of the finest examples of Renaissance lucidity in the realm of form. What’s more, it was said to have been financed with the winnings of a single night of gambling. In the 1930s, excavations in the cellar revealed an astonishing sight. An emerald lake, buried under the building, shimmered over the remnants of an ancient mausoleum. There lay Aulus Hiritus, consul and loyal general to Julius Caesar, as if entombed in a sheet of faery glass. And to the sides were other unknown tombs, scattered under the streets, and most peculiar of all, a mithraeum, one of those caves of initiation that Evola found so compelling. Whether the Baron was consciously aware of this discovery, it matters not, for Parvulesco certainly had no inclination of its existence. Could Daponte Blu have had access to a certain cellar hatch, one that opened into this imperial repository, one with a second opening, an opening into a metahistorical layer, the Hall of Arms?

Andrea Scarabelli, in his biography of Julius Evola, is one of the only writers I have encountered to explore this anecdote further. One that opened up new vistas and new possibilities.

It was this study that drew in Jean Parvulesco in 1968. He had discovered Evola’s name in Paris, at a time when his translations into French were multiplying, thanks in part to the presence of a large ‘Guénonian’ audience. A revolutionary close to the OAS (Secret Army Organisation), a scholar of political conspiracies, a literary and film critic, a member of GRECE (Research and Study Group for European Civilisation) and the Nouvelle Droite (‘New Right’), the Romanian Traditionalist spent several months in Rome and visited him almost every day. Their conversations returned insistently to two themes: Tantrism and the Polaire Brotherhood…

According to Parvulesco, the latter was experienced by Evola as a kind of ‘initiatory ascesis’ which, far from weakening him, opened up new horizons. He described these in very vivid terms as ‘dizzying metacosmic spaces opening up to him and within him through the secret passage into his own interiority.’ This liberation, Parvulesco claimed, was brought about by ‘indecipherable ontological codes and ceaseless, lofty mediumistic procedures’ dating back to the 1920s, to the ‘Ur Groups, and to the special powers imparted to the members of the Midnight Sun conspiracy.’ Parvulescu speaks of ‘Groups’ in the plural, referring not so much to the journal as to ‘links’ or ‘chains.’ Struck by his interlocutor, Parvulesco wrote the essay La mission occulte de Julius Evola (“The Occult Mission of Julius Evola), published in 1992 in Robert Steuckers’ Vouloir and expanded five years later in Le retour des Grands Temps (“The Return of Great Times”). It is a text on the ‘other Evola’ — the occult one, tirelessly at work behind the activist.

Why, Parvulesco asks, after reaching the spiritual heights of the Ur Group, did Evola engage in an unparalleled metapolitical struggle? Why, after transcending history, did he choose to direct its forces? According to Parvulesco, political militancy served as a diversion to conceal other operations carried out in the shadows. Evola, he argues, launched his assault on history by approaching European counter-revolutionary movements in the name of ‘a wide-ranging work of dissimulation.’ With a certain hyperbole, Parvulesco nonetheless captures the peculiarity of a man who left the world only to return to it, ‘concealing, with his disturbing activist initiatives, other activities that were the bearers of a hidden mission.’ Evola’s figure coincides with the mystery of this return, which compelled him to keep one foot in history and the other beyond it — much like his ‘differentiated man.’ This hypothesis may remain unverified, but it is as imaginative as the author who set it down on paper.

According to Parvulesco’s inspired words, Evola’s mission came from the depths of Arcane Rome, ‘cosmic, abyssal, hermetically sealed within itself behind a series of occult marriages that have allowed it to remain unknown.’ This religion ‘still exists in history, and will continue to exist invisibly until the end. ‘All one has to do is get back on the old path.’’ Two unpublished books arose from their conversations. The first was a collection of ‘testimonies and revelations’ on the ‘ontological perpetuation of Roma Principia.’ It had little success with publishers: many did not even read it, fearing what they might find. Two years later, he tried again with I quaderni neri dei miei dialoghi con Julius Evola (“The Black Notebooks of My Dialogues with Julius Evola”). Parvulesco submitted the manuscript to an unknown publisher, who demanded the deletion of entire paragraphs. He refused. ‘Perhaps I will have to wait for some honourable man to produce an underground edition, intended only for the circles of the shadows and secrecy.’ To this day, such an edition has never appeared. Something, however, has filtered through.

In the ‘Gnostic diary’ Le Gué des Louves, Parvulesco, adopting the stylistic features of the finest ‘fantastic realism’, recounts a ‘metaphysical journey’ that began in Rome in 1968, under Evola’s invisible patronage. One evening, after leaving the philosopher’s house, he decided to take a walk along the street towards the Tiber. Keeping to the pavement on the left, he came across a rather sinister establishment, halfway between a bar and a nightclub: ‘I will call it, as in some of my most terrible nightmares, Daponte Blu.’ Open until dawn and bathed in a bluish light, it was frequented by all manner of unsavoury characters: ‘A sublime haunt, saturated with murderers and late-stage junkies, prostitutes of either sex, and the corpses of restless shadows, unable to return. The dregs of two worlds, silver and violet flashes, utter terror.’ In that bar, worthy of the secret services, he experienced moments of total loss of consciousness. Guided invisibly by Evola, who led him ‘from a distance’, he stumbled upon the ‘mysteriosophic cave of the Daponte Blu’, where the incredible adventures recounted in his ‘Gnostic diary’ begin. This is only the final chapter of a ‘secret mission’ intended to harness the primordial fire and breathe new life into the West. During those afternoons, Parvulesco realised that these forces had not disappeared, but were still active. When the time was right, the Midnight Sun Conspiracy would manifest them again. Indeed, his nocturnal incursions revealed “how the higher operation — concerning the living signs of the loftiest Imperial Elevation, with their ‘unbearable light’ — attributable to the glacial and haughty recluse of Corso Vittorio Emanuele and his associates — an operation aimed at overturning worlds and heavens — was complete, entirely complete. His ‘hidden mission’ had been crowned with success. Finis coronat opus.”3

And so it dawned upon me that I was searching in the wrong place.

In fact, the possible location of this infernal establishment was perhaps closer to the subterranean realm under Riario’s former palace. But such speculation will be saved for later.

___________

This article series will run in parallel to “The Very Near East.” Two threads, entangled without touching, one above ground and one below.

In this first opening, we will place two visionary accounts in conversation, in which the following articles will serve as an extended footnote, an exegesis of the unexplainable.

Our second account occurred four years after Jean Parvulesco’s first descent into the strange world of Daponte Blu. And the author, at least exoterically, could not be further removed from the Romaninian.

Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi is a world-renowned academic and one of the leading scholars of early Twelver Shiism. The account you will read was taken from an article he wrote detailing a pilgrimage he made to the Jamkaran mosque as a young man.

In the year 329 of the Hegira (940-941 CE), Abū l-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, the twelfth and last Imam of the Twelver Shiites or Imami Shiites, entered what the faithful call the Great Occultation. Recognized as the eschatological Savior, destined by God to manifest Himself publicly at the “end of our Times” to fill the earth with justice and initiate all humanity into the hidden truths beneath the letter of the religions, he thus became the “Hidden Imam,” the awaited Well-Guided One (al-Mahdī), the Lord of the Times. Endowed, according to Twelver belief, with an extraordinarily providential longevity, occulted yet present in the hearts of his faithful, unknown yet active for the spiritual safeguarding of humanity, the Hidden Imam has, for more than a millennium, been the center of piety, the object of hopes, and the refuge of the distressed among Imami Shiites.

For more than a thousand years, a rich hagiographic literature has reported that he appears from time to time, in the most diverse places, to one or more privileged faithful, to resolve their problems, assist them in their despair, heal their otherwise incurable ills, teach them prayers, or even initiate them into secret truths—thereby proving, to minds tempted by doubt, his existence and his efficacy. Certain of these blessed places are particularly prized because, it is said, the apparitions there have been numerous. One goes there to humbly and discreetly devote oneself to piety and asceticism, to invocations and supplications so that the miraculous encounter may take place. The mosque of Sahla in Najaf, that of ‘Alī in Hilla, or the Cave of Sāmarrā’, all three in Iraq, are part of these places and are considered as many sanctuaries of the Hidden Imam. In Iran, the old mosque of Jamkarān, about ten kilometers southeast of Qom, fulfills the same function….

The first account is that of my own journey to Jamkarān in August 1973, when I was seventeen years old. I made this trip at the request of an old relative, the great-uncle of my father whom everyone in the family called âqâ, “the Monsieur.” A strange and reclusive character, respected and feared at the same time, he had practically spent the previous forty years in the cellar of his house in Tehran — a cellar that contained several rooms that no one, not even his wife, had seen. One only knew the first of them, filled with books. His piety, his kindness, and his great erudition in traditional sciences were known to all; he was suspected of being an alchemist and astrologer, of belonging to secret sects or even of practicing magic, but in reality no one literally knew his underground life.

In August 1973, the Monsieur, almost a centenarian, fell gravely ill. To everyone’s astonishment, it was I whom he asked for at his bedside. This only half-surprised me; a little earlier, after a lunch with Henry Corbin, I had decided to go to Paris to study Islamology. This news had delighted the Monsieur; according to his wife, the fact that a young man of the family had decided to expatriate himself to study scientifically the religion he cherished above all had marvelously surprised him, and he sought to meet me. When I was near his bed, in his immense chamber obscured by heavy curtains, he told me, in a weak but calm voice and without my being at all prepared, a strange story:

“About fifty years ago, I made my one and only pilgrimage to Jamkarān, to the sanctuary of the Imam of the Times. After taking shelter in the mosque and completing my prayers, I went to visit Monsieur P., an old friend who lives in Jamkarān. He invited me to spend the night at his house. After dinner, he led me to the cellar of his house. There, passing through the door at the back of the cellar, we entered a long gallery that led to other galleries. It was a kind of labyrinth of corridors more or less wide, of rooms more or less large, of staircases going up and down, all strangely lit by a light whose origin I do not know. Monsieur P. then said to me: ‘All the cellars of the several hundred houses in Jamkarān communicate with one another and give access to this hidden city that extends as far as the underground layers of Qom. Here is the dwelling place of the Companions of the Hidden Imam, of the people of the occult initiatic hierarchy, scattered over the surface of the earth and who meet from time to time, sometimes in the company of their Pole, the Imam himself.’ Guided by P., I saw storerooms, libraries, places of prayer, cells for retreat, some men and women. P. said to me: ‘Here is the true city of Jamkarān; all its inhabitants are People of the Secret. You are now one of them because, by the life you have led, you have shown yourself worthy of it.’ He then led me before a group of about fifty people gathered in a large, richly decorated hall, tapestried with marvelous colored wool coverings. There were men and women, all more radiant and more beautiful than the others, with good eyes and broad foreheads. A young man stepped forward toward me and told me secrets that I have forgotten but that ravished me to myself. When I came back to myself, I found myself in a caravan between Qom and Tehran. After questioning the travelers, I realized that a week had passed since my adventure. What had I done during that week? I have never known. All I know is that I have never again dared set foot in Jamkarān and that I have never seen P. again. Since this experience, I have difficulty bearing the company of men and I only feel well in my cellar, doing what I have to do. And for fifty years, questions have haunted and tormented me: Was it a dream? Was it an authentic spiritual vision? A concrete reality of the sensible world? Does this city really exist beneath Jamkarān? Was the young man who spoke to me the Imam of the Times himself? What did he initiate me into? You are the third person to whom I am telling this story. For fifty years, I hoped to have answers, through men, through books, through inspirations or dreams, but all my efforts were in vain. Today, I feel myself at the twilight of my life and I ask you a service: go to Jamkarān, find P.—I know he is still alive—and try to discover the secret. I await your return with impatience.”

Listening to the Monsieur’s account, I had felt shivers run down my spine several times and I thought I knew why. A great reader, I had spent my adolescence dreaming over the Missions of Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Beasts, Men and Gods by Ossendowski, The King of the World by Guénon, or the old Shiite accounts of the secret City governed by the Hidden Imam and his sons. The Shambhala of the Tibetans, the Agartha of the Hindus, the Green Island in the White Sea of the Shiites were the passion of my past years, and the idea of a hidden kingdom, governed by a savior and inhabited by initiates, all guardians of spiritual life on earth and awaiting the right moment to save suffering humanity, seemed magically reassuring to me. Listening to the Monsieur, a confused and uneasy feeling had come over me: was he confiding in me because he knew of my decision regarding my university studies—that to his eyes was the sign of my profound and pure faith—or did he know, in a way that escaped me since I hid my readings from others, of my interest in the subterranean Kingdom? The idea of this journey to Jamkarān enchanted me and at the same time made me profoundly uneasy. In any case, I could not refuse the request, probably the last, of an old man whom I loved. I set off on the traces of his half-century-old dream.

Twice a week, on Sundays and Wednesdays, dilapidated minibuses made the Qom-Jamkarān-Qom run. That Sunday, I was the only passenger; other pilgrims, I thought, were making the journey on foot, but I was in a great hurry. The heat was overwhelming and the weather extremely heavy. Halfway, the vehicle broke down. The repair took a long time and I decided to continue on foot. The dusty road crossed a charmless desert. Very rarely, a torrential rain soon began to fall, accompanied by a cold wind. Within a few minutes, I was soaked, covered in mud up to my knees. An hour later, I reached Jamkarān. It was a hamlet of a few dozen ochre-colored adobe buildings, the same color as the surrounding desert and the neighboring mountains. Poplars and tamarisks gave the village a touch of greenery. The sanctuary of the Hidden Imam, then the only monument of the oasis, was a small, sober mosque without any ornamentation and ochre in color as well. According to the author of the History of Qom, a work from the end of the 10th century, Jamkarān was, before the country’s conversion to Islam, a major Zoroastrian religious and aristocratic site, containing no fewer than twelve fire temples. Its very name literally means “the edge of Jam,” that is, of the land of Jamshīd, the mythical king-prophet of ancient Iran. According to the same author, on 17 Ramadan 373/22 February 984, following a meeting of an inhabitant with the Hidden Imam and according to the latter’s recommendations, the old mosque of Jamkarān was consecrated as a sanctuary of the Twelfth Imam.

I quickly visited the sanctuary, which had no remarkable feature except its evident antiquity. What struck me was the silence and calm that reigned there. Four pilgrims were there, performing their prayer or gathering in a corner. I then asked the baker for P.’s address. Once at his house, I quickly told him the whole story and the purpose of my visit. He welcomed me very warmly and invited me to have lunch with him. It was no longer raining, but my clothes were still soaked. I felt fever coming on; I had undoubtedly caught a cold. He gave me a change of clothes and offered me tea. He was a very old man, but he seemed to me much less old than the Monsieur. He lived, with his servant, who was as old as he was, in a small house with only two rooms overlooking a small courtyard with an empty basin and an immense poplar. I had noticed, in a corner of the courtyard, the door of the cellar at the bottom of a few descending steps. He spoke to me of a thousand and one things but deliberately, it seemed to me, avoided the questions that preoccupied me. I did not know if it was my fever or the tone of his grave, monotonous, and particularly warm voice that enveloped me in a feeling of gray calm. The servant served lunch. After eating, I tried several times to bring the conversation back to his cellar, to those of Jamkarān, and to the hidden city. Each time he skillfully avoided answering and changed the subject as if he had not heard me. He spoke to me of philosophy, theology, the hidden meanings of the Koran, the sayings of the Imams, astrology, the antiquity of Jamkarān, and the medicinal plants that grow there. I realized that he was of impressive erudition and that the subjects he addressed were of great interest, but my fever and my fixation on the subterranean city prevented me from giving them my full attention. Only, during one of his long monologues, I caught a few phrases that seemed to me to have a distant connection with my preoccupations. It was, I believe, during a reflection on a tradition of the Prophet: “Here, in Jamkarān, time passes differently. We are here in the domain of the Lord of the Times, and it is his time that unfolds here.” A new attempt on my part to bring up the hidden city met with another evasion. The rules of courtesy did not allow me to insist further. I wanted to take my leave, but before I could say a word, he invited me to go visit some of his friends in the neighborhood. I had no desire to do so. My frustration weighed on me and my fever was beginning to make me suffer, but I could not refuse the offer. Guided by P., I went successively to four of his neighbors. I drank numerous glasses of tea and smoked numerous cigarettes. During the conversations, I repeated my questions to each of my hosts. With one of them, I even went near the door of the cellar while launching a clumsy pleasantry about the subterranean city. Always the same courteous evasions and subject changes. I was seized by a kind of vertigo and, in my feverish state, I told myself that P. had deliberately taken me to these people in order to make me understand that the guarding of Jamkarān’s secret did not depend on his own will but was a collective duty. But were his neighbors not his accomplices? Had he not himself chosen my hosts?

I still had time before taking the evening bus back to Qom. The heat was becoming unbearable again and my fever made it even more overwhelming. On the way to the roadside stop, I stopped at the baker’s, who knew me, and asked him my questions. He told me with a smile that he had to close his shop and return home.

The Jamkarān-Qom journey lasts about fifteen minutes; from the first minutes, I sank, drenched in sweat, into a feverish drowsiness. Between waking and sleeping, I saw pell-mell and in a dizzying succession the face of the Monsieur, the doors of the cellar, the poplars of the sanctuary of the Hidden Imam, phrases from Ossendowski in French about the subterranean kingdom of the King of the World...; I heard the monotonous voice of P., the psalms of a group of faceless men in a dark room, the noise of the minibus engine.

The driver woke me in Qom. It was there that I understood, without anguish, that it was Wednesday. It seemed incredible to me. I had spent three days in Jamkarān, but what had I done, what had I become during those three days? Had I dreamed? Was it my lamentable feverish state that had completely erased three full days from my mind? In Tehran, the great anxiety of my family confirmed the reality that terrified me. I was supposed to have gone for one day to a friend’s and I had remained untraceable for more than four days. The Monsieur had died on Monday. In my distress, I received the news almost with relief.

Post-scriptum: My second visit to Jamkarān is quite recent; it dates from April 1995. The place was barely recognizable. The small hamlet of a few hundred village houses had become a small town of several tens of thousands of inhabitants. An ultra-modern highway directly links Tehran to Jamkarān, bypassing Qom. Every Wednesday, thousands of pilgrims go there in dozens of specially chartered air-conditioned buses. The sanctuary has been renovated and immensely enlarged, with loudspeakers everywhere for sermons that gather thousands of faithful. The town now includes several other mosques, travel agencies, hotels and restaurants, several printing houses and publishing houses. According to well-informed sources, an apolitical wing of the clergy, considering Shiism as an essentially eschatological doctrine and opposing the revolutionary clans in power, sought and almost succeeded in promoting Jamkarān to the rank of the great holy cities of Qom and Mashhad. The ochre oasis, dotted with poplars and tamarisks, that I had known and that had haunted part of my youth no longer exists. None of the inhabitants I had visited were still alive. I could not find the location of the old bakery. I was able to visit several cellars; they presented nothing abnormal.4

Under the appearance of historical contingencies, the secret law that gives rhythm to spiritual history imposes itself.

-Henry Corbin

Part 1

In the absence of revelation, a counter-history must be intuited and reformulated through a visionary organ—the poet’s ear. For this reason, I suppose, St Ephrem the Syrian postulated conceptio per aurem. To interpret the annals through a hermeneutic that remains mindful but not faithful to causality, through a warping of linear events, one which does not alter the words but rearranges the form into descending lines and stanzas, imposing a vertical order into the horizontal logic of the profane historian. Only then can we recognize rhythm and rhyme in the crystalline cascades of time. For the historian of today reads Dante’s Comedy as a single recumbent line.

We shall begin with a rhyme.

If anyone can be credited with initiating the Italian Renaissance, it is Gemistos Plethon. It was this brilliant Greek apostate who ferried Plato’s ghost from his Grecian graveyard to Italian soil, a soil so ripe to receive his spirit once more. As the Turk plundered his inheritance, a conquest engendered by his compatriots’ sclerosis, Plethon brought the seeds of his ancestral wisdom to a people now capable of harvesting it. And through this exchange, one mediated by the Medici court, the golden thread found a new stitch, and a richer fabric had not been felt in ages. But it was not just Plato who accompanied this sublime ferryman. Plethon brought aboard the fullness of pantheons.

The ripple of this movement, this vector, this transmigration of the gods, is incalculable in its breadth and width. This roar of renovatio and palingenesis shattered out into a million speculum shards—images, verses, ideas—beautiful and dangerous. He is the father of Hellenic Neopaganism, the grandfather of Renaissance Platonism, and the godfather of Western Esotericism. Such genealogies have been thoroughly charted, but Plethon’s own intellectual paternity is far less lucid.

But once this veil is pierced, we find that the peculiarities and the idiosyncrasies of the radical Platonist were not so alien to his near easter peers. His nature did not manifest in an absolute vacuum. Instead, we are presented with something of an equation. A distinct set of variables, odd as can be to the modern eye, but variables that repeat and conjoin to identical effect across space and time. Here, in this realm where borders and lines lacked the immutability of divine law, a witches brew of concepts and ethnoi, here in that paradox of Anatolia. For in the Eastern Mediterranean, late antiquity did not end until the conquest of Constantinople.

The first clue as to Gemistos’ origins comes from the condemnation of his greatest enemy, Gennadios Scholarios, the man who would become the first Patriarch of Constantinople under Ottoman rule.

“The sum total of his [Plethon’s] apostasy was consummated by a certain Jew with whom he studied because he was an expert on Aristotle. He [the Jew] was a follower of Averroes and of the other Arab and Persian commentators of Aristotle’s works, which the Jews have translated into their own language. Moses and the things in which the Jews believe or worship because of him [Moses] he [Elissaios] cared for least of all. This man also expounded to him [Plethon] the doctrines concerning Zoroaster and the rest. With this man, who was ostensibly a Jew but in reality a Hellene [i.e., a pagan/Hellenist/polytheist], he stayed for a long time, not only as his pupil but also in his service, being supported by him—he was one of the most influential men at the court of these barbarians; his name was Elissaeus. Such was the man with whom he completed [his formation]. Then, while trying to remain hidden, he was unable to do so; but when he began to spread his doctrines among his associates, he was sent away from the City by the most pious emperor Manuel [II] at that time and by the Church—not, however, without some destruction, because the majority did not openly denounce him, nor did they drive him away dishonorably or into barbarian land, nor in any other way did they prevent the harm that was going to come from him. Such, in brief, were the causes of that error [Plethon’s apostasy].”

When confronted with paradox in polemics, the modern mind tends to dismiss that which stinks of convoluted caricature. Contamination via a pagan jew in the Turks’ court is easy ammunition to discredit a heretical enemy, and yet, it stinks with the same internal contradictions as the old slander of “idol-worshipping Mohammadeans.” But do not be so quick to dismiss the old Patriarch’s judgment. As it was precisely in this era that coincidentia oppositorum was quotidian reality. I will spare you the scholarship and let the sceptics search the footnotes.

Plethon’s decision to study in “the land of the Turk” rather than the illustrious Constantinople is not as contradictory or eccentric as one might assume (and many have assumed). There are two possible candidates for the city he sojourned in. The first is the city of Bursa, first capital of the Ottomans, and the second is Adrianople (Edirne) in Thrace.1 In the 1380s, both cities were loci of spiritual and intellectual fermentation every bit as stimulating as they were peculiar. The Arabo-Persian medical school of Edirne offered far more to a curious student than its Venetian and Constantinopolitan counterparts. Indeed, plenty of Christians made such a voyage. And in this syncretic krater, all manner of spiritual ingredient entered this hermetic broth, Bektashis, Kabbalists, Dominicans and Greeks, a confluence of mysticism and exotic theories. Christians and Muslims studied under Jewish masters, while Jews studied under Christians, all in pursuit of new knowledge, medical or otherwise. And yet a student of the strange will see no contradiction in medicine giving birth to mysticism, as it was but 2000 years before that the great magician Empedocles founded his own medicinal school in the Mediterranean.

And then there is Bursa. The city in which al-Bistami of Antioch, teacher of Sheik Bedridden, chose to entrench himself. The city where he decided to immerse himself in the study of ‘the science of letters and the divine names,’ where he established the Brethren of Purity and the ‘recovery of a perennial and prophetic wisdom.’2 It was also a city that was by all accounts an attractive place to study esotericism.3 To desribe the dynamic as succinctly as possible, “Christians and Muslims, Greeks and Turks met on an esoteric and spiritual level and the graecophone Jews (Romaniotes) often assumed the role of mediator.”4

But what on earth do we make of Elissaios? He who was “ostensibly a Jew but in reality a Hellene [Pagan]?” There is a precise constellation that is formed in the words of Scholarios’ denouncement. “…a certain Jew with whom he studied because he was an expert on Aristotle. He [the Jew] was a follower of Averroes and of the other Arab and Persian commentators of Aristotle’s works… This man also expounded to him [Plethon] the doctrines concerning Zoroaster and the rest.” There is one name—one name and one name only that can justify such a configuration:

Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Sohravardī. Sheikh al-Ishraq. The Master of Illumination.

I had long intuited the outlines of this phantom thread in the ripples of Plethon’s words, ever since encountering Henry Corbin’s enigmatic suggestion that somehow Plethon’s project was touched by Suhrawardi’s thought. The current scholarship now supports such a prospect.5

Even the academics are beginning to intuit something peculiar in the shared nature of both projects.

Further characteristics of the mystical philosophy of Suhrawardi that are compatible with Plethon’s pagan Platonism support the picture of Elissaios as a transmitter of esoteric knowledge. Such is the inclusivity of the ‘philosophy of illumination’ of Suhrawardi, which attributes a special place to Pythagoras, the Persian sages and ‘the inspired and illumined Plato.’ This move negates the exclusivity of any particular religious revelation within history, just as Plethon does in Book I of the Nomoi. Compare, for example, two remarkably similar formulations of the idea that truth is coeval with the world. According to Plethon,‘True opinions are coeval (συναΐδια) with the universe and mankind, even if they prevail at times over many people and at times over few’. And here is Suhrawardi:

“Do not imagine that philosophy has existed only in these recent times

[i.e. the times of Pythagoras, Plato and the Persian philosophers].

The world has never been without philosophy or without a person

possessing proofs and clear evidences to champion it. [. . .]

Thus shall it be so long as the heavens and the earth endure.”

Plethon’s procession of divinities in the Nomoi may be read as evoking the radiation of Light/Being pervading and holding together all levels of reality in Suhrawardi. The complex angelology of Suhrawardi also evokes the manner in which Plethon assigns the supervision of particular aspects of the physical and intellectual world to specific deities. Further, it has been recently noted that the theory according to which Elissaios was a follower of Suhrawardi is strengthened by the prominent role of angelology in both Iranian mysticism and Romaniote Kabbala. Suhrawardi also identifies archetypes/Platonic forms with an order of luminous spheres, constructing a system analogous to the Plethonean ontological chain, in which Greek deities are identifiable with the megista gene of the Sophist and Platonic Forms. Both Suhrawardi and Plethon were aiming at creating a spiritual map with reference to imaginary beings/archetypes transcending the corporeal world.

Suhrawardi’s project saw the transposition of Zoroastrian Angels and spiritual topographies into the esoteric cosmology of Islam. He was aiming to restore something of the perennial. While Plethon was intent on reformulating theology and ontology in a neoplatonic emanatory framework in which the Hellenic Gods were once more the powers of mediation. Plethon simply goes further in his break with his religion of birth. In a Christian framework, this was the only possible option, while Islamic cosmology allows for a smoother metaphysical unity and syncretism. One may argue that there is a glaring difference. Sheikh al Ishraq simply brought in new angelic names, beings still in fundamental submission and unity too the One, while Plethon inserted genuine polytheism. Such a contention would betray a profound misunderstanding of Platonic theology.

The key can be found in one of the earliest anti-christian polemicists. Porphyry of Tyre.

At any rate, if you say that angels stand before God, who are not subject to feeling and death, and immortal in their nature, whom we ourselves speak of as gods, because they are close to the Godhead, why do we dispute about a name? And are we to consider it only a difference of nomenclature? For she who is called by the Greeks Athene is called by the Romans Minerva; and the Egyptians, Syrians, and Thracians address her by some other name. But I suppose nothing in the invocation of the goddess is changed or lost by the difference of the names. The difference therefore is not great, whether a man calls them gods or angels, since their divine nature bears witness to them, as when Matthew writes thus: "And Jesus answered and said, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God; for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven"

Plethons radical project, one which looked to overthrow the very foundations of Byzantine society in a total political and religious transformation, was unprecedented in the Christian west, but not in the Near East. If anything, it is an ideological overflow, a queer continuation of that which the heterodox Sufi orders were pursuing in the Ottoman realm.

And yet, this does not explain the central mystery of Elissaos. An Anatolian Jewish mystic submerged in Islamic esotericism is not peculiar for this temporal location; what is peculiar is his supposed Hellenic paganism. But we will return to this mystery later. For now, let us restate the queer equation.

Gemistos Plethon was initiated in Anatolia by a shadowy Jew, one who weaned him on the milk of Islamic mysticism. From here, he reformulates these currents, giving birth to a radical strain of Hellenic Neopaganism. He travels west and inculcates the wider occident with the germ of palengenesis, a surgical intervention in the imaginal realm of the western consciousness, one which alters the course of history forever. It is a paradox. European paganism seemingly revived by an encounter with the Muslims and the Jews.

It is time to finish the first line in this couplet and complete our inexplicable rhyme.

In the summer of 1900, the German adventurer Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer arrived in Constantinople.6 He had sailed from Alexandria on the tail end of a grand adventure at sea. In Constantinople, he entered the employ of Hussein Pasha, agreeing to work in his Anatolian estates in Yeniköy for the period of a year. Estates located but a few miles from Bursa. And it is in Bursa that he began to seriously study the occult. 7

Glauers interest in the occult and the exotic was first sparked after encountering a Mevlevi sect of whirling dervishes and the Cheops Pyramid in the summer of that year, where “His companion Ibrahim told him of the cosmological and numerological significance of the pyramids,” which, “aroused Glauer’s curiosity about the occult gnosis of ancient theocracies.”8 Glauers patron, Hussein Pasha, was a sufi himself and discussed these subjects with the inquisitive German. But it was within Bursa proper that a familiar equation emerged.

In Bursa, he was introduced to the Termudi family, a clan of Greek Jews from Salonica. The patriarch of the family was a committed kabbalist who had retired to a life of studying the occult sciences and amassing a collection of alchemical and Rosicrucian texts.9 This lifestyle was maintained as his eldest son Abraham managed their bank at Bursa, and the younger son ran a branch in Salonica. The Termudis also had business ventures involving silkworm cocoons and raw silk. (note on the famous american alchemist).

The Termudis were freemasons, initiated into the French Rite of Memphis. It was here, in Bursa, in 1900, that Glauer was initiated into Freemasonry by this shadowy jewish family. Glauer would go on to inherit the entirety of Termudi’s occult library, and through the Termudis and their masonic contacts, Glauer was introduced to Islamic esotericism.10 He would go on to be initiated into the Bektashi order. Glauer was convinced that the Islamic esoteric science of names and numbers shared a common root with Germanic runes.

Glauar, like Bedreddin before him, was not only interested in the occult but also in blending his esoteric proclivities within the fires of revolutionary transformation in the Ottoman state. It is worth noting that the masonic lodge he joined may have been a local cadre of the pre-revolutionary Secret Society of Union and Progress, founded on the model of Freemasonry by Salonican Turks.

Glauer is supposed to have given lectures on esoteric subjects at his apartment in Constantinople, subsequently founding a mystical lodge in December 1910. At this time he was writing a study of the Baktishi dervishes, an antinomian mystical order widely spread and influential in Turkey and connected by legend with the origin of the Janissaries, the medieval instrument of pan-Ottoman dominion in the Balkans. A link between the Baktashi order and European Freemasonry has also been allegeded. Glauer’s political views were primarily inspired by a religious orientation: the anti-materialism of pan-Ottoman mysticism, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism, combined with a post-war hatred of Bolshevism, which he identified as the acme of materialism, led him to embrace antidemocratic ideas. His politics find an historical parallel in the support of King Frederick William II for the Goldund Rosenkreuzer Orden,which opposed the rational and modernizing forces of the Enlightenment with its mystical irrationalism in Prussia during the 1780.

Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer is better known today as Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff, the founder of the Thule Society. It was Glauer, henceforth known as Sebottendorf, who, upon returning to Germany, was introduced to the ariosophical ideas of Guido Von List. He immediately intuited a connection between his Bektashi mysticism and that of Volkish esotericism. In 1917, Sebottendorf joined the volkish order Germanenorden, an ariosphical group in steep decline, and he revived a schismatic branch in the city of Munich, the same city in which the DAP (later the NSDAP) would emerge. Sebottendorf renamed his order the Thule Society. “In the words of Goodrick Clarke, Without this man it is likely that both the Germanenorden and Ariosophy would have been condemned to oblivion.”11

And so we are presented with our bizarre historical rhyme. One separated by centuries, but bound by location and archetypal repetition. Both Plethon and Sebottendorf are initiated by shadowy Jews in Turkish Anatolia, quite possibly in the same city of Bursa, where they are then introduced to Islamic esotericism. From there, they go on to formulate “neopagan” mythologies, drawing upon the pantheons of their respective ethnic ancestors, both with an explicitly political program of the most radical nature possible. Both end up founding covert revolutionary cells to both disseminate their ideas and engage in political action.

But this is only part of the story.

Continued in Part 2…

We begin Part 3 with a warning. Gods in ancient myth should not be primarily approached either allegorically or with a euhemerist sensibility. To understand my approach to myth, my spectral hermeneutic, you must first come to terms with my method of tautegorical liberation. Once the divine and the mythic can be grasped on their own terms, restored to a realm of transcendental objectivity, only then can a coherent logic be uncovered. It is only after the anthropological approach is discarded that poetic theogony and cult can be seen as ‘events in heaven,’ and the materialist assumptions of modern man cast into the dustbin.

We will begin with two relevant quotations regarding the method in question. The first comes from the book Religion after Religion.

Tautegory, a central hermeneutic principle shared by Corbin and Scholem, also derived from the esoteric Romantics. “Tautegory” apparently was a neologism coined by Friedrich W. J. von Schelling. Schelling, perhaps as much as any thinker, was an early tutelary spirit for Corbin and Scholem. His notion of “tautegory” may have come to Scholem and Corbin by way of the leading Schellingian exponent of their youth, Ernst Cassirer, whom Scholem heard lecture and Corbin met in person. They took from the Schelling-Cassirer theory of symbolism the crucial replacement of allegory with tautegory: the religious symbol is not to be understood in terms of a system of reference outside the symbol, as in allegory, but rather the symbol carries its own meaning, in reference to itself. This selfreferential meaning of the symbol was dubbed tautegorical. Scholem’s first Eranos essay, “Kabbalah and Myth” (1949), an essay in which he in effect announced the major themes of his synthetic Eranos years, stated unequivocally his Schellingian identification of myth as “narrative philosophy.” Corbin likewise embraced this notion at the core of his own system. Corbin dubbed his own project “prophetic philosophy”: “A prophetic philosophy is thus a narrative philosophy absolved of the dilemma which obsesses those who ask: is it myth or is it history?” The resolution of this false dichotomy for Corbin was Schelling’s tautegory. Corbin was most explicit on this point in his enormous, and enormously revealing, “The Imago Templi in Confrontation with Secular Norms.” Near the beginning of this extended 127-page essay, he noted that “the Imago Templi is not allegorical but ‘tautegorical’; that is to say, it should be understood as concealing the Other whose form it is. It is to be understood in its identity with that Other, and as being itself the thing which it expresses. It will thus be clear that we do not intend to take up the task of the psychologist, still less to subject the Imago Templi to the categories of positive historical criticism.” Later in this essay, he explains that “the Imago is the form in which both the one and other integrally manifest themselves. This privileged imaginal form can also be called tautegorical.” One may call this view “the tautegorical sublime.” What is sublime in this view is its liberating apathy. Released from a need to deliver religious phenomena to a meaning outside themselves, ancient spiritual phenomena are now let be. The documentary remainder of religious history, the symbolic heritage of the past—angels, sefirot, hierophanies—could now successfully resist condescending “explanations” which read them against their original spirit. They are now allowed to be themselves; they are themselves meaning; they mean themselves. These traditional symbols demand to be read in their own terms. This revision of the visionary into a visionary hermeneutics generated a revolutionary rereading of myth as a kind of tautegorical sublime. The key was the rediscovery of what Corbin called “the privileged imaginal form.”

The second is a direct quote from Henry Corbin himself.

[T]he current attitude is to oppose the real to the imaginary as though to the unreal, the utopian, as it is to confuse symbol with allegory, to confuse the exegesis of the spiritual sense with an allegorical interpretation. Now, every allegorical interpretation is harmless; the allegory is a sheathing, or, rather, a disguising, of something that is already known or knowable otherwise, while the appearance of an Image having the quality of a symbol is a primary phenomenon (Urph¨anomen), unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are.

A god is not an allegorical obfuscation of some abstract force or process. Rather, a deity is a concrete person that encompasses, circumscribes, and bridges multiple dimensions and occulted folds of nature. Apollo is not the sun. He is also not an abstract representation of form or reason. He is Apollo, Apollo is He. And this figure, this dimension, personifies and is personified by all of those attributes and forces associated with him in song and myth. Once that is established, then stranger hypotheses can be formulated.

It is with this fundamental perspective that we can approach the Numa myth in a fresh and fruitful mode.

__________

In the first article, we marveled at the mysterious logic of the ‘elicitation’ of Jove through the incantations of a bound Faunus. Now, we will analyze this peculiar god to make sense of the episode that delivered Rome a divine pledge of empire.

Faunus is a mysterious god, and the opacity of this deity’s essence is undoubtedly downstream of his great antiquity. The confusion surrounding his peculiar nature was already present in the age of the Roman Republic, where antiquarian authors tried their damndest to fit the queer faun into a box. Through the logic of the interpretatio romana he was equated with Pan, while euhemerist minded thinkers declared him an old king of Latium, grandson of Saturn and progeny of Picus. These conclusions are wholly unsatisfactory and borderline nonsensical, but the logic of the associations teases out something of his character. Faunus cannot easily be reduced to a single abstract force or principle. He is simultaneously a rustic deity, an oracular god, a fecundating force, and a being linked to the cthonic currents of the underworld. He was both wolf and goat. His worship was supposedly brought from Arcadia, and he was recognized as the god of the Lupercal. He is frequently portrayed as impish and clownish in later literature, and yet one cannot shake off the feeling that this god was once far more powerful. In the imperial period, his epithet was incorporated into the imperial cult. And as we discovered in the first article, Faunus had knowledge of “sinful” incantations capable of pulling Jove from the heights of heaven.

Faunus appears in the most peculiar of places. When one begins to track his various manifestations in mythology, it becomes clear that his personage is strangely present in the most significant moments of Rome’s birth and development, as if conjured to preside as a tutelary totem. This constellation has gone relatively ignored, and the reason for this is perhaps that many of Faunus’ myths seem to have been usurped by Hercules at later periods.

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Plutarch, describing Numas burial and the later discovery of the tablets, writes:

The peoples which were in alliance and friendship with Rome assembled at the rites with public offerings and crowns; the senators carried his (Numa’s) bier, the priests of the gods served as its escort, and the rest of the people, including women and children, followed with groans and lamentations, not as though they were attending the funeral of an aged king, but as though each one of them was burying some dearest relation taken away in the flower of life. 2 They did not burn his body, because, as it is said, he forbade it; but they made two stone coffins and buried them under the Janiculum. One of these held his body, and the other the sacred books which he had written out with his own hand, as the Greek lawgivers their tablets. But since, while he was still living, he had taught the priests the written contents of the books, and had inculcated in their hearts the scope and meaning of them all, he commanded that they should be buried with his body, convinced that such mysteries ought not to be entrusted to the care of lifeless documents. 3 This is the reason, we are told, why the Pythagoreans also do not entrust their precepts to writing, but implant the memory and practice of them in living disciples worthy to receive them. And when their treatment of the abstruse and mysterious processes of geometry had been divulged to a certain unworthy person, they said the gods threatened to punish such lawlessness and impiety with some signal and wide-spread calamity. 4 Therefore we may well be indulgent with those who are eager to prove, on the basis of so many resemblances between them, that Numa was acquainted with Pythagoras.

Antias, however, writes that it was twelve pontifical books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, which were placed in the coffin. And about four hundred years afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls,⁠ heavy rains fell, and the torrent of water tore away the earth and dislodged the coffins. 5 When their lids had fallen off, one coffin was seen to be entirely empty, without any trace whatever of the body, but in the other the writings were found. These Petilius, who was then praetor, is said to have read, and then brought to the senate, declaring that, in his opinion, it was not lawful or proper that the writings should be published abroad. The books were therefore carried to the comitium and burned.

Plutarch, while remaining sceptical of the ancient oral tradition of ‘Numa as Pythagorean’ (due to chronological issues), is still a good little Greek, and thus more than happy to reaffirm the notion of Numa as a student of Greek wisdom. In Plutarch’s account, the books are burned to keep them from being published abroad. A pious and patriotic attempt to avoid spilling state secrets. State secrets that originated from the genius of the Greeks. But Roman authors supply us with a more puzzling explanation for the immolation. Valerius Maximus writes:

Much care in preserving religiousness was also taken among our ancestors under the consulate of P. Cornelius and Baebius Tamphilus. For when on the land of the scribe L. Petilius at the foot of the Ianiculum, as the fieldworkers turned Over the earth at some depth, two chests of stone were found, in the first of which had been the corpse of Numa Pompilius, as an inscription indicated, and in the other were hidden seven Latin books about pontifical law and just as many Greek books about a philosophical system, they saw to it that the Latin ones be kept very carefully, and the praetor Q. Petilius burnt the Greek ones by Order of the Senate in a fire kindled by the victimarii in front of the people because they seemed in a certain part to be conducive to demolishing religiousness: the ancients obviously did not want that something be kept in this State by which the minds of the people might be alienated from worshipping the gods.

Now this presents us with an unthinkable paradox, one every bit as inscrutable to us moderns as it was to St Augustine. Numa was accredited as the founder of Rome’s earliest religious institutions. He was the lawbringer, the prince of peace, who cooled the warlike spirit of Romulus’ fledgling nation, and brought their will in accordance with the gods. His very name conjures up Romanitas and piety, and the Roman fondness for apposite etymology led many to associate his very name with the Greek nomos. And yet this Roman nomos was founded upon transgression; it had a double aspect, a shadow side, which the later Romans both unconsciously acknowledged and fervently occluded. It was no secret that their founding hero Romulus had established their civilization on the sap of fratricide and rape, but Numa was the counterbalance, the king who brought pacific heaven to earth. And yet the implied transgression of the religious lawgiver seems to go much further than Romulus’ own sins. For how could the secret writings of the religious founder be “conducive to demolishing religiousness?” How was a paradox not felt in the bones of the Romans, one that threatened to burst from the psyche and burn the bonds of the state?

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Those intrepid and curious souls interested in the work of Don Miguel Serrano tend to require a reading list, a structure in which to start their journey into his wonderfully weird oeuvre. Serrano’s simple prose is elegant and yet disorienting, as his approach to writing resembles the way nature composes a tempest. The mounting cascade of symbols and esoteric references that accompany his train of thought can be daunting and impenetrable to the neophyte, and so his genius is met with mockery in the minds of those not equipped to decipher the absolute lucidity and coherence of his project. Serrano completely exotericizes the esoteric, as he refuses to play the initiatory tricks of other authors, removing all veils from the content of his work. While other writers suggest, he proclaims. There are plenty of well-read right-wingers who mock Serrano while holding Ezra Pound in high esteem, completely ignorant of the fact that The Cantos posited a hierohistory no less audacious and grandiose than Don Miguel’s own counter-history.

Many open-minded and intelligent readers will begin his work and quizzically state, “I am not really sure how to read him.” As in, they are not sure what is allegorical and what is genuine, what is fact and what is fiction. They have no truth organ for penetrating the prose of the Magus of the South. Let me restate the aforementioned reader's query more bluntly, “Is Serrano just making things up?”

The answer is an emphatic “No.” He is not just “making things up.” Serrano’s knowledge is encyclopedic, and every seemingly absurd reference derives from a definite source. None of this is helped by Serrano’s refusal to hold a reader’s hand, his refusal to ease one in. Apologia is anathema to the Forbidden Man.

I have long contemplated something of a preamble, a minor initiation to prime the palate of those curious souls, so they may find the magus a little more digestible. All cards on the table: there is a reason I have finally decided to take on this task. A comrade of mine has been hard at work on an English translation of Don Miguel’s memoirs. I cannot say much at the moment, but the stars are alligning, and I feel it is my duty to partake in the constellation.

In this extended preamble, I plan on placing Don Miguel in conversation. To demonstrate the hidden sympathies between his lifeswork and the lifeswork of more digestible and academically licit thinkers. We will begin with Henry Corbin.

To the outside observer, no two individuals could be further removed than Serrano and Corbin. Serrano is a pariah, while Henry Corbin is one of the most celebrated French Orientalists and historians of religion of the 20th century. Corbin is widely regarded by Shiites as the first western academic to truly pierce the veil of that religion, to present the hidden essence of the Shiite tradition to the Occident. His legacy can hardly be captured in a few sentences, so I will leave biographical inquiries to the reader’s own research. However, suffice it to say, Corbin practically founded the field of Shia studies in the West, and his influence outside of academia is incalculable. Lacan, Foucault, Hillman, Scholem, Bloom— all credit Corbin as the prime influence upon their own respective understandings of Shia Islam and Gnosticism as a whole. Moreover, he is still widely read and widely loved in post-revolution Iran, with native Shiite scholars still translating and studying his work. Few academics of the 20th century were so universally loved and respected.

And so in terms of reception, no one could be further removed than Henry Corbin and the Forbidden Man.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon Henry Corbin’s book, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Going into it, I knew nothing of Corbin and even less of “Iranian Sufism.” And yet, as I turned through the pages, I could not believe my eyes. It was as if I were reading a compilation of exquisite footnotes, an academic disambiguation of Miguel Serrano’s work. Many of the major themes of Serrano were there, but approached from the perspective of Iranian gnosis. I found this quite odd, as Serrano’s esoteric synthesis rarely ventured into Islamic waters, but the taste was unmistakable. Shortly after, I took a glance at Corbin’s biography and uncovered the first filament binding the two men’s lives. Corbin, like Don Miguel, had been a close confidant and collaborator of Carl Jung. And both men had the privilege of being told by Jung that they were among the only ones who ever truly understood him. I immediately began to scour Serrano’s works, trying to find any reference to Corbin, convinced they must have known each other and engaged in long conversations. But nothing. How could this be? In fact, there are no records of either figure ever encountering the other. Could there have been some truly hermetic sympathy between the two, an ethereal bond, a synchronicity that correlated their spirits in esoteric unity? It would be a few years later that I would receive confirmation via an intermediary from Serrano’s son, that too his knowledge, his father had never spoken to or spoken of Henry Corbin.

Corbin and Serrano were both staunch partisans of a distinct strain of “spiritual nationalism.” They were heralds of palingenesis, poets who hummed a martial tune. Don Miguel was explicit in defining his warrior ethos- “Our Weltanschauung is warlike. It is faced with a war, because at the beginning of Time someone declared war against the Immortals…” Both thinkers recognized the absolute occlusion of power, both in its current form as a system of sociocosmic oppression, and as the ultimate remedy for countering this veiled structure. But Corbin had long remained insulated from any suspicions of his inherent extremism, and even placing these two figures in harmonic dialogue would send shockwaves through religious studies departments the world over. The first scholar who seemed to intuit the truth behind this camouflage was Steven M Wasserstrom, and he sounded the alarm in his book “Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos.”

These militant interpretations of the function of “making culture”— and thus of the History of Religions—seem especially illuminated by a statement Eliade issued to emigre Romanians in 1950. “In this historical moment of ours, we, on this side of the Iron Curtain, can do one thing alone: culture. . . . I have said this many times, but it is good to repeat: in the religious war we are engaged in, the political struggle has moved to the spiritual realm.” The point at present, in short, is that the work of Corbin and Eliade is suffused with metaphorical violence in a way that Scholem’s manifestly is not. Eliade celebrated what I have elsewhere detailed as his “violent rebirth” model of sacrality. “Today we are beginning to realize that what is called ‘initiation’ coexists with the human condition, that every existence is made up of an unbroken series of ‘ordeals,’ ‘deaths,’ and ‘resurrections,’ whatever be the terms that modern language uses to express these originally religious experiences.” Corbin, for his part, grew increasingly explicit in the violence of his rhetoric as he aged. He convoked the final session that he led of his Universit´e Saint Jean de Jerusalem on a topic of his choosing, the “Combat for the Soul of the World.” In their public activities, their choices of topics, and their rhetorical stance, Scholem showed himself a peacable man, in opposition to his comparatively aggressive Eranos companions Corbin and Eliade.1

Wasserstrom was dismayed to discover in Henry Corbin and his Eranos comrades a cadre of “Historians” who had declared war upon history, academics united by a shared fixation upon esotericism and gnosis, who had the utmost contempt for modernity and the world of the moment. In Henry Corbin’s own words, “Counter-history is ultimately more true than history.”

Both Scholem and Corbin thus spoke of “historiosophy.” They also spoke of their own work in terms of a kind of “counter-history.”2

Corbin seemed, of the three, to have developed, on a philosophical basis, the foundations for a full-blown metahistory. “The epochs of the spiritual world are totally different from the epochs of the exterior world of geology or of sociopolitical history. The epochs of the spiritual world make up a history sui generis, which is in its very essence imaginal history.”3 Elsewhere Corbin spoke of “metahistory” and “hierohistory.” Metahistory, he asserted, “bestows meaning on history, because it makes it into a hierohistory. In the absence of metahistory—that is to say, in the absence of anteriority ‘in Heaven’—and in the absence of an eschatology, to speak of a ‘sense of history’ is absurd.”4 Corbin adopted the related conception of “historiosophy” from von Baader and Schelling. “By contrast, that which certain Western philosophers, like Baader, and Schelling, have called Historiosophy would not be able to do without a metaphysics, for if one ignores or excludes the hidden, esoteric sense of things, the living phenomena of this world are reduced to those of a cadaver.”5 Elsewhere he struck a Heideggerian note, invoking the notion of “being thrown into history,” in order to underscore his preference for Historiosophy:

“Take note! When a man lets himself be thrown into history he can go through all the philosophies of history he likes, he can legislate in the name of a historical causality which ignores all metaphysic, he can behave like a complete agnostic. This is no longer possible when history is interiorised, integrated into man’s consciousness. . . . Only that which theosophists like Franz von Baader or Schelling have so rightly named “historiosophy” can now be pursued.”3

Corbin’s radical anti-historicism was a product of the reading of his beloved Shia theosophers. For Corbin, events in heaven preceded and engendered all material phenomena, that true history, hierohistory, occurred upon the horizon of the soul.

In declaring, “The Intelligence is one with eternal Time,” Nasir-e Khos- raw is also slating the secret of the speculative Ismaili cosmology: the eternal birth of the pleroma from the Ibda (eternal Existentiation), formed of archangelical hypostases originating in the first among them. This world is not of an immutability and immobility presenting a simple contrast to the perishability of sensuous things; there are Events in Heaven, archetypal Events preceding the Creation of things, and these Events are the very genesis of being.4

The unsayable which the mystic seeks to say is a story that shatters what we call history and which we must indeed call metahistory, because it takes place at the origin of origins, anterior to all those events recorded—or recordable—in our chronicles. The mystic epic is that of the exile, who, having come into a strange world, is on the road of homecoming to his own country. What that epic seeks to tell is dreams of a prehistory, the prehistory of the soul, of its preexistence to this world, dreams which seem to us a forever forbidden frontier. That is why, in an epic like the Mathnawˆı we can scarcely speak of a succession of episodes, for all these are emblematic, symbolic. All dialectical discourse is precluded. The global consciousness of that past, and of the future to which it invites us beyond the limit of chronology, can only attain musically its absolute character5

If a certain science of our times views Nature [as a corpse], it may be said that it is this transgression which all esoterisms have subsequently tried to redeem, and that is their significance for a spiritual history invisible to historians of external events . . . no esoterism, until the coming of the Iman, can be anything more than a witness, recognized by a small number, ridiculed by all the others, and not progressing except in the night of symbols.6

Profane history sees mankind as mankind has created itself; History is the creation that man regards as his own, and of which he is the result. Sacred history or hierohistory reascends to events that are prior to the world, prior to the destruction of Temple, because it is by this Temple that I was created, and its Imago exists within me. This is the key to my hermeneutics, the sacred norm which determines the ascent from world to world.7

Ultimately, Corbin’s anti-historicism amounts to a violent polemic against popular understandings of time and causality. For Corbin, time is “discontinuous, qualitative, pure, psychic,” and modern man’s understanding of cause and effect is nothing but a lecherous groping of sand and mud, an effort to unite the discontinuous while ignoring higher principles.

The fundamental idea is this: visible, apparent, outward states, in short, phenomena, can never be the causes of other phenomena. The agent is the invisible, the immaterial. Compassion acts and determines, it causes things to be and to become like itself, because it is a spiritual state, and its mode of action has nothing to do with what we call physical causality; rather, as its very name indicates, its mode of action is sympatheia. 8

If the chronological succession does not suffice to give us knowledge of a causal historical filiation between these recurrences, at least we see arising between them the continuity of a “hierophanic time,” which corresponds not to the external history of the sects and schools connected with the Gnosis, but to the cyclical presence of their “archetype,” to their common participation in the same cosmic dramaturgy.9

For Corbin, the cosmos emanates cyclically, produced by an interplay of archetypes and symbols moved through sympatheia. Material events are engendered by their celestial antecedents, and history is willed. The logical conclusion, frequently hinted at by Corbin, is that popular history is itself a sludge of confusion and falsifications. It is the goal of the gnostic to replace this mundane history with a hierohistory or counterhistory.

And this “goal of the gnostic” is exactly what was undertaken by Miguel Serrano in his El Cordon Dorado trilogy. Serrano actualized these hierohistorical yearnings in a grand epic of cosmic revisionism, a recentering of world history in which myth penetrates the sap of the soul. He sings a song of hyperborean exile, a cosmic draumaturgy against the falsification of the demiurge. Serrano recognized this present earth as a palimpsest, a crude perversion, a painting painted over.

Why did it happen? Was it pure chance? Did someone cause it? Going out from Eternity, from Nothingness, to create this bad copy of something else, then invisible but immortal, beautiful, eternal. What is unmoving, on the other side, could not go out from itself or become imperfect and active without the act of Someone who was outside and then became. Without a point of fabricated assistance. A type of Robot, Cosmic Machine, a Golem that had lost control and tried to create on their own, in their own image and likeness. An event as if over a beautiful painting of Leonardo there were overlaid a monstrosity of Picasso. So that the existence of the entire mechanical Universe, visible matter, would be a poor copy made over a fine canvas original by a Satanic plagiarist. A palimpsest. And because of this within this Nature, in which we are now, we can sense the presence of another underground Universe that has been imprisoned and tortured. In her creatures, minerals, plants, in the mountains, rivers, seas and even the stars, in all of Nature there is a nostalgia of lost perfection, a Paradise that was and still remains beneath within her core.10

Nature, and the gods, are imprisoned by this demiurgic bondage. A corruption befalls the soul of the world, and this spirit has a concrete personification, not in an abstract sense, but a personification more real than the common sense perceptions of man. Serrano, like Corbin, despises allegory.

The ancients did well to represent the Gods in human form as an Archetype recurring in all the Universes. The same stars are a gigantic man, clothed in demiurgic matter, imprisoned in this Nature and repeating himself although decreasing in size. We do not see the inhabitants of those worlds because our eyes made only to perceive our terrestrial space and time do not catch their matter. The sky has the form of a man, said Swedenborg. Everything would be as in those Persian, Indian and Chinese miniatures where there are inside men and animals other even smaller beings and other animals. Such that we ourselves, within, or on the surface of a star, would be like cells of a giant’s body, an imprisoned God who can only free himself with our efforts and our victory over the Great Jailer. Victory that often inhibits that same God.
Because this entire Universe of visible material stars, fire, ice and combustion, is the land of the Demiurge, the prison in which the Gods are bound and enslaved. This aberrant similitude has been superimposed over the pre-existence of another Divine Nature and extends itself towards the worlds of the immortals, winning battle after battle until everything would be destroyed by its own mechanical action at the end of a Kalpa when its finite energy has been exhausted, having to recommence an identical history thanks to the eternity of an imprisoned God, Time-Kronos- Saturn. Thus the Gods themselves enable the survival of their executioner, giving over to him the energy that allows his Will to Power to reform and begin everything all over again in the Eternal Return of the Same. The Demiurge receives his ‘food’ that prolongs his Cosmic Vampire existence. He keeps the Gods imprisoned within the hypnotic cycle of his diabolical Will.11

The dramaturgy of the imprisoned time god and his combat with the assistance of his emanations, is in near perfect accord with Corbin’s own understanding of Ismaili gnosis. The only difference is a matter of definitions. Where Serrano says God or immortal, Corbin says Angel. For Serrano, the archetypes are gods; for Corbin, the archetypes are angels. This may at first read as a monstrous oversimplification. But bear with me, and let us tease out the nectar of both systems.

The first key to unlocking the fundamental homology between the polytheism of Serrano and the angelology of Corbin lies in their shared “exemplification.”

Corbin:

The special and characteristic nature of the situation is shown in this process of exemplification, which constitutes the individual person and raises him to the dimension of an archetypal Person. Essentially, the perception of all reality becomes the perception, or visualization, of a concrete person. This situation creates the schema of a fundamental angelology, which is essentially the mode of self-understanding of an existence which undergoes what we may now call an angelomorphosis—that is to say, the passage from “angelicity in potentia” to “angelicity in actu,” which is the positive culmination of the Ismaili anthropology. On the other hand, this exemplification which personifies all reality in a concrete person presupposes both coincidence and distance, identity and difference, and for this reason the totality must also be present in the “every instance.” This recurrence is the foundation of the homology between the total cycle of the aeon and the cycle of resurrections which in the life of the adept constitutes his ascension from one esoteric degree to another. In the Ismaili theosophy the idea of an exemplification of archetypal persons and the idea of a homology between the cycles define the religion of Resurrection (da’wat-e qiyamat) as an angelomorphosis.12

“The sky has the form of a man.” It is no coincidence that Serrano singled out a Swedenborg quote to illuminate this point, as Corbin shared this fascination for the Buddha of the North. In Corbin’s reading of the Ismailis, each person, thing, thought, and moment has a concrete personification as an angel, and therefore a theophany.

i. Archetypal Persons. How is exemplification possible? It is to Nasiraddin Tusi that we owe the elements of a brief and profound analysis. It seems to postulate that the aspect of action which we state in the infinitive, or the aspect of the event which we denote by an abstract noun, are by no means the true aspect of their reality, and that in the last analysis they refer back to the person of the agent who enacts the action or the event as the true reality of both. For all mental or ideal reality, every concept (ma’na) in the world of the universal has its counterpart in the world of the individual: a concrete person (shakhs-e ‘ayni) outside of which this ideal or mental reality remains virtuality and pure abstraction. Everything takes place as though the question “Who is it?” were substituted for the question “What is it?”— as though to name the person were to define its essence; and it is to this person and not to the abstract, universal concept that the ta’wil or internal exegesis leads back. We gain this impression by juxtaposing propositions such as these: “Paradise is a person (or a human being).” “Every thought, every word, every action is a person.” And finally: “Every true thought, every true word, every good action has an Angel.”13

Both Corbin and Serrano are accomplishing the same transmutation of the Jungian archetype. The archetype is a concrete essence, an angel or a god.

Serrano:

Each star of the firmament is a God divided by the demiurgic explosion and imprisoned. Now serving as slaves of the Demiurge, awaiting the ultimate day of Ragnarök when the Great Fenrir Wolf will devour them. But beneath each star, in the untouched center, there is a God in pain awaiting his resurrection, his transfiguration, as in each rock, each plant, each animal.14

Serrano was quite adamant that he was not endorsing a form of gnosticism. He described his theocosmology as “Tantrism, Wotanism and an ever-particularizing pluralistic paganism.” This ever-particularizing pluralistic paganism is functionally identical to Corbin’s own exemplification. And it is here we begin to pierce the mysteries of what Corbin described as the “Paradox of Monotheism.”

I will leave you with one more quote from Corbin, which will both emphasize the mystery of this paradox and introduce the subject of the next article.

“I believe that this imaginal world is the locus of the rebirth of the Gods, those of Greek theogony, as well as of Celtic theogony, which with those of the Greeks and the Iranians, are the closest to our consciousness.”

Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo,

e nove Muse mi dimostran l'Orse.

To the stars around the pole.

_______________

When brother fled from brother, when lovers passed

Each other by in ignorance, when fathers failed

To recognize their sons, when human words no more

Were understood, nor human laws, that was when

The meaning of it all assailed me and I trembled:

It was my nation’s parting god!

I heard him, and upward to unspeaking stars

I gazed, the place from which he had descended.

And then I went to placate him. For us there still

Were many radiant days. It still seemed at the very end

We might invigorate ourselves; and thus consoled

By memories of the Golden Age, that all-confident

And brilliant morning full of force, the frightful melancholy

Was lifted from me and from my people also;

We sealed with one another free and firm bonds,

Appealing to the living gods in supplication.

Yet often when I donned the crown of all the people’s thanks,

And when the nation’s soul approached me ever closer,

Crowding me alone, again the melancholy stole upon me.

For when a country is about to die, its spirit at the end

Selects but one among the many, one alone through whom

Its swan song, the final breaths of life, will sound.

I had an intimation, yet served the spirit willingly.

And now it has transpired.

-Hölderlin

______________

Act 1 Scene 1

[Grimm]

Brother, well met! What news from the pole?

[Noir]

Frenzy, friend. Frenzy and thunder.

The treaty’s moot.

[Grimm]

Christ!

[Noir]

Nay, another.

Our Consul-General has christened office,

and baptized his claims in deed and blood,

The parleys split, all pretensions gored

of peace and sheathed arms

[Grimm]

And the president?

[Noir]

Presiding over his oval omphalos,

as stalwart Arthur ushers forth a navy,

Yet surely that cuckold will claim some credit,

and pay it double, with all interest due

[Grimm]

It would seem our fears were no fata morgana.

Arthur’s cold blood secretes thermal inversion.

[Noir]

Aye, but beware the unconscious equivocator

For fairy castles are full of purloined heirs

And a little pottage, to make a mess of man.

Here lies a changeling in the manger.

[Grimm]

The House has had its fill of Arthur’s bread

And half the Senate consents to this Arctic circus,

But if he tarnished the treaty, and set fire to ice,

Then our congress can play coy no longer.

Arthur’s mettle conceals an alloy savage.

We should have acted, for suspicions

are worthless, when not indexed to lead.

Summon the other senators, but first,

Tell me what transpired in fair Antarctica.

[Noir]

Fair is an unfit appellation for that cursed land,

For it is neither pleasant nor just.

It’s said even time freezes in those regions,

but in truth, ‘tis the only thing thawed.

Our Consul General has conjured a strange spring

[Grimm]

Then we shall shorten the seasons to precipitate a fall

[Noir]

And which shall we constrict, climate or calendar?

Such powers preside with Pontiffs and shamans,

Bridge builders and witch doctors, of which we are none.

[Grimm]

Bah! Enough with these sterile jousts,

Recite me the sins of our martial Faust!

[Noir]

Arthur arrived at the round table with half a fleet,

Along with the savage arm of his fidus Achates

[Grimm]

An idle right-hand man, the devil’s workshop,

I can only pray that General Locke

wasn’t present for the proceedings,

Ever the diplomat that one.

[Noir]

The Chinese demanded he disband the outposts

And abide by the Treaty of fifty-nine,

A treaty all nations have signed and sworn

To uphold, and the Persian legate incensed,

Said that no forsworn sword of an American consul general,

possessed the power to sever this solemn Concord,

That which the united states initiated in the first place

[Grimm]

How did our perjurious paragon respond?

[Noir]

Arthur rained words of honey and wormwood

Which intoxicated the duller delegates,

As he sensibly explicated on the sensitivity

Of this sensitive situation, and how any nation

With any sense, would guard their own interests.

And that it was in the interest of all parties involved

To kindly consent, to the continued occupation

Of this worthless wasteland of bitter cold sterility.

The Russians were less than impressed,

As their birthright is such a wasteland,

Atleast so said Locke, in unchecked scorn

And the whole delegation devolved into

A coiled collage of claims and counterclaims—

fictions, dictions and half-factuals!

The temperature was beginning to take a toll

And so I snuck off for a draught of real wormwood,

As the intoxication of spirits

is preferable to the stupor of words,

Or letters, or whatever the hell Paul said

Before he lost his head

[Grimm]

Zounds! It sounds as if you were half sauced!

[Noir]

Rest assured, my senses are sterling.

And the worse for it, for my retinas remain scarred

With the infernal forms and outlines

Of what I witnessed when I returned.

Words sharpen words as whetstones,

Past an hour, the delegates were spitting obsidian,

And yet the object of their ire had disappeared.

Arthur was gone, yet this escaped the crowd’s ken

But it did not escape mine.

So I made haste to escape myself,

To reach our fleet before the tempest

[Grimm]

Who initiated the storm you reference?

The yellow bellied chinamen?

[Noir]

Nay.

[Grimm]

Chileans?

[Noir]

Nay.

[Grimm]

Rogue Chechens?

[Noir]

Nay, Nay, Nay!

With a head full of liquor and loathing

I galloped forth from the chilled pavilion

Past Chinamen, Chileans, and Chechen sneers

Who were huddled up with their peeshooters

feigning to be occupied with soldiering,

As they counted the clock for this diplomatic

Formality to finally conclude.

It had not dawned upon their ranks

That the Americans among them

Had evaporated from the vicinity.

[Grimm]

What are you getting at?

[Noir]

And thus from the American beachhead

A gust of drones rose to blot the horizon,

A stygian tide of loitering munition

Shifting infernal in obsidian currents

As the oblivious ambassadors babbled on

With oblivion but moments away, the drones,

They billowed as black foliage in the boreal gale

Like a murmuration of starlings above the Tiber

And any man who's been in Rome

and witnessed the avian smoke

Would know the awful image I conjure.

That which Danes revere as a sort sol,

E come li stornei ne portan l’ali

nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena,

così quel fiato li spiriti mali;

And I abandoned all hope

for those who had entered

This whey faced inferno,

For Prospero had called forth his tempest,

And it’s motions mirrored the aurora above.

[Grimm]

My god, the good consul struck them at ease?

[Noir]

And with ease. In the aftermath of that first swarm

It was clear no counteroffense was coming

whether from the middle kingdom or Moscow.

For the hordes hath been dismembered,

Dissembled, and disemboweled

By the fall of the sparrow, and

Over the frost, a froth of foam and man-gore

Snowy lakes of sanguine slosh, steaming

And sweating foul vapors over the once white wastes

Rising to luminescent tongues of Green fire

On this day of grim Pentecost.

And the aurora bore witness to her apostle

For Arthur, stalwart Arthur, Our Arthur

parted the red wastes in glitter and glory,

With a wild host of armor and steel,

Heralded above by his fixed wing valkyries

Which unfurled fire from wizzing tomahawks

To swallow up the few souls still unscathed.

And the consuls countenance, shone as brilliant…

[Grimm]

His countenance? You speak as a charmed schoolgirl

Nursing a flutter chested crush!

He has betrayed us,

He has betrayed our institutions,

He has desecrated the senate halls

With this provocation on ice

[Noir]

…And his heraldry, the numinous drapes of the aurora…

[Grimm]

By God man! He would have left you to the missiles!

Straighten your wit you fool!

Assemble the others, Arthur will be drawn and quartered

whether with the consent of this half rancid senate

Or by my own arms!

Enough! enough! by Washington enough!

[they exit]

Act 1 Scene 2

[Enter Mob in the Hills of Maryland]

[Mob]

Arthur! Arthur! Long live Arthur!

Who goes there? Identify!

[Marcus]

Tis but a puckish pilgrim

On Damascene roads

[Mob]

Where stand you?

[Marcus]

Before your eyes and their scales

[Mob]

No, where stand you on our Consul General?

[Marcus]

Alas, I’ve not graced the man with my soles.

[Bystander]

These fellows inquire not of shoes but views

Sir, for self preservation’s sake, stop playing coy

[Marcus]

I’m not one for the cobweb of politic,

I’ve not the guile for gossamer plots.

Intrigue, revolutions, they interest me not

Instead I follow the motion of other orbs

[Mob]

Apolitical! Tis a sign he’s with us!

Abstruse language can only signify thus

[Marcus]

Aye, a discerning mind indeed,

I am a staunch partisan of stalwart Arthur.

Tell me, who is this man you’ve bound and gagged

Who you drag behind yourselves in chains?

[Mob]

A man guilty of slander and sewing conspiracy

Spreading his seeds of false truth and poison

To soil this soil and its minds.

He spits gossip and rumor on our consuls

Good name and valor, claiming he’s snared

Our president in wicked weeds, extortion,

And other foul devices, that Arctic triumph

Was no triumphant deed, but a blitzkrieg

Of deception and bloodshed, mass murder

And broken oaths.

[Marcus]

Foul lies indeed, tis clear he must die,

How now! Three cheers for pellucid Arthur!

A hero with a sharp heart of crystal!

This lynchpin to gibbet your pity and brains!

[The mob cheers and leaves]

[Bystander]

Tread lightly stranger, tis not the time

For wit and self satisfied utterance.

[Marcus]

I need not utterance for self satisfaction,

Nor your council in dealing with gnats,

But tell me, this swarm that passed,

They’ve no fear in hanging a man

this close to the nations capital?

[Bystander]

Congress is cognizant of the country’s ken,

They may be crippled but remain taut in craft.

If half the nation considers Arthur

De facto sovereign of this republic

Then they figure he will reap the blame

For current failings, ergo loosen the leash

And let anarchy soil his name to mud.

It seems the senate failed to foresee,

The masses using the chance to bolster,

Fair Arthur’s position in gallowed blood

[Marcus]

How fickle this wayward herd, how fickle

And bovine, so quick to forget the days

When they’d bucked and brayed for the old bull

Now shorn of horn and manhood by new studs

And what make you of our Consul General?

[Bystander]

He’s a numinous war god, one

who augurs ill for the mundane.

[Marcus]

A touch dramatic, no?

Ive never heard him hurl thunder,

Nor loosen lightning from a bow,

I think the peasantry would do well,

To pay mind to his flesh and blood

How tis no different a substance

From their own bowel sheaths.

[Bystander]

Careful friend, watch your words

I will not stick around with a loose tongue

While a man down yonder is choking on his.

[Marcus]

Aye begone, coward.

[Bystander leaves.]

[ And enter June, Jude, and Jules]

[Marcus]

Who comes here?

[Jules]

Craftsmen, off to construct a merry maypole

[Marcus]

A merry maple?

[Jules]

No friend, a may-pole

[Marcus]

But ‘tis not may, nor even April

[June]

No, but they call me June. This here’s Jules and Jude

[Marcus]

Three juwes eh?

[Jude]

No sir, gentiles.

[Marcus]

I don’t suppose you ruffians have it in

For anyone?

[June]

No sir, nor out for anyone either

[Jude]

we three won’t be blamed for nothing

[Marcus]

A bit inauspicious, methinks

[June]

What’s that?

[Marcus]

I said I deem your stated aims fictitious

[Jude]

Yahwehs balls! Why so suspicious?

[Marcus]

You’re erecting a maypole in middle December

[June]

For Stalwart Arthur hath rendered spring

by forcing our sworn foes surrender!

[Jules]

Heil Arthur Ultore! thwarting forsworn oaths!

He who swings his sword towards perjury!

[Jude]

Heil Arthur sagacious, in wisdom he dwelleth,

Rapacious as Jacob, he comes as Qoheleth

[All three Juwes in unison]

Architect and king of universal state

Upon his stones our fates we stake!

[Marcus]

Aye, now I’ve surmised the sense in the symbol

A maypole to herald a spring metaphoric,

summoned by our conquering consul general.

[June]

Tis winter sir, what riddle is proposed?

You yourself stated ‘twas dead December.

[Jude]

Arthur won,

[Jules]

Thus the pole.

[Marcus]

Aye! A stout pole for south pole triumph!

Simple puns hide sterling symbols!

[Jude]

No symbolism sir, tis but a pole

[Jules]

Sometimes a pole is but a pole sir.

[June]

Truth be told, these inquiries fit the mold

of a man beholden..

[Jude]

…To lechery

[June]

To lechery sir, lurid lechery.

A mind too keen on semiotics, signage,

And other sins, signifies a spirit stewing

in the lurid throes of dissipation.

[Jules]

Tis true, typology’s an inclination foul.

[Jude]

And by analogy analogous to Sodoms sin.

[Marcus]

Methinks this trio speaks tongue tied truth.

[June]

Truth is juggling,

[Jude]

Two balls and a cane,

[Jules]

A lot of effort,

[June]

with little gain.

[Marcus]

These puckish rhymes, as sweet as absinthe,

Sans the truth such a tonic delivers.

Tell me, where comes this stupor

For our consul general, he is no king,

Nor does he state such loft ambition.

[June]

Why he’s cut from our cloth, our souls are stitched,

a truth that only a Cowan could miss.

[Marcus]

Aye as sightless men mistake square for compass

And circumscribe straight lines in wayward circles.

[Jules]

I’ve seen Arthur’s gaze, it could sever stone

[Marcus]

(Or pray slay a stone cutter)

[Jules]

Irises set as uncut emeralds

Savage and phosphorescent

[June]

A mallards crown, that very hue

[Jude]

Or serpent scales in viridian dew!

[Jules]

I heard he beds scores of women a week

[June]

No, tis said he abhors all carnal fruits,

To preserve the bitters in his blood

[Marcus]

And what of his second, that other general?

[Jules]

Who Locke? He’s a lout.

[June]

A scallywag and a scoundrel

[Jules]

Long legged Locke they call him

[Marcus]

On account of his stature?

[Jules]

No, something to do with preying on widows

[June]

And his awkward spindly limbs.

[Jude]

I heard he fucked a horse.

[Marcus]

A man of stellar epithets indeed

[Three juwes in unison]

He has shameful names that number the stars,

Nebulas summoned when seen from afar!

[Enter Madman]

[Madman]

I will remember, nor could I forget, far-shooting Arthur,

Whom gods tremble before as in the Bears abode he is striding—

Then, as he comes up close to the place they are sitting, they leap up,

all of them, out of their seats, as he stretches his glittering bow back—

AEEIOUO!

AEEIOUO!

[Jude]

By Jabulon, who’s this jabbering madman?

[Madman]

AEEIOUO!

[June]

Can it you cacophonous catamite

[Jules]

Have some decency you unkempt wench

Temper those vowels with consonants.

[Madman]

Let whoever never loved, love tommorow,

Let whoever has loved, love tomorrow.

[June]

I can’t say I much fancy the madman’s moralizing

[Jules]

Aye, fool! We are well schooled in Brotherly love

[Madman]

A new spring, already a spring of songsters,

Spring is born again to the world!

Tomorrow beneath the leafage the binder of loves

will weave green lodges of myrtle boughs,

Tomorrow Dione from her lofty throne gives decree:

Let whoever never loved, love tommorow,

Let whoever has loved, love tomorrow

[June]

Tis December! December!

[Jules]

Your unrhymed romance is soiling our fraternity,

[June]

And floral verses are far out of season,

Take heed and leave!

[Madman]

May Day in December makes asses of men!

[Jules]

The madman mocks our maypole!

[Madman]

And Fraternizing crafts makes men fond of asses!

[Jude]

Methinks he mocks more than our maypole.

[June]

Listen here sod, three’s a crowd, but four?

The makings of a lynchmob.

[Three jewes in unison]

Out! Out! Out!

[Madman]

First origin of my origin, AEÈIOYO;

[The madman exits]

[Jude]

Begone you Pentecostal pagan!

[Jules]

Go glossolalialize elsewhere

[June]

Or by Ford we will get to sockdologizing

[Jude]

These Crass theatrics have soured my mood

[Jules]

Indubitably. Well we are off sir.

[June]

Let’s hope the merry maypole rekindles our cheer.

So long sir, we are heading east.

[Marcus]

And I west, may we never meet again.

[June, Jules, and Jude exit]

Marcus paces and thinks

[Enter three ruffians]

[Ruffian I]

This’n here appears endowed in coinage

Oi lout! Your purse or yer liver!

[Ruffian II]

Cough up the cash, or cough ichor and bile!

[Ruffian III]

No guile neither, lest we gut ye

[Ruffian I]

We’ll gut ye we will

[Ruffian II]

And peel your skin back as scales of salmon.

[Marcus]

Oh what savage humor riddles Gods glee!

Oh sardonic circumstance! sharp mockery!

Alas! Alas! You have arrived too late!

Alas! Alas! Satirized by fate!

Cruel providence! First as tragedy

Cruel providence! Then as farce!

Piracy! Piracy! You come premature!

[Ruffian I]

Speak sense you fool

Lest we sever your throat box

[Ruffian II]

Cease the riddles

Lest we riddle ye with lead

[Marcus]

But moments before I was shorn of my gems!

Three ruffians robbed me of my ringed diadems!

My treasures taken! My heirlooms stolen!

[Ruffian II]

He speaks truth, not a coin on ‘em

[Ruffian III]

Nor necklace nor locket

[Ruffian I]

nor dollar in pocket.

[Marcus]

Roguish scoundrels, Under false pretenses

these fallacious fiends feigned craftsmen,

Pretending to construct some strange totem

Symbolizing spring, a phallic maypole

[Ruffian I]

But Tis December.

[Ruffian II]

Who’d fall for that?

[Marcus]

Aye I said as much, but these serpent tounged

Scoundrels, their silver lipped speech slew my

Simple senses, for I am a simple man

Once pour in wit, but rich in wealth

Now impoverished double, a penniless dope

Bearing digits bare naked of all but nail

[Ruffian I]

What is it they robbed off ye

for you too lose so much in so little?

[Marcus]

My patrimony! My honor! Sir my rings!

Three circlets forged of golden shank

Three bands adorned in priceless gems

Antique rings from the land of Uz

Once worn by sultans, caliphs, and kings

Worthy of Solomon, Chinggis, or Nibelung

The first bears an emerald, green as the pole

The second a sapphire, blue as uranus

[Ruffian I]

Mines not of such a color

[Marcus]

The planet you ass, tis blue as Neptune,

Blue as forlorn emotion, once shorn of my treasure.

[Ruffian III]

And the third?

[Marcus]

The third band is most brilliant, for

Upon it a pearl, of monstrous splendor

A radiant orb, large as a walnut

Pried from an oyster the size of a calf

[Ruffian III]

By the gods!

Where did these three wander next?

[Ruffian II]

Speak!

[Ruffian I]

Now!

[Ruffian III]

Quick!

[Marcus]

Oh its no use for the trios too sly

When robbed I shouted “my friends are nearby!”

I told them this lie, hoping they’d reconsider

After hearing that help was quick coming hither

What they did next was ingeniously evil

[Ruffian III]

Which is?

[Marcus]

Each pirate took a ring in the palm of his hand,

And gobbled them up, deep down in their gullets

As the rings sunk like horses caught up in quicksand

But what they said next hit my heart as a bullet.

“Now no one can help for your claims ring of jest

Who can believe we’ve your treasure in our chests!”

[Ruffian III]

They ate em?

[Ruffian I]

They ate the rings?

[Marcus]

Consumed the ringlets as walnuts, and now

No one can reach them, nor verify my claims

Until they re-emerge from puckered ringlets

Heeding the next call of nature

[Ruffian I]

Where are they now? Speak!

[Marcus]

I’d wager they’ve just reached their bowels

[Ruffian III]

No the three ruffians, the thieves you fool!

[Marcus]

Why? You cannot possibly retrieve the jewels!

[Ruffian II]

You tell us where and leave the “how” to us.

[Marcus]

You carry laxatives on your persons?

Prunes or possibly another fibrous fruit?

[Ruffian I]

Were guttin em you lout, now speak quick

Or we will gut ye too.

[Marcus]

Oh Gods! Oh the humanity!

They went that way, yes there

That square mile of land down yonder

[Ruffian I]

Their names? Tell us!

[Marcus]

June, Jules, and Jude

[Ruffian III]

Three juwes eh?

[Marcus]

Nay gentiles.

[Ruffian I]

Aye lets go lads, quick!

[Marcus]

Wait! One request, one request I beseech thee,

Please slit their throats from left to right,

Jugular to jugular, clean cross the carotids

As Im told this culling blow is painless mercy

Do it gentlemen, for poor humanity’s sake!

[Ruffian II]

Why should we give a damn about poor humanity?

[Marcus]

Gods sake man, slit his throat in this fashion

Tis a robbed mans vengeful request,

Enact this damned penalty I pray you.

[Ruffian I]

Aye, if its for bloodlust we’ll grant it.

Away lads, away!

[The Three Ruffians Exit]

[Marcus]

No degrees are required to outcraft a craftsmen

And no more than a look to hook a crook

[Enter mob]

[Mob]

Arthur! Arthur! Long live Arthur!

[Marcus]

Murder! Murder! Oh Foul Murder!

My three comrades! Killed

For serving their Consul General!

[Mob]

Whats this? Murder?

[Marcus]

Murder political!

Murder despicable!

Cleaved from nape to navel, gutted

Gored, throats slit like hogs!

Bowels pulled from their bellies!

Dissected! Desecrated! Brutalized!

[Mob]

Who! Where! Why!

[Marcus]

Oh heavens, help! Help!

My three cousins, staunch partisans

Of our good Consul General!

Threatened over their beliefs

And then slain for their virtue!

As we speak those ruffians are pulling their innards out!

[Mob]

Slow down and make sense man!

[Marcus]

My three comrades! Just now!

In their infinite love for Thundering Arthur

They erected a monument to his valor

A Pole for a Polar victory!

[Mob]

A clever symbol indeed!

[Marcus]

Aye, I did say as much!

But then, a group of ghouls appeared!

Claiming to be from some order or sect!

A crafty lodge of cabalists! Who despise

Our good Consul General!

They began goring them when

They would not consent to removing

The maypole in honor of Arthur!

Friends! Countrymen! Arthurians!

Swift justice! Lynch the scoundrels!

String the bastards up by the very

Symbol they wished to fell!

The May Pole! For Arthur and America!

[Mob]

By God, lets go! Quick.

[The crowds departs in chase]

[Marcus]

Aye now your maypole will surely symbolize something,

Tis sinful to let a pregnant symbol

pass a babe stillborn

[Enter five armed brigands]

[Brigand 1]

You there, your money! Now!

[Marcus]

Touch me cunt, I’ll turn your brains to bran mash

And sous vide your liver to serve over spleen

I will consume your stomach guts as walnuts

and flush your liquid remains to rest

In a shit stained porcelain mausoleum

You filthy little cunt.

[Brigand 1]

Aye sir theres been a mistake I reckon,

We’ll be on our way.

[The brigands exit]

[Marcus]

Indeed a mistake, one of man’s grave Gods.

Tis a mistake to cause death, and a mistake may evert it,

Feigning mistake preserves life, even when they deserve it,

But when a man mistakes, a mistake for intention,

Even the Fates are thrown into mistaken contention.

[Marcus exits]

[Enter madman]

….and hail to you the fifth! KIRROALITHO!

Hail to you the sixth! ERMIKTHATHOPS!

Hail to you the seventh! EORASIKE!

[The sound of thunder as curtains close]

[Act 1 Scene 3]

[In a room outside of the Senate House]

[Arthur]

Do you hear them moan, Marcus?

Verily, verily, I say to you,

The crowd is a whore.

[Marcus]

Ah, is this your great revelation mighty Mars?

After all the glitter and gunsmoke?

That the adulterous deity you seduced

was perfumed in promiscuity?

Is this the pearl of wisdom you pillaged

from the carnage? A prize fit for a pirate.

[Arthur]

Were a wise man to rely on wisdom to temper a crowd,

Then he would surely relinquish the epithet,

For orthodox wisdom is struck undone

When three or more fools, speak with one tongue.

[Marcus]

Your majesty graces us with another pearl.

[Arthur]

Then line it up with the others and lance it,

Thread a filament to circle your neck

And flaunt it, as any common coquette

Who collects other men’s maxims

and deems the noose wise.

[Marcus]

Then grant us one more inch of rope

And tell us Arthur,

how does a wise man rule a crowd?

[Arthur]

Seduction.

[Marcus]

And your aphrodisiac of choice?

[Arthur]

Contempt. And a coating of instinct,

A tincture of well water,

the faint aftershave

Of war.

[Marcus]

Ever masculine my Lord. Surely the senate

will quiver and melt upon the first roar

of her martial paramour.

But what will become of us,

if you do not succeed in flattering the harlot?

[Arthur]

Be not afraid.

Charming a brothel is no high alchemy.

[Marcus]

And yet, recent events will have your mark

A few degrees the more mercurial

[Arthur]

Pay no mind to this pigsty

the time has come and they know it not.

Each illustrious senate seat is but

A lecherous soul that I’ve bound to a swine

And when the swine squeal it be the seat and not the senator.

The century is legion. Five score and no more.

[Marcus]

And the House?

[Arthur]

Divided. It cannot stand.

Our formula is simple arithmetic,

Yet rendered hieroglyphic to they

With word riddled brains

Tell me Locke, have you taken a lay of the land?

Where do the domains around the capitol stand?

[Marcus]

Aye sir, peace reigns sterling.

American souls all composed

in perfect equanimity.

[Arthur]

If it is not so than it shall be soon

disorder abides for I rule in shadow

Once I abide in light, so too will light order

[Marcus]

But the problem lies sir,

in the mess we’ve made down south.

[Arthur]

And with this mess we shall barter a birthright.

[Marcus]

Which is?

[Arthur]

The special providence of which the Prussian spoke.

For providence apes nature,

In the desire to hide, and in hiding desire,

from the eyes of the vulgar, twins

Bound in mutual eclipse and occultation.

This nation is nothing but a womb

And we her midwives,

Laboring, for the sake of the first man,

An American, unborn still.

[Marcus]

And the father?

[Arthur]

I am who I am.

But who art thou, Locke?

What key does this name encode?

Many a Marcus has walked this earth,

so far, you have made a fine Agrippa.

[Marcus]

Yet you are not yet Augustus.

[Arthur]

Nor do I wish it.

For I shall be far more August than Octavian,

posterity will paint his majesty as my foreshadow,

and not I his late summer shade.

The day a dreamer in the epochs to come

chances upon a broken column,

In the splendor of ruin, and contemplates glory,

My likeness shall overcome his thoughts,

Overshadowing the shadows of that age.

You call me Mars, but I am not his kin.

My forum will not house him, I need not his unction.

The man to come will point to his sign

and declare it blessed, for it hath shared in my conjunction.

[Marcus]

‘The man to come,’ an incantation

Ever coating those lips, this gnomic gloss

Of four sibylline syllables, be it

Prophecy, wish or riddle?

Your aphorisms escape me

[Arthur]

To know the man to come,

You must know the man today

What is the essence of man,

Locke? I know you fancy

Yourself a psychologist

[Marcus]

A loud little drawer of comestibles

With a spark of reason to illuminate

his bowels, and four limbs to aid in

digestion, a noble heap of cunning meat

[Arthur]

Man is no mere stomach, but a subtle sheaf,

A silhouette, formed in a fig leaf, all rhythm and umbrage.

His kind, but an outline, delimited by the season

His mind, but a trick of the light.

A pilgrim, from Cancer to Capricorn,

And Capricorn to Cancer.

Heckled by cave nymphs, a slave to recurrence,

Man is mere twilight, cast from kenotic flame,

Suffering through a mirage of movement.

The shadow of the shadow of an idea,

One poorly thought.

Yet within this knot of coiled penumbra

Lies a kernel of stardust.

Numinous and hot,

veiled and forgot.

What a great miracle is Man, Marcus,

A being worthy of reverence and honor

He passes into the nature of a god

As though he himself were a god,

He despises that part of his nature which is mortal

For he hath put his hope in the divinity of the other.

[Marcus]

Do you fancy yourself a God, Arthur?

[Arthur]

No. I have only taken the shape.

Marcus, we shall smelt the organs of this state

And uncover an ore more noble

To construct a body, and with a body, an eschaton,

Unencumbered by viscera and lies.

Come now, our whore awaits.

[Arthur and Marcus leave for the senate]

[Act 1 Scene 4]

[The Senate hearing]

[Grimm]

And so the swine assemble

[Gering]

What time will Arthur arrive?

[Grimm]

Who's to say, he’s shown no reverence

For custom or rule, could be hours before

Our Consul General graces us

[Gering]

Have you prepared your polemics?

[Grimm]

Prepared? I need no preparation.

The gun smokes, and Noir’s recovered it.

My tongue is sharp enough to spar soldiers,

And once Ive riddled his wit with this wits

Dagger, I’ll feign a few red herrings cloaked

And finalize the faena, this bull’s

Oblivious, Noir’s account, my estocada.

[Noir]

The senates a fine china shop indeed.

Ah, Good Morning Senator Schiedam,

how fairs your poor daughter these days?

[Schiedam]

I fear her pallid flesh still flees from bone

[Gering]

By Jove, is your daughter a leper?

[Schiedam]

I fear it’d be easier if she were

[Gering]

And what on earth, pray tell, is worse

Then leprosy?

[Schiedam]

She suffers an ailment unlike any other

And only God knows what preys upon her,

For all night I pray on blue knees bruised,

Contused and confused, head bowed,

Lips puckered in professions of faith,

Petitioning providence to cease draining

My cherished little cherub of her juice,

as vampiric force sucks her bosom dry..

[Gering]

By god man, has the fruit of your wife’s womb

Been snatched by some incubitical imp!

[Grimm]

Ignore these saucy allusions, Schiedam

Is prone to extravagant adjectives

And flights of libidinal speech when sorrowed

A quite common professional affliction

Amongst both politicians and crones

[Gering]

Speak plain man! What befell your daughter

[Schiedam]

What befell her was a fall, first in body

Then soul.

A few weeks back she slipped on ice, while with

Her sisters, skating upon gelated ponds

As children do, enjoined in the gaiety of youth.

When from the south a tempestuous gust

Was summoned thick, from air so thin

A spectral squall, ordained for her back

And blew her far from the arms of her kin.

Smooth she sailed on belly bitter, across

The pond, towards a sword, a sharp icicle,

A shard of death, a wintry lance

Which lodged its hate into her whole.

[Grimm]

A mouthful man! A mouthful.

[Gering]

So what, stitches and a broken rib?

[Schiedam]

Six broken ribs and stitches six score,

But if it was only this, and nothing more

Then my tears would’t pour, but a second

Sword emerged from heaven, to gore her soul,

For while she recovered she saw a Seraph,

in fevered dream, before her bed,

and this frightful being, or so she said,

lodged a saber of flaming steel

straight through the spot of her sternum!

[Gering]

A rogue Sheriff you say?

[Schiedam]

I heard her high screams from across the house

And when I entered the room, I saw her blouse

was singed around a spot of smooth flesh

discolored and scarred, but a wound not fresh

as if she had suffered burns in years past

but hours before when I had last cast

fresh bandages, she had nothing of the sort,

and yet, the whole room smelled of burning pork!

[Grimm]

This tale is too strange.

[Gering]

What madness do you spit?

[Schiedam]

And ever since this episodes occurrence,

her body has shifted, torn in strange ways.

In the morn she releases a quarter of blood

from every orifice, with fluids foul,

and fortnightly a new organ emerges from jowl

coughing up spleens, bladders and lungs,

a steel nail from her nose, and shards of gold gunk

glitter in the grime of her handkerchief.

Now she has visions, this phantom fever

Has rendered full forms in empty air,

as she spies figures, that simply aren’t there.

[Gering]

Have you tried tylenol?

[Schiedam]

She does not eat, nor can she rest and slumber

her cartilage cracks, her spines encumbered

But she spits a spew of peculiar essence,

and this fluid emits a phosphorescence,

ectoplasmic, the shade of jade,

like a light enlightening an emerald cave.

[Grimm]

Whats that? Our seats? Sorry friend

but it seems we are being called to order

[Schiedam]

I did not hear any such charge

[Grimm]

(quick Gering, before we’re subjected

to another rhyme macabre)

[Gering]

Yes, I hear the speaker too, well Shiedam,

I hope they catch the rogue sheriff who stabbed

your daughter, peace be with you, sir.

(For its clear your progenies in pieces)

[Grimm]

Listen well, a united front we must present

You, Gering, have my back when I confront

that scallywag in first round of questions,

but the killing blow will be loosened by Grimm

when he tells the senate of the horror firsthand

[Gering]

You can surely count on me, old friend,

ol’ Gerings sharper than a ballpoint pen

[Noir]

And I, brother, am sure as skies blue

that I wont say a word that isn’t true.

[Arthur and Marcus enter the Senate floor]

[Speaker of the Senate]

To your seats, Senators,

to your seats.

[Senators take their seats]

[Speaker of the Senate]

This meeting of the Senate has been

assembled by the word of Senator Grimm,

a scrutiny requested of actions undertaken

by the Pentagon and our Honorable Consul

General. Grimm, take the stand.

[Grimm goes to the podium to confront Arthur]

[Grimm]

Are you a man of God, consul general?

[Arthur]

The very Maker’s mark.

[Grimm]

Where is the president?

[Arthur]

Presiding.

[Grimm]

Aye, ever abiding by your command and council?

[Arthur]

I am indeed the consul general, senator Grimm.

[Grimm]

May I be so bold as to inquire of his Consulship

What the definite essences of his dutiful office entail,

Which checks and balances circumscribe his arms?

[Arthur]

Martial matters, wholly unknown to men

Who cache their arms in file cabinets

And cash their checks with pork barrels,

Balanced, by the martial men they scorn.

[Grimm]

Yet a position you conjured up

from an unknown almanac,

with much pomp, yet little precedent

Fellow senators, how potent the spell,

to summon a schism through state tradition,

sutured up with impositions and innovations

Anathema to the very vision of our founders.

Where find you, warlock, the foul hex,

to smite a nation’s nature?

[Arthur]

From a chronicle to long ignored

That of history: nature’s grimoire,

In which she beckons men to retrace

Her faint recollections, and render form

From nostalgia

[Grimm]

And which devil shall you call upon next, Faust?

What blight will your cauldron beckon?

[Arthur]

A balm. To heal your chafed ego

Alas, I know not the formula

[Marcus]

Nor does any man alive

[Grimm]

General Locke! Apply your name to your lips!

[Marcus]

Your wife had such a request, and I quote:

“Oh Marcus, Mark us below with those fair lips”

[Grimm]

Bastard! Brothers of the senate!

Gaze upon the twin rogues you’ve enthroned!

Those who boast of branding dead wives

In debauched acts of lechery

Liar! Filthy liar! Bloody, whoresome liar!

[Marcus]

Aye, its as the good senator says

I lied with her, in filth, and then I lied

With some other bloody whores,

For while alive, she lied to her husband,

In death, she lies with the worms

[Grimm]

I’ll take your tongue you cur, death!

Death! Who do you take me for?

[Arthur]

A bit of yellow bile in a bruised reed,

Broken by a soldiers humor, shorn

Of manhood, a naked stalk.

Good men of this solemn senate,

Is this your voice? How high it wavers

A eunuch in a deaf choir, quite a hymn,

Not quite a her.

[Senator Gering]

Hah! Yes Grimm, enough of your womanish whines

[Arthur]

There, now that’s a voice endowed, well

girded, broad, the bellow of a boar!

What say you, of Grimms waifish words?

[Senator Gering spits]

[Arthur]

A virile sign! The rebuke of a warrior!

Here stands a man with contempt for words

A rough rider, scorning phrases floral,

Who greets Grimm’s goad with a brawny boot.

A drop of spit, to wash away the ways of woman.

[Grimm]

There’s insufficient spit within the lips

Of a whale to wash away what stains you!

All the water of Jonah’s first sepulcher

Could not swab the sins from your soul.

The ways of women? This is the charge?

For safeguarding the rule of law and virtue?

You embody the most feminine vice,

Cowardice, perfidy, striking a man’s back

And breaking your word with cracked oath.

Tell the senate, tell these scoundrel swine

Of your gutless deed, of the craven course

That our Consul has charted for this state.

Poltroonish pusillanimity! Oh Captain!

My Captain! Where is thy nobility!

[Arthur]

Nobility is a man’s virtue and a state’s end.

Senator, I’ve a chest full of medals

To attest to the noble metal of my heart.

Twas noble when I charged the caves of Ghor

and slew seventy men in the Hindu Kush.

Twas noble when I held the Persian trench

waterlogged in tears, piss, and pallid gore,

as I shut my mind to fear and stench, and

clenched my fists around pistols and scrags,

thumbs in skull sockets, wrist deep in spleen,

cleaving, felling, as I slew more men

than most men will ever call friend,

or kin, or cousin, trees I’ve toppled,

uprooted, rhizomes reaching back to Babel,

ancient faces and war cries, Ive faced

without flinching and sans assistance,

brothers lost, comrades crippled, and yet

I abide.

Twas Noble when I led a fleet to Formosa

after I first was given a general’s star,

when a wayward rocket cracked the hull,

I stood firm, rooted, as my men took leave,

And I went down with ship, ready for death,

but death would not come from this noble deed,

the sea, she spit me shoreward from wet sepulchre,

reviven and soul leaven, I charged forth.

Many more a hundred score noble deeds

adorn my soul and valor, a noble name

known to all, Arthur Orso, Consul General,

if every noble deed were written down

I reckon the whole world would lack room

for the books that could be written.

But I am no longer a man, nor soldier,

but the commander of a State, a nation,

so no longer can I afford the luxury

of a noble name.

[Grimm]

Enough! Enough! Noir, Good Senator,

Tell this amnestic crowd of the horror,

the carnage, the gore he conjured,

unprovoked, and without consultation!

[Noir]

Yes, yes, let me tell you all the tale,

Of when Long-Armed Arthur, in glitter and glory,

set fire to ice, with fixed-wing valkyries,

to vanquish foreign hosts, and his countenance,

shone as brilliant…

[the senate cheers]

[Grimm]

No! No! Tell of the carnage! The carnage!

[Noir]

..the apostles heraldry, the numinous drapes of the aurora…

[Grimm]

Damn it, Damn you all! To hell and back!

[Arthur]

This pride of lions has given consent

with a roar of the chest, taking pride

in my assent. Begone Grimm, for

I fear your pride will not survive the next vote.

[End scene]

Act 1 Scene 5

[A dark room with hooded figures seated in a semicircle]

[Horace]

Let us finish the putrid pleasantries

For soon formalities begin.

[Grimm]

Brothers, brothers…

[Horace]

The Lady is not yet present,

Do not address me as kin, Grimm

[Grimm]

Even the need for anonymity

Has been reduced to hollow ritual.

Fine Horace, let me speak.

[Horace]

Speak

[Grimm]

If appearances hold true, then our cause

is dire, the senate seems bewitched,

But every other senator sits in a sect

such as this, so the howls may be hollow

[Horace]

And just as many are in arthur’s purse

And God knows how many other cliques

Are immersed in this purse, or contrary

To this or that line of credit.

Where is thy half brother, Grimm?

Has he been so seduced by three piece score

Of Arthur’s silver?

[Grimm]

Noir is too sick with romance to see straight

That snakes been charmed by worthless currency

[Horace]

I didn’t think him so green,

Has he no skin in the game?

[Grimm]

His brazen nature rusts with age

The young bull’s now but a head, a bust,

lusting after younger athletes.

Reason was not divvied out in our mother’s blood

And our fathers ran as contrary as our names.

The senator has shed his skin all the same

[Horace]

You two have long been thorns on a rosebud,

Drawing blood before I can pick my prize.

What use do you have to our designs

The senate abhors you

[Grimm]

The senate are swine. They abhor

Me as a whore abhors a virgin

Or as an investor scorns a senator,

And bankers spit on servants of the state.

[Half the men stand up and jeer in protest]

[Horace]

Oh Noble Grimm, Servant of the State!

And yet you plot here with men of lucre,

How your soul must singe, to know

Your luminous glow must endure the dark

[Grimm]

The darkness of these halls was once lucid

As midnight crystal, numinous black

The crude oil of initiation, feeding

The flames of civic virtue, melting

The fat from Lady Liberty’s gut.

[Horace]

A noble eulogy indeed, Grimm

But whose wake do your words attend

Who has died? Our order, or your pride?

We all have heard how the hearing went,

How Marcus and Arthur unmanned you,

Taking your stones and your woman’s

Honor, violating your name and her grave.

[Grimm]

I will hold my tongue, and turn this cheek

For I am far above such petty jibes

[Horace]

Senator Grimm, reborn a stoic!

Baptized in the waters of humility,

Christened in the jism of Cuckoldry!

And just as Aurelius he’s growing horns.

[Cornelius]

Enough! Enough! Who can we count on?

[Horace]

Few in power, the executives gone,

Arthur’s bound diamond in Pentagon,

And his generals, loyal as Baal to Belial,

So no defection or defence from the armed

[Grimm]

Is this equivocation I hear?

Are you privy to some crack

In the Order of the Fly?

[Horace]

I do not follow.

[Two hooded figures bring in an ebony statue of a woman, resembling a Sicilian Madonna]

[Horace]

Silence, silence, the Lady is present

[All rise]

[Horace]

Ia! Ia! O’ How fast we have flown,

Gathered by the winds to our lady’s throne!

Brothers, Brothers, beloved kin so dear,

Our blood is one, bound in love and fear.

Remind you, I, our rule so ominous,

Before our lady, we’re all anonymous,

John Doe to John Doe, our verse heroic,

Our couplets steadfast like rocks azoic.

A request, I have, at traditions' behest,

For one such brother to our lady attest

[Cornelius]

Oh sibling unknown, the honor’s all mine!

To recite the words, from our lady’s mind!

[Horace]

I will remind our brothers, but one time,

That only her words, lack iamb and rhyme.

[Cornelius]

The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach
rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto

the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man

who knows through the vast and dark unknown.

And on I was carried as the mares, aware

just where to go, kept carrying me straining

at the chariot; and young women led the way.
And the axle in the hubs let out the sound

Of a pipe blazing from the pressure of the two

well-rounded wheels at either side, as they rapidly led on:

young women, girls, daughters of the Sun

who had left the Mansions of Night for the light

and pushed back the veils from their faces with their hands.

There are the gates on the pathways of…

[Grimm]

Night! alright, brothers, I beseech you all,

To expedite the song of our ladies’ call,

For time is short, we must commence to plot,

I pray the lady will forgive this thought.

[Horace]

O John Doe, fairest friend of mine,

How could you dream of interrupting time,

With gentlest whisper, I beg our brother,

To let other brother, complete another,

Of our Lady’s honey sweet fable, please…

[Grimm]

Our lady’s bylaws make it clear as day,

That in urgent hours we can delay,

Introductions and such, until after,

Tis passed, this hour of pressing disaster

[Horace]

Fine, I’ll abide by sacred constitution,

(traditions one and sole ablution.)

So now, we plot, to find solutions

A bloody end, to a states pollution.

I’ve heard, as it were, from some noble bird,

A man named Horace, of most sterling word,

That few fellow captains of industry

Believe it wise, to end his ministry,

But Horace was approached by interests bolder,

Interests foreign, bearing chips on shoulder,

A Persian legate, whose been bested twice,

Once in Tehran, and then once on ice,

The first loss was fair, but the following foul,

intent, he is, to set bullet in jowl.

[Grimm]

I propose we employ a bomb!

A fiery way to right the wrongs!

[Horace]

Please, my brother, I remind you frantic,

To preserve pentameter iambic

[Grimm]

Tetrameter will do just fine!

[Horace]

Oh dear, brother, it’s now quite clear to all,

That the lady must be sent from hall.

Adieu, fair goddess, I say so somber,

For someone here, indeed, has wronged her.

[the statue is carried out of the hall]

[Horace]

Fuck you Grimm, you weasel cunt

I should slice your loins to mince meat

[Grimm]

Does not one soul here think it quite absurd

That we discuss our fate, in metered words?

[Horace]

So now you use the damn couplet heroic!

Arthur has risen because men of your sort

Choose perdition over state tradition!

[Grimm]

No, I’ll show you why we’ve all come short,

Why the vital breath has left our chests

For tis you who’ve abandoned heritage

Not I, for you’ve reduced tradition down

To Meaningless signs, illegible

For example, a question I propose:

who recalls the identity

of our fair lady ebony?

[Man 1]

Isis!

[Man 2]

Mary!

[Man 3]

Lilith!

[Cornelius]

Liberty!

[Grimm]

Tis wisdom! Sofia! You sordid louts!

This hallow allegory’s been hollowed out

By men who ween, a mask for a face.

Foul Butchers! carving flesh from squash.

Foul butchers! Daggered up tikes

Adding angled eyes and crooked crowns,

To orange orbs illumined in fraught light.

Fertility to carnage, harvest to horror!

[Horace]

Tis you who mistake the mask for a face,

For a name is nothing, ephemeral gloss,

a Sound susceptible to mutation with age.

Zeus and Jove could never face and wage war

No more than Grimm could battle Grimm, outside

the domain of allegory and idiom,

The false power of sophists and fools.

[Grimm]

The idolatry of blind men!

Ye who gild symbols as gods!

[Horace]

Far better than the heathen perverting

pantheons into pedagogy,

Circumscribing the splendor of a god,

Like a child crudely dissecting a frog

[Grimm]

Barbarian! Another listless lunatic

Lacking a lucid hermeneutic!

[Horace]

Tell me, is money allegorical?

Does a dollar change if I call it dough?

Or if I don’t know the ins and outs

Of exchange rates and fluctuations?

Does Washington lose weight

In the wallet of a blind man?

A symbol’s power is surely sovereign,

Independent of all exegesis.

I could surely trade some presidents head

To have a mob come fetch me yours.

[Grimm]

Mammon be thy god!

[Horace]

I do not worship money, anymore

Then we worship wisdom.

[Grimm]

I will end Arthur without your stench

Fouling my pure and murderous intent

[Grimm leaves]

[Horace]

We will see to you soon, Grimm.

Well, the seal of our lady has been broken

We may as well freely plot in the open

The Persians have pledged arms and credit

And the Chinese promised to not advance

through American soil, so long as Arthur’s gone.

So fatten pockets with foreign grease,

And send word to all the cliques sympathetic

To sow a numbness, a balm anesthetic,

So our Persian surgeon may cut incision,

And extract the plaque from our heartland.

[Cornelius]

Is there no chink in the armies armor?

Could we not find a Judas lurking?

What of Locke? He is the closest.

[Horace]

Locke will never budge; he’d don a dress

Before betraying the Consul General.

Their bond is the only thing in this state

That I can say for sure won’t break.

Arthur’s aura mirrors divinity,

Locke’s reflection bears no affinity,

Marcus, like Antony, will only betray

His beloved deity after death’s day.

Now, take flight, spread your wings my doves

The hour for power is upon us all,

Sow the seeds of sedition in your nests

In board rooms, and walled streets,

In hushed corridors where spooks meet.

From banks to barracks, if so inclined,

We shall conquer our foe, under this sign.

[all leave but one]

[The seated hooded figure stands, and removes his hood, before removing his face to reveal another]

[Marcus]

The blind lead the blind, groping elephants,

to walk in lines, as the beasts they grope,

Trunk to palm, ego to ego,

This fellatio of flesh and pride, blowing

smoke up ivory tusks and towers, so

Soon shall this memory be poached in time.

The Blind lead the blind; they mistake an egg

for a cock, and a rooster for Alectryon.

Perhaps I shall fall sound asleep,

And allow Helios to alert Hephaestus?

The Blind lead the blind, weening wisdom

a rhyme, and iambs the feet to walk on

waters sublime, Shepherds wielding crooks

and crooks guiding shepherds, oblivious

to the sheep, who’s truly a leopard

The blind lead the blind, but you, Arthur,

You are the blindest of them all.

Arthur, Arthur, thou art a scarecrow,

Mantling ravens in the field of Mars

A martial totem, an elegiac effigy

A rabbits foot in the peoples purse,

A brave stallions shoe stripped from hoof,

now nailed to door, to ward off death,

but the steeds been stripped of locomotion

for signage superstitious, folly, o folly,

your fall will come soon.

What art thou Arthur? A shamrock.

Delusion cast forth from the end of an age,

A Phylactery, cornicello,

the crones last sigh of self defence

against natures cruel touch of entropy,

inevitable, your fall, Time’s evil eye,

has cast it’s gaze upon this land

and Saturns scythe is now in hand.

How many times, Ive seen such before,

in foreign lands, on foreign shores,

In every age, of every metal,

Ive sailed Samsara on a lotus petal.

And so, my friend, you are but a sigh,

the noble sound of gasping air, the throes

of death, the song of the swan,

that first took step, on Plymouth Rock,

so sing this canticle from your chest

and ill cherish the sound of your final breath.

Yes, but I admit, you exert a strange pull,

an inertia atavistic, O Arthur,

You are more magnet than man.

But a man all the same, a man, made of

flesh and blood, fragile bonds of gore

covered in the pelt of common quarry.

A mammal. Bound to breath and digestion.

Maybe in the end Ill turn your skin

to a cloak, and fashion your scalp to a scarf,

with a bodkin for puncturing man-leather.

If you can hear me brother, know this,

my words are not sadistic nor cruel, no,

but saturated in the sound of honor,

for it is a great honor to cloak a numen.

And then your name shall join the ranks

of Mjolnir or Aegis, my golden fleece,

from an iron age, the last, of all heroes slain.

You claim to have taken the shape of the gods,

And yet you fail to discern their shape.

Who art thou Arthur? The same as your kin.

Blind, mortal, and marked for death.

You were born of woman, and you shall die,

As any woman born man who has walked

This earth.

[Marcus spits]

A drop of spit, to wash away the days of man.

après toi le déluge, Arthur.

[End scene]

___________________________

Act 2 Scene 1

[Noir’s house]

[Grimm]

Bastard! Brother, have you got what you wanted?

You’ve blessed his perjury, a florid benediction

[Noir]

But I’ve not perjured, and that’s all I promised

[Grimm]

Is the sky not blue? Your words were not true

For you concealed his deeds in eloquence

Twisting truth with tangled tongue

To paint a scene with false palette.

“Numinous drapes!” Which poet did you rob?

Pilfering symbols from sonnets, fool’s gold,

You're drunk on a substance worse than liquor

Bewitched by Homer and other fables

You search for past glory to project on

Tyrants, And cloak false drapes on cracked glass.

[Noir]

Sure, it’s true, the sky is blue, but over

Arctic ice tis green the hue, through

auroras glowing phosphorescence,

And bitter absinthe’s effervescence.

[Grimm]

You pharisaical worm, would you damn

The nation to spite your brother?

[Noir]

No, in spite of you being my brother

I’ve uttered this tonic despite its taste.

I find no pleasure in straining our bond.

[Grimm]

Tis more than strained, tis broken, severed

I declare this blood split, as Moses split sea.

[Noir]

And split a half to quarter? Calm yourself.

Arthur’s no pharaoh and you no shepherd

[Grimm]

The nations aflame and you sleep in books

What is this you read?

[Noir]

A tome most strange

Authored by a magus with peppered name

[Grimm]

A spell book?

[Noir]

Of a sort. It speaks of palimpsests.

[Grimm]

Medieval?

[Noir]

Cosmic.

[Grimm]

I do not follow. What is the claim?

[Noir]

That the world’s a painting, painted over.

[Grimm]

A gnostic shade?

[Noir]

No. He sings a theogony far more subtle,

a caustic artisan who can only muddle.

What do you know of synchronicity, Grimm?

[Grimm]

Tis a way to unlock the mind’s back door,

And let lunacy rob, reason’s drawer.

[Noir]

The coincidence of symbols cannot

Be labeled madness anymore than

The coincidence of love, as both

Are governed by the same law.

Is faith in destiny madness? If so,

Then all men are mad, or destined

to be so.

[Grimm]

What’s a symbol? A stop sign, or a cross,

A crude design, designed by man, to

Communicate, to his fellow man,

so this fellow knows the right time to stop,

the time to pray, or the day, he pays tax,

There’s no spectral essence here, for

A symbol’s a short formed Instruction,

To impart a virtue, or induce production.

[Noir]

And what if our lives were themselves but symbols?

[Grimm]

And what if our lives were nothing but letters

With infinite worlds, all bound in fetters,

All wasting away for men of letters,

Have nothing to do better, then fetter

their minds with useless letters.

[Noir]

It would mean each of our souls and lives

Were symbols informing some higher mind,

Seraphs and sylphs reaching down to read

Our flesh as braille buds, a spring gust of wind,

Perhaps fingers of heaven, touching

Our lives as lily pads.

[Grimm]

Groped by God! What an image, more larceny

Of a lecherous poet.

[Noir]

Symbols glide through time as koi fish,

Cutting pond surface crystal, ripples

To remind the world of whirls lost.

[Grimm]

To hell with you and your gnomic dross,

I’m here to inform you that I have plans

To end Arthur, your symbolic man,

And I’ll cleave that symbol with a sword in hand.

[Noir]

And if the sword’s itself a symbol?

[Grimm]

Then make it double, so long as she’s sharp.

[Noir]

And what form will your stiletto take?

[Grimm]

A bomb.

[Noir]

To heal your chafed ego?

[Grimm]

No. But I know now the formula.

[The sound of a large explosion is heard in the distance, shaking the room]

[Grimm]

What in the hell was that shock?

[Noir]

The sound of a broken back door lock.

[End Scene]

Act 2 Scene 2

[A bar in the capital]

[Hariman]

And there stood I, deep down in the south,

Two clicks from the pole, ‘round Ross ice shelf,

had half an armory ‘round the shelf of my shoulder,

A pound of C4, two Russian rifles, smoldered.

Thirty chinks were checkin’ my lips with lazers,

And thirty Chechens surround me,

knife to neck, close as razor shaves,

And was I cold, my soul gelated, but colder

my blood, this instinct, killer, my comrades

Killed, their cadavers traced my steps as

breadcrumbs, only I was left.

[Barfly 1]

Aye, ‘twas the bodies that probably

alerted the chechens and chinks to your

presence. You should have buried ‘em.

[Hariman]

There was no time of course, things were too coarse,

And hairy, there’re bears, polar, and Chechens,

bolder, who bite like bears, and ripped heads

From bare shoulders, so ‘twas left to I,

This mission to shoulder, for my squad

Was painting the ice crimson, their blood

The brushstrokes on bellying canvas,

(Ice is water and all, the metaphor sticks)

So I had to paint this painting over, with

Yellow blood, and whatever color blood

The Chechen bears bare. I was bare

naked too, did I mention that?

[Barfly 2]

Why were ye naked?

[Hariman]

Hypothermia makes you hot, act strange

And all, and I’d been hypothermic for a week.

Perhaps two.

[Barfly 3]

You were hypothermic for a week? How

In the hell d’you survive?

[Hariman]

I’m something akin to a Viking berserker,

our whole unit, personally trained by Fair

Arthur…

[All the bar]

Heil Arthur!

[Hariman]

..hopped up on shrooms and other

narcotics, amphetamines and such.

We don’t feel the cold, it’s half-trained

Out of us, and the other half of the cold is

stoned out of us, where was I, okay, so

Forty Chechens had daggers straight

On my stones, and the ridge was full of

snipers, Asian, aiming to emblazon

My body with checkers, but ol’ capn’ Harry

Was playing chess, thirty moves ahead,

Disarmed, but with my wits and my fists

Double-decker, so I threw a diagonal kick

Which licked the man’s lips, bishop-like,

Before I bouldered my shoulder right

as a rook, and the castle crumbled upon

The right hook.

[Barfly 1]

But what of your stones! You claimed

Daggers on your junk! How’d you save yer

manhood nude?

[Hariman]

Shorn right off, from gooch to pube.

[Barfly 2]

What! They done shorn your horn?

[Hariman]

Practically castrated by kitchen knife.

Chess-like.

[Barfly 2]

How in the hell do you figure it chess-like

to lose your beans?

[Hariman]

For this pawn was promoted into a queen.

[Barfly 1]

You're out of your gourd! Show us the spot

Where these Chechens cut cord!

[Barfly 3]

Show us your crotch, and if the pickles

Not picked, we will crop it off and pickle

it thick.

[Hariman]

Tut tut, gentlemen, calm yourself and recall

I’m a commando, under the command

Of our commanding officer Arthur.

[All the bar]

Heil Arthur!

[Hariman]

Besides, my cock did soon come home to roost

After the bastard snipped me, my severed

member soon froze, and as you all know,

When you lose a limb, your to put her on ice,

And so I suppose I was mighty fortunate,

Doubly fortunate, when I rose to realize

My cob had frozen hard as a log, and

Sharp as an icicle. So by losing my

Little arm, I found myself unarmed no longer.

[Barfly 1]

You used your little sword as a saber?

[Hariman]

You see, trained we were for this very

circumstance by Arthur…

[All the bar]

Heil arthur!

[Hariman]

…the same. And so I used this little stiletto

To slay the whole lot, turning the spot

Into a frosty little meadow of dead Chechens.

[Barfly 1]

You’re a lying ass!

[Hariman]

Then with a Donkeys cock I have made

asses of them! With a donkey's cock I

have slew a thousand men!

[Silence]

[Barfly 1]

Aye then I reckon the sky collapsed on your head.

[Hariman]

No friend, my cock was shorn, but not my

hair, in fact cut twice, as the circumcision

scars bare.

[the whole bar laughs]

[Veteran]

Your laughter shall devour you as locusts.

[Hariman]

And whose this sour voice?

[Veteran]

Tell me, fool, how many miles from

Ross Shelf to the Pole? Two clicks?

And there were Chechens and chinks

Clicking their teeth beyond the barrier mystic?

[Hariman]

Such info is classified, I fear.

[Veteran]

And what color are Arthur’s eyes at dawn?

What tune does Locke whistle when he scalps

a soldier?

[Hariman]

Yellow, good fellow, and the yellow

submarine, or perhaps the brick road,

The generals a tad tone deaf.

[Veteran]

The color of the skin of those snipers

whose sights you were centered? How’d

You solve that, o’ noble commando?

[Hariman]

I crooked my cock and hawked it as

A boomerang, then used their black hair

To sew my stones back to crotch.

[Veteran]

Enough! I was with Arthur from the days

When our consul general was but a lieutenant.

He saved my life, not once, but thrice

In those terrible caves of Ghor, after

The battle, still smouldered in gore,

“come” said he, “follow me,” with a grin,

“I’ll make you A Hunter of men,” and I

swore as he wore that leonine smile,

that I would worship the blade that he brandished.

A disciple was I, till the day that I’d die,

As long as that death would come by his side.

Zealous, I was, and pious as well

For I’d follow ol’ Mars to hell.

Amazed, was I, in the Hindu Kush,

When he slew seventy men without

Changing his look, a grin of gold,

A grin that shook, the fires of my soul.

[Barfly 1]

You served with Arthur?

[Veteran]

Aye, and a man o men was he, each

Promotion he climbed, he’d lift me up

at his side, up the ranks and into the fray.

A few months before, the Formosan war,

A fresh man joined our fierce company.

This colonel Locke, I’d met before,

But something seemed off, the look

in his eyes, twas different from what

I recalled. Their bond grew strong,

From the first battle fought, shoulder

To shoulder, two gods on the hunt,

No kindness, there was, in that man’s grin,

a malice unbecoming…

[Hariman]

And I’m becoming bored with obvious

lies. How now, ol Captain Harry’s

never seen you before, stolen valor’s

a capital offence.

[Veteran]

Then I’ll leave now before my blood boils

and I soil this capital in your blood, “Captain.”

[Barfly 1]

Oi wait! Were you in Antarctica?

[Veteran]

Aye, and I saw things that may not be spoken.

[Barfly 2]

I’d reckon such glorious deeds need

a tongue more poetic. You can hold

yours friend.

[Veteran]

My silence is not for such a reason.

Tell me, was there ever a time you found

yourself in thresholds far from fellow man,

where liminal air seethed thick then thin,

and curdled epileptic? As if a blink

in Saturn’s eye revealed a vista far

and wide, so below your feet you saw in mind

the world as it truly opens? The worlds

in their splendor broken? As if

the waking shapes of day, are mental

drapes we chimera lay, to cloak and veil

the cosmos splayed in our motley image?

[Barfly 1]

I do not follow.

[Barfly 2]

Tell us of the battle!

[Barfly 3]

Tell us of the carnage!

[Veteran]

The sky has the form of a man.

[The barflys all look up as the veteran exits]

[Barfly 1]

I only see the roof.

[Hariman]

Aye, away with you little worm! Now,

as I was saying, Donkey Cock and

Philistines…

[Barfly 3]

Grab him

[Hariman]

Away, away from me!

[The Barflys grab him]

[Barfly 3]

Alright, Samson, let’s shear this hair,

and then see what becomes of your cock.

[Hariman]

Not my locks! Away, Away! Or Yahweh

will make you rue the day!

[Barfly 1]

This is for slander, you little cunt, outside

the city they’d lynch for such lies.

[Barfly 2]

Heil Arthur!

[All the bar]

Heil Arthur!

[Barfly 3]

Fair Arthur delivers a foe to shear!

First the locks, then the rocks!

Heil Thundering Arthur!

[All the bar]

Heil Arthur!

[Barfly 2]

Heil Arthur the Raven Tempter!

[All the bar]

Heil Arthur!

[Barfly 1]

Heil Arthur of the Long Arm, he who brings fire from heaven!

[An explosion rips through the air and blows the walls of the bar down, crushing all inside]

Act 2 Scene 3

[Horace]

Zounds! The hell was that sound! A quake

To shake earth free from ground, and fell

The sky, has Jove just shorn his fathers loins?

[Cornelius]

‘Twas Kronos and Uranus

[Horace]

'Tis not the time for jokes of flatulence,

Slick Karios waits for no mortal man!

Quick, Cornelius, seek out the source

Of this brooding thunder! Chop Chop!

[Cornelius]

Aye, I’ll return in a second sliver.

[Cornelius exits the room]

[Horace]

Colonel Hung, are you still in one piece?

[Hung]

One Piece? Yes. At Peace? No.

This frenzy surely bodes no good.

[Horace]

I thought your kind were known for a stoic

Repose, maybe cross those legs and utter

Mantras for us both.

[Hung]

Your words are as delicate as Chechen's grip,

and your acumen, as loose as Locke’s lips.

A Grey Eminence, truly, to grace this land’s back

In shades as subtle, as your race is black.

[Horace]

As opposed to your Eminence yellow,

Surely, Ive never had any love for

you lot, but even less for our common

Foe. So purge your woes in jibes and jest,

Before we plot, to bribe the rest.

[Hung]

What has our Persian legate laid?

[Horace]

A golden egg, and a carton follows,

A little patience, my friend, this goose

Needs time, but in the mean, our sums divide,

Our bribes have brought the average to our side.

[Horace swats at the air]

[Horace]

Damn this fly! Buzzing in my ear,

As a woman scorned, from dusk to dawn!

Wheres that spray, or a swatter, pray tell!

[Cornelius returns]

[Cornelius]

A bomb has gone off in Dupont circle!

And a second in Logans, detonated

Double!

[Horace]

And who's the culprit?

[Cornelius]

The news came quick, our position is fraught,

They are saying the bomb’s a Chinese plot!

[Horace]

But we three here are the Chinese plot!

[Cornelius]

Aye, and so I thought. But then I recalled,

A comment from Grimm.

[Horace]

Grimm?

[Cornelius]

Aye, the same, on that day he broke the peace

Of our Lady, and blurted his intent

to bomb the Bear.

[Horace]

You think this could be Grimm’s doing?

[Cornelius]

Thought is cheap, and we’ve plenty of funding.

[Horace]

Then go and empty our purse!

[Cornelius leaves]

[Horace]

Hung, we need to move you somewhere secure.

[Hung]

I’ve a safe house.

[Horace]

Shall I send men to escort you?

[Hung]

My wit is not so dozy as my eyes

may seem reflect. I will send word soon.

[Hung exits]

[Horace]

And so I thread these webs so tight

And tighten threads where webs feel light

These gentle fingers sewing dread,

With Chinese silk and Persian lead.

No eastern wisdom, just eastern bread,

The only gold I need is in my head.

[Horace swats at the air again]

[Horace]

Away, fly! Away!

[End scene]

Act 2 Scene 4

[Arthur makes his way to the Capitol, as he is approached by an old crone]

[Crone]

The Gods have want to speak today.

[Arthur]

Who are you, crone?

[Crone]

My name is Thanks.

[Arthur]

Well I shall give you none,

For I am less in your name.

[Crone]

A clever tongue, but

ingratitude is unbecoming

[Arthur]

I doubt you shall cry tears for it,

As there are cobwebs upon your face.

[Crone]

In more ways than you’d know.

[Arthur]

Or maybe less.

I lack the catch for riddles.

[Crone]

I come not with riddles, but a warning

the stars and the speal bones augur ill

Heaven has sent me hexameters

[Arthur]

I have no need for a sibyl who cloaks

platitudes in sibilance, hissing aphorisms

under the pretence of wisdom.

[Crone]

Peace sir, hold your peace

So I may deliver mine!

[Arthur]

Tell me sibyl, on which ides should I stay put,

Or will my pride blind me mid march?

I’m sure your prophecy will encompass

All possibilities in perfect ambiguity.

Or better yet, a goats liver has whispered

Some truism to your marked up ear

To school me in fortune cookie wisdom.

Maybe love of money and nothing else

Shall ruin my reign and wreck America?

Shall I pray to the winds or pray fear,

The acorn eaters of fair Arcadia?

[Crone]

I see in dreams a sect has risen

Plotting, scheming, sewing…

[Arthur]

I have no want for these sooth sayings.

[Crone]

Tis but a moment to hear!

[Arthur]

And a moment too long,

For such moments conceal,

A poison most strong,

And an end most clear.

[Crone]

There is no poison in my words,

But a drop, a dose to immunize

your soul from future venom.

[Arthur]

Even if your words were true I’d spit.

[Crone]

And thus scorn the gods with your wet lips!

[Arthur]

What god favors this sordid sortilege?

Which pantheon is so crass and common

To come forth in the roll of die casters,

And hold dicastery and kingdom with crones?

[Crone]

To put their names to air would singe your hair,

And coagulate those eyes in cataracts.

For I am emissary of foregone gods

Who reign upon void thresholds.

[Arthur]

Aye the threshold of sanity in the

Void of fantasy, crowned in vanity,

Holding throne in a senile mind.

[Crone]

My patience grows thin!

[Arthur]

And yet still thicker than mine.

[Crone]

The prophecy...

[Arthur]

..lies inscribed inside this heart,

in the chambers of my bosom,

chiseled four fold in sacred atriums,

engraved in flamed enigma.

It’s message, a mystery to my mind,

Circumscribing my soul,

Yet every flex of this chest sends truth

To consecrate capillaries in godly vigor.

An amethyst ocean in sober circulation

Sanctifying the very air I breathe

With the perfumed aroma of Olympus.

Your words bloom brittle, for they are dead

in your heart, poisoned by air,

Fresh gore for your sleeve,

While mine are unspoken and hot.

[Crone]

You fail to read the words within?

A hero blind to his own heart?

Then I shall scry it in your stead

the heavens hold the same high shape,

Every star, whispers loud your fate.

[Arthur]

The stars whisper half truths to mortals,

But to half gods hymns, golden verses,

serenades for the truth we make manifest

Under their signs, but from our deeds

a constellation takes flesh, which we

carve out from the cave of the Naiads.

Tell me, am I not a bear?

Take your prophecy to the grave, witch,

And let the worms feast on its riddles.

As they suckle the nectar of your cerebellum

And conjoin your name to mud.

[Arthur spits]

[Crone]

Your words confirm your damnation!

[Arthur]

Then let Hel hold to that she hath!

[Arthur exits]

[Crone]

I need a keener bodkin for this bear’s pelt.

[Enter Grimm]

[Grimm]

From pigsty I come, and to pigsty I

go.

[Crone]

His soul is grim and his blood half black,

Or his half blood’s black, in name, not fact,

Or at least that half of blood he lacks

Has tongue so frank, in matters fact.

[Grimm]

Who is this you serenade?

[Crone]

Not high praise, but portends presage!

The gods have want to speak today!

[Grimm]

Well I have want to know the man you speak

[Crone]

His name, not known, but a sign I see

It seems to be the letter G!

[Grimm]

Be off with you! I know your sort, you swine

A crooked swindler of dead poets’ rhymes.

The letter G! The Bard I see,

Perhaps it’s Richard number three!

[Crone]

Richard? No. But Othello? Perhaps

Sans the brawn, nor bride's hymen intact.

[Grimm]

Come again?

[Crone]

This man I see, the Letter G, Tis

Capitalized! What could this mean?

Capitalized! A Possibility,

I think perhaps a senator…

[Grimm]

Or perhaps a stonecutter! Yes, that’s it!

You’ve cracked the case, uncovered a web.

A conspiracy as high as high heaven,

And as stale as fresh bread is fresh leavened,

Or as old as the flesh of Christ is unleaven,

Or as riveting as the number seven is eleven.

[Crone]

So hath SIbIlla a boken ysette

as the lacquer In sunlight!

A Senator with the letter G

Was he who bombed the circles three

[Grimm]

Bombed?

[Crone]

Bombed I say! And now the grim man

Must grimmly pay! So thinkest they!

[Grimm]

So thinkest who?

[Crone]

So thinkest the man with a poet’s name,

But with a mute man’s sense of meter

[Grimm]

And is this mans name homophonous

With a certain god egyptian?

[Crone]

As homophonous as a certain G

Has the name of a certain Reaper!

And now Mr C, trails Mr G, at the

behest of his tone deaf leader.

[Grimm]

By wisdom’s beard, where find you these facts?

[Crone]

From the Gods! And It matters not who set

The bombs, but that these men, think it thee.

[Grimm]

Be there anything else your mind’s eye has glimpsed?

[Gering walks in]

[Crone]

Yes indeed, I see the man with letter G

And half blood black, will pay the fee of liberty

By pulling iron trigger back, and blowing

Arthur’s head off back! Tis destiny!

So mote it be! The senator will set us free!

[Grimm]

Away from me! Away!

[Crone]

Away I go! Away! Fulfil the thread

Of fate one day! So hath SIbIlla

a boken ysette!

[Grimm and the Crone both leave]

[Gering]

My God, my Lord, do these ears deceive?

The Sybil has said that Senator G

With blood half black, is destined to slay

Fair Arthur!

And the only man of mulatto breed

Is me! And by George a G for Gering!

[Enter Schiedam]

[Schiedam]

Good morning Senator, we must hurry quick,

The hearing is soon to start.

[Gering]

No! No I must go! I must escape

the cruel Design of providential fate!

[Gering leaves]

[Enter Marcus]

[Marcus]

…Dumb as a door knob and as easy too turn…

[Schiedam]

Long Legged Locke! Morning General.

The times are grim indeed.

[Marcus]

Yes, yes, grim yellow bellies will be brought to heel.

The Chinese, that is. I pray the bombs touched not

Your stock.

[Schiedam]

If only, dear friend, if only it were

bombs that rocked my daughter’s frock

And not the spectral sting of unnatural

Possession, for I fear by the day she…

[Marcus]

Oh dear god, put a sock in it Schiedam!

If only you’d traded your wife lips for a sock,

or at least finished in her other set of lips.

I wont endure another rant macabre

in reference to your diabolic progeny!

[Schiedam]

Then will you endure something sweeter?

I have proof now, of the supernatural thrusts.

[Marcus]

Proof? Proof of what? A hysteric daughter?

[Schiedam]

Have whiff of what’s in this leather pouch

[Marcus]

Is it foul?

[Schiedam]

Surely sir, if your senses scorn cinnamon

And hold rosebuds in foul contempt

Tis Foul if you find fowl shit fragrant

And fair if you find vagrants foul

[Marcus]

Give me a whiff you flagrant fool!

By Odin what a smell! An odor to sweeten

The stench of hell! Lilac and daffodils!

What clod of heaven have you stolen from above!

[Schiedam]

Not a clod, but heaven’s cud,

Perhaps twice divine,

conceived immaculate

From an angelic mind.

[Marcus]

What treasure lies wrapped in that leather?

[Schiedam]

You may not have the stomach to discover it

[Marcus]

How so?

[Schiedam]

It emerged from hers.

[Marcus]

Whose and what?

[Schiedam]

My daughters esophagus

[Marcus]

Your metaphors contuse me

[Schiedam]

No metaphors sir, I speak plain as night,

It labored in her belly and then crowned

Out the wrong set of lips for birthing,

the sort of lips you suggested I use for unbirthing.

[Marcus]

She had the thought for the concoction

While digesting something fragrant?

The perfume’s ingredients epiphanized

Half past breakfast?

[Schiedam]

My daughter’s appetites are not so expensive

[Marcus]

Yet mine seems to be, for my curiosity

Is famished, and if time be money

Then this meal will leave me broke

[Schiedam]

Sir, it’s vomit, of a sorts.

[Marcus]

Are you mad?

Why collect the sickly contents of her chest?

And why, by I, does the spittle smell blessed!

[Schiedam]

From her throat comes fragrant gore

[Marcus]

Gore? What delicate carnage could conjure

A scent sublime as this! Maybe if she

ate incense oriental, on a strict diet

of frankincense and myrrh.

Give me a look.

[Locke looks in the pouch]

[Marcus]

You claim this came from her chest?

[Schiedam]

Emerged straight from her lips puckered.

[Marcus]

This pouch I must take. What else did she say?

[Schiedam]

Marcus, I’m sorry, but you cannot take this away

[Marcus]

I’ll take your head too if you don’t do as I say,

And the jelly of your eyes in my thumbs

to twiddle

[Schiedam]

A fair bargain, I suppose. My neck for spittle

[Marcus]

Now what else has your daughter said

Anything of me, or fair Arthur’s head?

[Schiedam]

Indeed, how strange you’d ask.

Nothing of you, but to Arthur she calls,

As if he’s there with her in room,

Shivered pupils, hot beads of sweat

Line her soft cheeks and quiver, breath

Heavy, mantic she shouts, a train of vowels

A melody spectral.

[Marcus]

What is the tune?

[Schiedam]

AEEIOUU

[Marcus]

Hush. I will call upon your daughter.

[Schiedam]

Im sorry, Locke, but no one may see her.

[Marcus]

I will see about that, or I’ll see to you. Begone.

[End scene]

Act 2 Scene 5

[The Senate. Scene begins with Arthurs entrance]

[Noir]

Here walks the brass battlements of hate.

Plated Mars comes wearing wrath.

[Noir’s aid]

What is this glow that blankets him?

Do these retinas wrinkle?

[Noir]

He wears the air as glittering cuirass,

His countenance a halo’d helm,

A full panoply of starlight.

[Noir’s aid]

Where comes the source of this lustre?

Be this a trick? Do the others spy it?

Rays shatter off from his temples

Fully formed, a crown of horns,

A radiant bundle of rods, my God!

As if im squinting before the dog star,

as cracked light refracts around Sirius.

What is this fairy castle he wears?

[Noir]

We are not long for this earth.

[Speaker]

Order! Order!

[Arthur]

I come here enveloped without color,

Bearing only black, somber and widowed.

For I am in mourning. Who do I mourn?

Many. Seven senators here are dead.

Three taken by terror, and four soon

To be smote by my sword.

[The senate starts yelling. Horace looks nervously at Cornelius]

[Arthur]

Silence. Or it shall be far more than four.

[The senate goes silent]

[Arthur]

And before these fates are brought to the floor

We must reflect. We must grieve for a moment.

Here is my eulogy, may you find it

Enlightening. Our nation has been stained

In blood by serpents fanged and foul, seven

Score souls snuffed out in stormy smoke,

An eruption, unnatural, has blown open

The rib cage of our nation’s rich chest,

Warping our sacred center agape to stake

The beating heart of our republic's bosom,

And desecrate hallowed diamond in ash.

A hundred forty men are dead, and three

Of the departed were kin by office,

Your senatorial brothers dear.

A tragedy. An outrage. But I lament

Another, a casualty not listed,

One unknown to census or baptismal font,

This victim I mourn, has no name.

For I mourn the death of my faith in you.

You, the senate, your competence.

The protection of this city, this land,

Is your domain. I move no legions here,

My imperium is relegated to foreign clay,

And yet your weakness has rendered this clay

Foreign. My powers must be extended,

This unchecked imbalance inverted,

If the pentagon was shepherd of this diamond,

Then no serpents would have coiled here.

The alterations I imposed with mutual

Consent of this senate with the dawn

Of the consulship, must be enshrined

Into constitutional ink, and expanded.

[Grimm]

Expanded?

[Arthur]

Aye! Expanded, Grimm! Or with seasons shift

Come spring I reckon half of this senate

Will have perished to another cruel device,

For our enemies smell weakness as jackals,

And this capital is wounded game, guarded

By sterile scouts. Where was I, you may wonder

When those bombs broke air? I pose

A more pressing question, the guards

Under congressional chain, assigned to my

Office, where were they when bombs broke?

It seems someone had told them to abandon

Post, for simultaneous to the croak of C4,

A man entered my office and sprayed

A bushel of hot lead to checker my walls,

With smouldering barrel, he traced

My flesh with his submachine gun.

And if I were any other man, I would

Be a riddled corpse wilting in morgue still,

But I am not any other man, I am

Not one of you, I am too quick

For simple bulls.

[Speaker of the senate]

And where is this man now?

[Arthur]

I slew him with a brawny thrust of steel,

With twist of wrist uncorked his stomach's seal.

[Grimm]

How are we to believe what we’ve just heard?

[Arthur]

I’ll prove one sense with another.

So you may see what you have heard

By seeing that, through which he heard.

[Arthur tosses a pouch at Grimm. Grimm opens it]

[Grimm]

By god he sheared the bulls ears!

[Arthur]

Alas, he had no tail for me to take.

But I have a tale for you to hear.

As I disassembled this rogue, I saw

His eyes epicanthaled, and heard

Him beg for life with monosyllables,

As his oriental tongue knelled like

A little bell rung by a bellhop.

And I squeezed the truth out of him

As his belly released its weight,

And verified his claims by the end

Of the hour.

[Horace]

And what were these claims?

[Arthur]

That both bombs and gunmen were two threads

Of one plot, a web of carnage woven

By the Middle Kingdom, in conjunction

With Persians perfidious, but most insidious,

Is that four senators walked this web.

[Horace]

Impossible! Lies! There was no plot!

[Arthur]

And due to this rank sin, this infestation

Of widows black, I am declaring martial

Law, to restore this city until the scourge

Is squashed!

[military men storm the capitol]

[Arthur]

Arrest the spider, bind his legs, until

The hour that my Justice shall sever them!

[Horace]

No!

[The soldiers grab the Speaker of the Senate and three other senators in attendance]

[speaker]

Lies! Lies! Away from me! Away!

[Horace]

Yes! I mean No! Do not merely arrest him,

Shed the turncoats blood upon the floor!

Finish him here! Uncork him like his hired gun!

[Arthur]

I will not stain these halls any further.

[Horace]

But of course, Justice without time’s cloak

is but another whore.

[Arthur]

How now, did the atmosphere curdle here?

A sudor seems to stick to this chamber,

A humidity no doubt, lest we forget

This city’s a swamp. Dab those foreheads,

Wipe the glistening beads from your face.

If any other plots incubate in these halls

Abort them now, and all shall be forgiven.

I am nothing if not magnanimous.

[the senate begins to clap]

[Arthur]

Enough. Applause does not befit a funeral.

[the senate stops clapping]

[Arthur]

The hour of vengeance is upon us. We shall

Cleave this unholy coalition that goads us,

We shall sever their states into slivers.

I need not your consent to defend our honor

Abroad, but I am a servant of the state.

War. War we shall have, but only if this

Chambers unanimous. If not, I shall

Relinquish my command and consulship,

And allow congress to fend against the wolves.

[Horace]

Yes! Oh mighty consul, I speak for all

When I say Yes! O avatar of American will!

O Washington reborn! Aye!

[Grimm]

Cowards! Fiends! Yellow bellies!

[Horace]

To yellow hell with you Grimm!

[Grimm]

This rogue who stands before us, his line

Has hardly drunk American air

For a single generation! And this

Oriental despot has so seduced you

Cowards, that you’ve spit upon five hundred

Years of patriot blood, of republican virtue,

So quick to throw our land in shadow!

So quick to barter your birthright for

A measly mess of pottage!

[Arthur]

I do not scorn tradition. I am her steward.

I come to baptize her in the water of rebirth,

To reforge the body so the spirit may live.

[Grimm]

What need do we have to reforge?

When was it decided we must abrogate?

I see no death throes, no signs of frailty!

[Arthur]

When men began again wielding

ceremonial swords in battle, and

Conversing in registers archaic

Read the words of men a century

before and see the syntax strained,

Complicating phrases turn, for culture

Had voided out in thin lexicons.

Yet the effort to reforge tongue and sword

Bore twice born babes as aryans.

Nostalgia cannot revive a corpse,

Yet may it perform a section Caesarian.

[Grimm]

Aye! Caesar comes to lead us to slaughter!

A foreign lord ushers foreign wars

Where has Grimm heard such before?

[Arthur]

Arthur a foreigner? So sayeth Grimm.

Mother was Persian, father, Roman,

yet Arthur’s conceived immaculate,

These noble threads in Virginia fettered,

born on the banks of the blonde Potomac,

Reared in the umbrage of Washington’s pole.

No qualms, had Arthur, to battle his blood

And lead a legion to scold and chide the shah

I scourged high Cyrus, set Farsi aflame

And brought dear mothers manger to mud.

I wrought thunder through the ore of the Aryan shore

And fraught lightning to the graves of the magi!

In fairest Formosa, when battalion italic

chose to turn coat, I poured lead down

The crowns of those curly heads,

and stormed a squall of Brimstone.

And when distant cousin kin were dead

I glimpsed the crimson soldiers bled,

And reached to touch gored Ichor foam

And knew the substance, foreign to my own.

How many among those present here,

bare surnames such as Smith?

Or a drop of blood from Albion old? The only

John Doe's known to I, don title as mask,

and in death, They don it double.

A century before, the Potomac shores,

Still reared a Smith or Wesson.

Grimm’s name is German, his brother

French, his only English twist,

flees his guts, an hour after breakfast,

And the only blood, His soft palms dare touch,

Is the pudding from said breakfast.

Far flung flowers of May, all dead today,

For the fertile rays of that first race

were neutered cold in foreign clay.

[Grimm]

A foreigner all the same!

[Arthur]

A foreigner, sure, from two lines so pure,

Sent to scourge you mongrel melungeon.

[Grimm]

And where will you lead us? Where shall

Our armies blaze? Beijing? Tehran once more?

[Arthur]

Where mythic clouds blow hawkish rain

And Sharp crystal spears pierce spheres

of rain. I am the thunderer. I come before

You as a firefly at dusk. A will o wisp,

Luminous, The last ember of an ancient hearth.

I fly through the pitch ink of time,

Impelled by the breath of the owl, I sail

By the rudder of the raven wolf.

I come to burn boscage in high holocaust.

I come to kindle your holt heart.

Dare you squash a glow bug?

Dare you come to know an angel?

Behold. I am the bear. And to the land

Of the bear I bring you in a barque of flame.

We sail north. So I may stake the breast

Of fiendish foreign motherlands, and raise

The star spangled banner over Gaia’s crown.

So draw your swords, and puff those chests,

As painted picts, wear the woad of war,

O revenant wights! In fortnight we fly

A wild hunt of wingèd hoofs up high,

To torch the aether, the pole is nigh,

A smaragdine blaze in the northern sky!

[Grimm]

You wish to push antipodal? For what

possible purpose?

[Arthur]

In Greenland the foreign hosts assemble

They gather to strike our north coast.

[Grimm]

Vanity! Vanity! You are no mere tyrant,

You are mad! What belch of ego is this?

[Arthur]

All those who are with me, raise your arm,

flex your diaphragm and bellow as a boar!

[The rest of the senate raises their arms in salute and shouts aye]

[Arthur]

That leaves just you, Grimm. I am a man

of my word. It must be unanimous.

Simply say nay, and I will step down.

[Grimm]

I have no choice.

[Arthur]

We all have a choice, Grimm.

What will you choose? Martrydom?

Yay, or Nay. War, or my resignation.

The nation’s fate rests in your hands.

[Grimm]

I have as much choice as the President.

[The crowd begins to jeer, threatening Grimm to consent]

[Arthur]

Aye, and he chose too.

[End Scene]

[Act 2 Scene 6]

[The Bedroom of Schiedams daughter Helike]

[Helike]

AEEIOUO!! AEEIOUO!!

[Enter Schiedam]

[Schiedam]

Oh my sweet starling! Cease your screams!

[Helike]

I dream.

[Schiedam]

What horrors haunt those pallid palpebra?

What forms perform before eyelashed curtain?

A troupe of puckish pixies at play?

Devilish thespians dissimulating life?

If only I’d a drop of Azoth, to wash

those orbs clear of cataracts occult.

My soul for a solution! My soul for yours!

[Helike]

I dreamt a crone approaching, a crone

With the throbbing webbed wings of a fly

[Schiedam]

Cease your sighs my sweet child! These seizures

Are but the gossamer swirls of cranial heat.

Humid vapors, for your humours stew in marshland,

We must drain this foul swamp that mucks your mind!

Perhaps bloodletting,

[Helike]

I’ve let enough blood.

[Schiedam]

Aye, so I recall! Quarts upon gallons

A galleon could not quarter all the discharge

That storms your orifices, these sorcerous portals

Open seas of gore! Lord! Subdue this deluge!

Lord! Send us an olive branch bearing dove,

to lead us to dry shores!

[Helike]

My bosom burns.

[Schiedam]

Aye those perky breasts! Punctured at behest

of some infernal equestrian! Give me a look,

So I can rebandage if needed.

[Helike opens her blouse]

[Schiedam]

What is this that glistens around the scars?

And why does this wound form the shape of a star?

[Helike]

Reach hither thy finger, and behold my chest.

Reach hither your hand, and thrust it in flesh.

[Schiedam puts his finger into the wound]

[Schiedam]

What is this rivulet that gushes forth!

What is this liquid? So thick it streams!

Tis fragrant! Like the sap of an oak!

[Helike]

Tis oil from apertures seven, Ursa Major,

The septentrions twin, incestuous kin,

Tis oil from Arktos, the polar dew,

Which doth sweeten the high vault of heaven.

A chrism to glisten upon the brow of sages

And christen those who listen across the ages.

[Schiedam]

This finger is numb! Tis cold yet smoulders!

[Helike]

(To a corner of the room) He still stands.

[Schiedam]

The hell is this, you witch! What poison

Does your chest emmit!

[Helike]

(To a corner of the room) I will tell him.

[Schiedam]

With whom do you converse?

[Helike]

An angel.

[Objects begin flying off the shelves of the room]

[Schiedam]

A poltergeist? What Goetia is this?

[Helike]

The angel wishes to gift you something.

[Schiedam]

I want none of these gifts! I’ve already

one, and its provenance I ponder!

[Helike]

A mantra, he will gift you a mantra.

[Helike begins to cough, heaving, before a raven emerges from her lips and flies around the room]

[Schiedam]

Who is this who flies from teeth? Be this Thought?

Or rather Will?

[Raven]

Ang! Gwee! Lar! Ah!

[Schiedam]

Upon what foul pantheon have I stumbled?

[Raven]

Ang! Gwee! Lar! Ah!

[Helike]

AEEIOUO!

[Raven]

Ang! Gwee! Lar! Ah!

[Schiedam]

Enough.

[the room stops shaking and the raven falls dead]

[Schiedam]

I’ve had quite enough you little whore.

[schiedam grabs her by the hair]

[Schiedam]

Hush, or I will seize your scalp and rape you.

[Helike]

Away from me! Away!

[Schiedam produces a leather pouch]

[Schiedam]

Did this content come from your chest? Speak.

[Helike]

We’re all fettered.

[Schiedam slaps her]

[Helike]

Tell me, you wish to split my breasts

And tear my sternum raw from chest?

You seriously search for the source of treasure?

Fie! Know not you the fable of the golden goose?

Was Aesop an alien to your mother’s lips loose?

you’ve got your wombs mixed and muddled

Mistaking a crevice for the vein of ore,

for the mind that birthed these stones, was not mine,

but your own.

[Schiedam]

I care not for minerals nor sleights of hand,

I need only know what thread has fettered

This circumstance twixt inexplicable stitches.

[Helike]

The angel has wish to impart the true gift.

But you, Locke, are merely the courier

[Schiedam slaps her again]

[Helike]

Deliver this warning to my wintry groom.

[Schiedam]

Speak, slut.

[Helike]

The magis say that evil sprout

From a thought of doubt

In the mind of God.

[Schiedam]

I’m sure our consul general will revel

In such worthless words. But I am not

Word riddled, the only riddles I wrestle

Are those I wield. Now sleep.

[Helike faints]

[Schiedam leaves through the window]

[A beating knock on the door is heard]

[Schiedam breaks down the door]

[Schiedam]

Helike! Helike! Awake! What noise!

[Helike]

Father!

[Schiedam]

What commotion emerged from this room!

[Helike]

O Father, thank God you’ve come.

[Schiedam]

Have tempestuous spirits returned

in my absence?

[Helike]

I had the most horrible dream, in truth,

a dream veiled in another, ephialtes

enveloped in a bogey’s flesh.

[Schiedam]

O child, relate the vision.

[Helike]

I saw you, father, come hither to room,

But below your face was that of a fly

Sewn and stitched into the flesh of a crone

With the long legged limbs of a widow.

And as I looked past this mask, I saw

A shifting mass of amorphous forms

Of smouldering mud, a void pleroma,

The fullness of naught, but beneath this clot,

A thin long flame that folded its essence

and flickered black, luminous and light.

And I knew this fire had come from the earth

Where the five infernal rivers hold hearth,

And I wept for the sadness that it burned

As mirth, and my tears drew the eye of the orb

Up high, and brother sol let tender sigh

pulled to my heart from his throne in the sky.

I saw the sun come low to the north

And ice caps hissed and cried tears

That welled and fell antipodal to earth,

a murmuration of clear ink ascending,

As starlings, into sky to coat the orb

And these droplets touched the sun’s flesh

And coagulated into a gossamer film

And this solar gloss descended as a sheet

To veil my face and my heart, and from

This mantle my words came refracted

And cruel, but this shawl of elements

It shielded my soul against the dark flame,

This crystalline veneer, the color of jade,

A tapestry, I knew her, a woman,

wisdom, purest religion, who would one

Day cloak the earth. And in this veil

I felt an unveiling of God. While an angel

Of plated light stood watch by my shoulder

With the body of a bear, and the face

of a boar, and an eel emerged betwixt

his tusks… oh…

[Schiedam]

My dear, are you alright?

[Helike]

Oh… oh…

[Schiedam]

Where do these moans emerge? Be they anguish

Or ecstasy? How blissful your countenance.

[Helike]

The eel comes to me… oh… oh…

Father… do you know how the world

Came to be?

[End Scene]

[Act 3 Scene 1]

[Marcus enters carrying the bloody head of Horace]

[Marcus]

HEAR me, O Death, whose empire unconfin'd,
Extends to mortal tribes of ev'ry kind.
On thee, the portion of our time depends,
Whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends.
Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid folds,
By which the soul, attracting body holds:
Common to all of ev'ry sex and age,
For nought escapes thy all-destructive rage;
Not youth itself thy clemency can gain,
Vig'rous and strong, by thee untimely slain.
In thee, the end of nature's works is known,
In thee, all judgment is absolv'd alone:
No suppliant arts thy dreadful rage controul,
No vows revoke the purpose of thy soul;
O blessed pow'r regard my ardent pray'r,
And human life to age abundant tear.

O handsome head! Hear the words of your name,

An irony as poetic as your wit was lame,

If only such a hymn were your final adieu,

A soliloquy true, and not craven croaks

That choked meek throat with self-pity shed,

The moment before I cleaved spine from head.

Speak skull! And recount your shame!

How from the form of a fly I came, in glory

Before you, expanding my woeful brawn

From a point midair, how scared your gaze

When I flashed in a pitch of thund’ry

smoke,

Before your swatter when you tried to smote,

The nuisance a’ buzzing by cheek and ear.

O that look, that succulent look, your fear,

If only it stuck still to your skull, as nectar

I’d quaff it, guzzle and slurp, the aftertaste

Id savor, as Burgundy or Bordeaux.

You claimed there was gold inside your head!

I see thalamus jam to spread on bread,

But no gold, only grey matter and blood.

But I’ll honor these words in luxurious twist,

And fix a varnish of fools gold external

To round this head in Aurelian glitter,

And stud gemstones in eye sockets,

I’ll crown this cranium in a royal diadem,

As catacombs saints in a panoply

Of splendor, how gay! How glorious!

An undeserved end in the odor of holiness!

So steadfast that smile, that sardonic look,

seared in self-satisfaction to abide,

even after the snuffing of your soul.

But soon i’ll melt that adipose fat,

This clumsy wax that mats the pure form below,

O how splendid a skull stripped of flesh,

Unsheathed of the common, the lumpy clay,

For once kind nature strips you clean,

A nobility returns, a dignity unearned,

As all skulls look as striking as one another.

The nude head of a king’s as gallant as a pauper,

the skull of rapists as majestic as mystics,

if I switched you for Catherine’s, Siena

would still glimmer in the glitter of romance.

The great mercy of Kronos, to clean

The fingers of Thanatos’ feast, for death

sans time’s cloak, is but another whore.

I’ve severed you as the Free Fathers’ Retinue,

To take your skull betwixt my palms,

Admire my poetry, admire and quake!

For you’ve met the same fate as your own namesake!

[Marcus pauses]

[Marcus throws Horace’s head on the ground]

[Marcus]

Damn it all! Twas Horace, not Orpheus!

I’ve mixed my bards! How did Horace die?

And what hath Horace written? A verse,

A verse! Damn it all this endings mucked!

[Marcus picks back up the head]

[Marcus]

No matter.

Mine eyes hath been set on a prize far greater.

My weapon’s as keen as my wit and my rhymes.

Time, so sharp on her own, she sharpens herself,

with each hour’s groan, to score man’s skin, to crack his bone.

Yet, men who are not men, immune to her fetters,

may grasp her hilt and wield her far better,

Then dreaming Saturn so fast in slumber.

I’ve fourteen nights, a week doubly tempered,

‘Tis Plenty of time to sharpen time to dagger,

Each second a whetstone, a million little whittles

And ten thousand score more for good measure.

Surely Arthur’s leather cannot weather times sickle,

Plenty of seconds, to pierce his breast, a second time.

[End scene]

[Act 3 Scene 2]

[Grimm in his house]

[Grimm]

There. Tis finished. Fate has made me her fool.

A man born for scorn. Necessities goat.

Chosen at birth to satiate Azazel.

Every hour of my life but a cruel marinade

To season this flesh for her champion’s feast.

Each virtue and value that I digested

An enzyme, to soften my sinew and fat,

So that my brawn would fall from bone.

This civic duty instilled from birth, but

A steady diet of acorns to marble

Muscle for curing, to smoke and salt

My will, to give hungry history fine pork.

Hang up my haunches! A shroud of cheesecloth!

Bury me in shambles, ‘tis better than stomach.

My climax, my culmination, one moment,

Of humiliation, forever frozen,

A coward eternal, my name to be

Seared into the annals with searing hate.

Two outcomes, of near equal shame,

Either Arthur succeeds, and I’m seen as a

Cicero, a footnote of history,

One penned in scorn, glossed in contempt,

Who wouldn’t even muster an attempt

At arms, no, I’m not worthy of his toe,

I’m no Cicero, I’m a worm, vermin.

And if Arthur fails? I’m Pilate, Pontius.

I’ve washed my hands of this nation’s blood,

And allowed the republic to be nailed

To wintry cross, of hubris and ego,

Sans resurrection or savior’s rise.

The gears and springs of divine design

Have long craved craven blood to lubricate

The machinations of the archons’ hate.

A grim little pawn, to be raped by fate.

[Enter the Ghost of Grimm’s Wife]

[Grimm]

What is this vision that heaven sent!

Kind torment or cruel reward? Who sends this form?

Divine mockery or more madness?

[Grimm’s Wife]

Sweet husband, cease these sighs of lamentation

And self-contempt, you are not exempt

From the weaknesses of all mortal men,

Nor are you exempt from your dutiful oaths.

[Grimm]

The specter speaks! An apparition more solid

Than my own will. Death must truly beckon.

In a moment you’ll shatter into the mist.

[Grimm’s Wife]

Husband, I am no mere production of a

Troubled mind. Our mutual love so strong

It has pulled me from the gates of beyond.

Touch my ivory palms, caress my ruby

cheeks, see that I am no mere vapor,

And once felt, on skin and heart, then listen.

[Grimm touches her hand]

[Grimm]

Oh Lord!

[Grimm falls to his knees]

[Grimm]

If this be madness, then I embrace madness

As lover, if this be madness, then sanities

But another whore.

[Grimm’s Wife]

The hour is much too late for such queries

Philosophical, we’ve not the time for

Hollow utterance and shock, get your wits!

This reunion will be brief and bittersweet,

But if my words are heeded, eternity

Together awaits us both in the fields

Of golden wheat.

[Grimm]

My love!

[Grimm’s Wife]

Husband, you must not wallow in the mud

Of self pity, tis beneath you. Mourn only

A Moment, and then collect your embers.

Tender your flame, kindle that heart!

[Grimm]

Tis kindled! The fire blazes! I roar!

[Grimm’s Wife]

Good. Such heat doth suit you. Now listen.

God has spoken in my ear to deliver

You a message. You must persevere.

You must save this republic.

[Grimm]

But what can I do? Arthur prepares

His hosts, but a few days and history

Will pound her fiery seal and envelope fate.

[Grimm’s Wife]

Tis as the crone had spoken. Fulfill

Your fate. Not Cicero, but Brutus.

If you do not act, then you shall be

Cicero but baser, but if you strike,

You will be Brutus, far nobler, forever

A hero, and at death, the gates shall

Open. Our souls reunited forever.

[Grimm]

How can I possibly slay this man?

And what difference would it possibly make?

This nation is drained of its vigor, anemic.

With Arthur’s death another tyrant shall

Rise, one less capable, more dangerous.

[Grimm’s Wife]

If not for the Republic then do it

for your own honor, and do it for mine.

How now, what is that strange look that

Has fixed your face?

[Grimm]

My love, I must ask…

[Grimm’s Wife]

Speak.

[Grimm]

Your honor, that which was spit upon

By Locke, these claims, of loose fidelity…

[Grimm’s Wife]

What is it you ask!

[Grimm]

Are these claims true? Did you lie with Locke?

[Grimm’s Wife]

Never once have I met the man!

Never once did I unlock mine own lock!

I’ve never shamed myself nor you,

My flesh did not birth you a cuckold!

[Grimm]

O thank God.

[Grimm’s Wife]

You’ve cuckolded yourself with this drop of doubt,

shamed me you have, with poisonous thought.

Dont you know, the Magi’s say,

that evil sprout from a thought of doubt?

[Grimm]

My dear, twas but a question…

[Grimm’s Wife]

No! Twas doubt. Twas dishonor! You

Have made me a whore! Clean this stain!

Shed the blood of the tyrant bear, and with

That sanguine soap, wash the stain of shame

From the souls of us both! Smite him!

[Grimm]

But shouldn’t I smite the prime offender?

That fallacious fiend, General Locke?

[Grimm’s Wife]

Sure, why not.

[Grimm]

You're not as enthused as I surely thought.

[Grimm’s Wife]

Tis the bear that must be felled! As the lacquer

In sunlight! Slit his throat! Puncture his lungs!

Drain his gall, empty his bladder! Hook

Him by the haunches and strip his pelt!

Bring me his skin as a coat to don!

So mote it be! Away I go! Away!

We shall meet again on the day your debts

Been paid.

[Grimm’s wife exits]

[Grimm]

And so I swear upon the rock of heaven,

I’ll slay the bear in pieces seven,

Civic virtue’s enzyme my soul shall leaven,

And mark my rise, and ascent to heaven.

[Grimm exits]

[the closet door opens and out comes Cornelius]

[Cornelius]

By the Gods almighty! Hell has spit forth

Her heavy souls from the Stygian muck!

The world’s inverted, the heavens fall!

For Grimms’ wife returns as solid as stone!

The depths gob forth her horrid whores to earth!

There she stood, identical to memory!

I’d remember, for I saw her without modesty

While alive, I pierced her ass in sodomy!

I must go, and warn Horace of what’s afoot!

Goetias abound, necromancers walk!

The shade of she who once covered my cock!

[Cornelius exits]

[Act 3 Scene 3]

[Horace’s office, Horace and Colonel Hung speak]

[Hung]

You are far more pleasant than I remember,

Horace.

[Horace]

You catch more flies with honey, Colonel Hung.

Now, where were we…

[Hung]

This eccentric new plan you hath proposed.

[Horace]

But of course. Our Consul General has lulled

Himself into a false sense of security,

He is a man without doubt, and he doubtless

Weens he wears the senate as bridal ring.

It’s time we wed his flesh to lead,

I’ve long begun the betrothal, the venue’s

Chosen. These vows are soon to break,

A sacrament from which he will never wake.

[Hung]

I hope for our sakes that this hitching

Will be hitchless. What is the venue?

[Horace]

A theater.

[Hung]

A theater? We’ve but a week before

Your Consul goes to war! How in the hell

Do you plan on pulling him to production?

[Horace]

Im glad you asked. We shall put on his favorite

Play of all, The Septentrion, the retelling

Of Actaeon, in which hunter becomes stag.

[Hung]

That is not the plot of that play.

[Horace]

And what does a Chinaman know of

American theater!

[Hung]

So what do you propose? We off him

As Lincoln? A Bullet to his skull?

[Horace]

Tush! How stale do you take me?

No, it shall be far more fresh a death.

At the end of the third act we shall invite

Him on stage, as if he’s Actaeon at the hunt

[Hung]

Actaeon is not in the play, you confuse

The Septentrion for another.

[Horace]

Hush! I know my theater! Now, at this point

Our Persian legate shall come on stage

Disguised in drag as the goddess Diana,

From which he’ll pull a sword worthy of the

Stag to be.

[Hung]

No man stands a chance against Arthur

In combat, armed or unarmed,

it matters not

[Horace]

Aye, but it will give us a grand show,

For this legate put steel half an inch from his heart,

When Arthur led legions across Persian snows,

And so a duel worthy of heroic last act,

And once he stands above his foe,

Secure and confident in majestic glow,

A gunmen shall emerge from the brine

Of confusion, and take aim to strike

And contuse his skin, robbed blue of pallid splendor!

[Hung]

Why not simply have the gunmen fell him

Without this clash on stage?

[Horace]

Where’s the poetry in that? Besides,

Tis far better to eliminate the legate

Than let him live. Now, all we require

Is a gunmen…

[Enter Cornelius]

[Cornelius]

Horace! Hell Horace! Hell vivacious!

Whorish Kore flees stygian shores

Wet in a fluid far less salacious

Than my tongue hath tasted! But far more

infernal! Persephone's bridal sheets!

Plutonic harlots walk the streets!

[Horace]

Speak sense! Be these the words of the poet Thracian?

What caverns do you come from Cornelius?

And what is your implication by orphic invocation?

[Cornelius]

I spied a form, while trailing Grimm, that spoke

As if she never ceased a word in life.

A form I knew, and you did too, in sense

Levitical! Grimm’s bride she rises leaven!

[Horace]

Ah, now I can coat orphic skull in Golding once more!

‘From thence in saffron colourd robe flew Hymen through the ayre’

[Cornelius]

Tis not a joke! Im serious as syphilis!

[Horace]

‘Beseech yee of Eurydicee unreele the destinye

That was so swiftly reeled up. All things to you belong!’

Or perhaps Beatrice? I didn’t take Grimm so anagogical.

[Hung]

Enough! Speak sense! The Baroque rituals of American

Court convention are swelling my cerebellum sour.

My distaste for your race only grows, by Deng enough!

[Horace]

Quite right. Brass tacks. Don’t cut yer thumb.

Now, lets get down to business and clarity.

Tell me Cornelius, what is the plot

Of the Septentrion?

[Cornelius]

Tis a retelling of Circe and Picus.

[Hung]

Tis not! Tis not!

[Horace]

Quite right Hung, the subject is Actaeon.

But we’ve no time to waste discussing

Semantics and the thespian arts.

Tell me senator, what did salacious

Shade tell groom?

[Cornelius]

Not a shade, but a substance!

[Horace]

All substances are shades unless endowed

With Sofia's form, and I doubt Grimm

Is counted among the loving faithful.

[Cornelius]

Listen! She told her groom in pleading words

That he must fell fair Arthur’s nape, and Grimm

Seemed to take these words to soulful will.

As she twisted his mind in equivocation,

And declared her bridegroom a cuck!

[Horace]

What’s equivocal in that? Tis true.

The man was cucked as the sky is blue.

[Cornelius]

But she lied in truth!

[Horace]

Aye and she lied with a dozen others,

At least she lied with a single virtue.

Would seem the heavens have sent us lemons,

For Grimm’s newfound effervescence may yield

The juice our intentions crave. A little love,

To make the craven brave.

[Hung]

Grimm the gunmen?

[Horace]

Aye! As my namesake spoke: Carpe diem!

Rejoice while alive! Make the most of the dead,

Tis later than you think.

[Voice from a chest]

Liar!

[Hung]

What was that?

[Cornelius]

Is someone here with us?

[Voice from a chest]

Unlock me, so I may mark the Locke

Among us

[Cornelius]

The voice comes from the cabinet in the corner

[Horace]

Tis Ventriloquism, pay no mind to the voice in the chest

[Cornelius opens the chest to find the skull of horace, plated in gold and with a sapphire in one eye socket, and an emerald in the other]

[Cornelius]

Heterochromia bejeweled!

Irises of untold splendor! What a relic!

[Horace]

A relic! Quite right! A centurion’s skull,

Gentile number one, which once hung

In the catacombs of Callixtus,

The holy ghost must possess it,

Or perhaps an unholy ghost,

One cannot trust either, doubly

So, when holding the skull of a namesake.

[Skull of Horace]

Liar!

[Horace]

The draugr must be enchanted,

A spell or hex of equivocation,

To force its tongueless tongue

To only utter untruths.

[The skull of Horace]

Liar!

[Horace]

See! Tis all but confirmed!

Neurotic necromancy!

[The skull of Horace]

He lies!

[Horace]

Fie! Then speak truth!

[The skull of Horace]

Upon two-natured Protogonos,

great and ether-tossed, I call;

born of the egg,

delighting in his golden wings,

the begetter of blessed gods and mortal men;

he bellows like a bull.

Erikepaios, seed unforgettable,

attended by many rites,

ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion,

forever in whirring motion,

you scattered the dark mist,

the mist that lay before your eyes.

Flapping your wings, you whirled about

throughout this world,

you brought pure light.

For this I call you Phanes,

yes, I call you Lord Priapos,

I call you bright-eyed Antauges.

O blessed one of the many counsels

and of the many seeds, come joyfully

to the celebrants of this holy rite,

of this very intricate rite.

[Horace]

This is no hymn of mine! Tis god anterior!

And Taylor’s translation is far superior!

[The skull of Horace]

I find his verse to be far drearier

[Horace]

And you were Horace, not Orpheus

You amnestic skull

[The skull of Horace]

I merely mirror my maker

As a shade doth a form.

[Horace]

A brazen tongue in a gilt head!

[The skull of Horace]

I have no guilt, for I am dead

[Horace]

Zounds this whole story is twisted.

[Cornelius]

The hell do you mean he was Horace’s head?

Then who is this that stands in your stead?

Or his stead, instead of the head?

[Horace]

I said he was hoarse! A hoarse throat!

[The skull of Horace]

Mine eyes were born from murd’rous lies,

Yet crystallize into fiery truth,

So I speak not as the fallacious seed

But my lips speak truth as the womb that

birthed them. Is this a riddle for you to

Wield, Locke? Or shall you wrestle

As your lies are wielded against you.

[Hung]

Locke? Did this skull call you Locke?

[Cornelius]

General Locke? Hung, draw your gun!

There’s perfidy a foot!

[Horace]

The only perfidy is in hand!

Throw the head from yours!

[The skull of Horace]

Shall this golden head now quote Golding dear?

Or does Greek still please that ear, so queer?

‘The herbroughlesse and cruell house of late th'Arcadian King,

Such time as twilight on the Earth dim darknesse gan to bring.
I gave a signe that God was come, and streight the common sort
Devoutly prayde, whereat Lycaon first did make a sport
And after said: By open proufe, ere long I minde to see,
If that this wight a mighty God or mortall creature bee.’

And so this puckish riddles cast from golden skull bewitched.

What is thy identity? Which divinity is which?

[Horace]

I find Greek more pleasing and clear.

[The Skull of Horace]

εἶπεν δέ· Τίς εἶ, κύριε;

[a shot rips the air as Hung fires his gun at Horace’s chest]

[Horace]

Enough.

[Piercing pillars of fire and light emerge from Horace’s countenance as his body grows in size and twists its form]

[Cornelius screams]

[Cornelius]

My God!

[The god]

Fall. Fall before me in supplication.

Beg. Beg before me in propitiation.

Bruise your kneecaps and swoon as slaves.

Scald those retinas in my searing brawn.

Gaze upon the horrid flesh of dawn.

[Cornelius]

Who are you? Locke? Horace?

[The god]

I am the god of many forms and many faces.

I am the god who rules the races of men.

All my kin have departed from this earth.

All the archetypes transpire in their plasmations.

See my rods, which rule the man-worm in wrath.

I am He who sates himself on the lifeblood of fated men.

Black becomes the sunbeams in the summers that follow.

The weather is treacherous and soon to transpire.

Axe age, sword age, shields are cleft asunder.

Wind age, wolf age, the world goes headlong.

No longer is there mercy among men.

I see the glimmer of Surtr’s sword brighter than the sun.

I shall swallow the stars as novas freckle my fangs,

As the heavenly bodies chymify in this gut.

I am the Aeon. I am a child at play.

I am hungry. I grow tired of fiddling with comestibles.

[Cornelius]

Have mercy upon us!

[The god]

Mercy has no taste upon my tongue.

No flavor as it coats my hot palate.

The play is done. A sprite has robbed

My meal of its spice and season.

But I will feast upon your flesh and flights of reason.

Gentle Cornelius. You shall have your baptism.

Have you repented?

[Cornelius]

Yes, yes my Lord! I have repented!

[The god]

Then ask the skull to wash you in water.

Speak skull. Where is the cry from the wild shrubs?

Where are those hands to call down the dove?

Where is your light? No, you are just a witness.

[The Skull is silent]

[The god]

The one who comes after is mightier.

I shall baptize you with phantoms and flame.

[Cornelius screams and contorts upon the ground, steam emerges from his flesh as his skin burns and boils. Then he expires]

[The god]

And what of you Hung? Cat got your tongue?

[Hung]

The fear that struck me has already passed.

Your words reveal you and offer revelation.

Misplaced symbols form a constellation.

I know my stars. Your enclosure is not purple.

You seem to believe this the plot of the Septentrion.

Your clever thoughts had led me along,

leading to what you believed would be an epiphany

in my eyes before death, but you are no author.

I see now how the world opens, how the void

sneers and howls in your face, I can only

laugh with it, enjoined in joy with that

otherworldly mirth. Ziwei’s parting gift to me

is to share in a moment of gnosis.

To be the only mortal soul alive

in on God’s great joke. From my throat

comes the hilarity of heaven.

From my throat comes the thundering snigger

of your eternal shame.

[Hung hysterically laughs in an otherworldly pitch. The god covers his ears in pain, before striking Hung dead]

[Act 3 Scene 4]

[Arthur in his office as Marcus walks in]

[Arthur]

You look tired, Locke

Ive never seen such a wrinkle

Reveal you.

[Marcus]

Even eternal flames flicker.

[Arthur]

Dourness does not suit your demeanor.

Id think you joyful, our glorious enterprise

Is but a few dawns away.

[Marcus]

Aye, united thoughts and councils

Equal hopes and hazard. Carnage

Will liven my pneuma to boil. Mark it.

[Arthur]

From water to air, are you prepared?

[Marcus]

Mark it.

[Arthur]

Good. I need my right hand ready.

Slaughter will melt ice to water

In crimson brine, and north

Shall mirror south. Blood

Gives me no pleasure, Locke,

But I need your lust enlivened.

[Marcus]

I think your arm long enough.

But what stuff of dreams pillow

That head? What joys enjoin

Your will to deed? Do you

Bleed emotion in moments

Of solitude? I have never cared,

Nor asked, just as it matters

Not what thoughts kindled

The fury of Achilles, or what

Frequency of emotions plucked

Odysseus’ soul. You are a rock.

As if conversing with a face of granite,

Stamped into the side of a cliff.

Does war bring you joy?

Or is it just a matter of motion?

I can find no shape to fit you.

No blueprint to fix a measure,

Nor even a heart to weigh to feather.

What is the substance of your soul?

[Arthur]

My soul’s a potters vessel,

holding water from foreign wills,

As if an oft bolt of thunder enlightens

my thougtless soul, with terrible hues of heaven.

Forked flame that rains from a hundred holy courts,

Each flash, a fresh decree from a new throne.

These thoughts, are none my own.

My heart the head of a pin, in which

a million daemons dance, what room

is there for man on such a stage?

Which curtain birthed me?

Often while still a boy

some god preserved me,

From the clamour and rods of men.

On the potomac shores, whirring forms

would stir and blossom, blonde locks

of seafoam tresses curling up to my finger tips.

And in the woods of Appalachia

the Lares of Lazio would spring antipodal

to kiss my cheek and offer tears

of nostalgia. Even then I knew

that fate had marked me her own.

O all you faithful

and friendly Gods!

If you knew how

My soul then loved you.

But tenderness soon smouldered over

into smoke and pale flame.

And from the hearth, a hundred fires

filled my soul with frightening faces.

There is no firmness in my spirit,

nor on the earth, but a pantheon

holds courts within my countenance,

one soon to return with winged shoes,

and blades aflame with starburst.

But I knew them better

Than ever I knew mankind.

I understood the Aether’s stillness,

Never, though, the words of men.

[Marcus]

How can you not understand what you wield

In ways far keener than your peers?

[Arthur]

For the same reason that you may twist

The minds of men in your endless webs

Without ever having held a heart.

Some things come as effortless instinct,

As the thicket of starlings who smoke the air

In autumn, or eels occult who know their

Thread to sea, destiny is inscribed in blood,

Drawing our blind bodies to appointed pole.

Your instincts serve you well, my thoughts

Are hevel, a vapor to cloud deed in mist.

History need not know my emotions,

Only that her champion bleeds.

The men to come will never know

The swirls of crystal that nursed this heart,

The loves and fears that weaned me.

I never had the luxury of being a man.

Fate had sequestered my ego,

Robbed me of all relations and common joy.

And yet, in silent rebellion I lived inside.

For a brief moment, I was a man.

I was Arthur, a child and a man.

The things I could tell you, the things

I have seen.

But such things must be sealed up.

The scroll of fate, rolled in searing wax,

Stamped by her prophet in self negation.

For my soul is already being poured out

As kykeon to break the gods long fast.

I have fought the good fight.

I have nearly finished the race.

Do you understand now, Locke?

The great genius of my geopolitical steps?

My conquests are nothing but liturgy

My movements, the stations of a new cross

South to north, I slither up the pole

And upon the top, I shall turn.

I know not the logic behind our venture,

No more than the starling knows the logic

Of his migration over cities eternal.

He simply knows, and then he goes.

And the high heavens follow in murmuring wake.

Do you feel the seasons shorten?

All of time contracts. The labor’s lasted for ages.

[Marcus hesitates, before finally producing a leather pouch from his pocket and placing it on the table]

[Arthur]

What’s in that leather bag you have?

[Marcus]

A gift, my friend.

[Arthur]

I need no tribute from you, Locke.

[Marcus]

A gift from a friend and not as a general.

[Arthur]

Courtesy demands I accept.

[Marcus]

Mighty kind, my lord. I found this pouch

Locked in a chest, it’s contents fragrant

And figure well formed.

[Arthur opens it to reveal three gemstones]

[Arthur]

A pearl, a sapphire, and an emerald

Of spectral sheen and luminous luster

the size of this pearl! What monstrous mollusk

Reared such a calf!

[Marcus]

Do these drops of mineral mean a thing to you?

[Arthur]

Why should it?

[Marcus]

An intuition, a coating of instinct,

Something akin to a bout of nausea

Hath commanded me to deliver it..

You look contemplative, lost in nostalgia

[Arthur]

This pearl.

[Marcus]

Yes?

[Arthur]

It reminds me of a dream I had as a child.

I shall tell you this dream, the one bit

Of my soul that I will ever give you.

A gift for a gift. A pearl for a pearl.

I am nothing If not magnanimous.

[Arthur closes his eyes and begins to speak]

When, a quite little child, I was dwelling

In the House of my Father’s Kingdom,

And in the wealth and the glories

Of my Up-bringers I was delighting,

From the East, our Home, my Parents

Forth-sent me with journey-provision.

Indeed from the wealth of our Treasure,

They bound up for me a load.

Large was it, yet was it so light

That all alone I could bear it.

An emerald from the land of the midnight sun,

A shard from the diadem of the morning star

A sapphire from the crypt of the house of night

A teardrop hardened from the eye of Ra.

They girt me with Adamant also

That hath power to cut even iron.

My Glorious Robe they took off me

Which in their love they had wrought me,

And my Purple Mantle also

Which was woven to match with my stature.

And with me They then made a compact;

In my heart wrote it, not to forget it:

"If you go down into Egypt,

And thence you bring the one Pearl --

"The Pearl that lies in the Sea,

Hard by the loud-breathing Serpent --

"Then shalt Thou put on thy Robe

And thy Mantle that goeth upon it,

"And with thy Brother, Our Second,

Shall thou be Heir in our Kingdom."

Have you ever had such a dream?

[Marcus]

I do not dream Arthur.

[Arthur]

In truth, I’ve never seen you so much as sleep,

and for this reason you shall never wake

But I have faith that one day you Locke,

May dream again

It’s strange, with every passing day,

Another memory reawakens, a ray

Reassembling itself as a shattered clay

Krater, by invisible palms.

[Arthur looks closer at the pearl]

I see twenty one words inscribed upon this pearl

In hieroglyphs of searing splendor.

[Marcus]

What do they say?

[Arthur]

I do not yet know.

I have not the key to decipher.

But I shall treasure it up

In the chest of memory.

Be honest with me Marcus.

For once, shed your tongue

Of all equivocation.

Where came these gems?

What cavern birthed them?

[Marcus]

Not a cavern, but a solution.

A substance too subtle and rank, spawned

In vapors that billow and bloviate,

A stench to cut stone or he who cuts stone

This loam from which the jewels foamed up.

An airy ether known to no honest man

Nor could an honest man honestly affirm

It’s taste, The purest poison on earth,

quicksilver To gold, chrysopoeia,

Capable of making base metals noble

And dissolving noble into base, both

The Alkahest and stone philosophical

Disfiguring the world into heaven or hell.

[Arthur]

I do not follow this riddle.

[Marcus]

Twas born from the breath of a lie.

I have one more gift for you Arthur.

A mantra.

Perhaps its the words of the pearl.

[Arthur]

Sing it.

[Marcus]

Ang! Gwee! Lar! Ah!

[Arthur]

That is no mantra.

Tis the heckle of a crow

[Marcus]

How so?

[Arthur]

My fathers surname was never orso,

Yet his blood mingled with little ones.

My families seat still stands across the Tiber,

A palimpsest occluded by a poets name,

But this misnomer is fitting all the same.

Learnèd astrologers all know the lore:

the bear was once the boar.

Eels come from mud. A little luce in fango.

Just as the oysters that line hells rivers,

A rebis with a phallic form. Purity,

Birthed from chthonic muck.

This is the last time that I shall bear you

My soul. It is time I relinquished

My last drop of mortal bliss.

Come Marcus. It is time

For time,

To begin,

To end.

Act 3 Scene 4

[Arthur and Marcus are walking across Capitol Hill]

[Marcus]

Washington’s cock stands stout as ever,

I wonder if he means to salute our strides.

[Arthur]

You spy vitality in that pole?

[Marcus]

Look how the sun catches it.

How the rays blaze like the limestone

Which once adorned the sepulchers of Giza.

[Arthur]

You find beauty only in death and dead things.

[Marcus]

What does daylight have in common

with the cry of the catacomb?

[Arthur]

Whether the diurnal dew glitters upon a headstone

Or is ensnared by willow bark, umbrage would look

Just as handsome upon charnel ground

In your charnel mind. If I were to loosen

An arrow from a bow and blind

That orb forevermore, you would claim

The moonbeams lacquer the marble

In a manner more holy still.

[Marcus]

Come now. You cant be so contrarian

As to scorn ol’ Georges needle?

[Arthur]

Tis a cursed thing, that sardonic rod.

[Marcus]

I did not think you shared the crass

Superstitions of the crowd.

[Arthur]

Tis not hocus-pocus and conspiracy

That swells my aversion. But clarity.

[Marcus]

What lucidity could make such a

fine form shunned?

[Arthur]

Ere the long navel the nation was still one.

They whisper twas erected by Washington

With words of wizardry and Coptic curses,

Nilotic incantations from lodgebound artisans.

That each dimensioned inch cradles the kernel

Of occultations anagogical.

While others insist it’s providential finger

Denoting man’s destined fate, his telos,

Whether with the worlds or the clouds.

In truth, tis a wrought nail to pierce the nations heart.

Anguish allotted in bluestone and marble,

Each brick tooth gnashing betwixt mortar gums,

A garbled palimpsest veiling the shame

Of a headstone. Both cenotaph and spear.

For when a nation dies it no longer has the vigor

To mark its own grave. Twas not Washington

Who raised these stones. The year

Of its completion, the nation was already dead.

Just as Christians still kiss the shards of the true cross,

I’m sure one day such shame will be transfigured,

As it once was and will once again.

When future man unearths a slumbering verse

And falls headfirst in erotic throes of nostalgia,

And declares himself that day an American.

I pray this future warlock only raises

The best of our bones.

But this corded umbilical I’m soon to shear

So two new babes may bank the Tiber,

And the she-wolf may rear another brood.

[Marcus]

You speak as a headsman and not as a king.

[Arthur]

No. The nations blood has long dried

Upon the obelisk which impaled it.

I am the catafalque. I am the Lumerpa.

[Marcus]

How fond you are of your many names,

Coating your chest with your precious metals.

[Arthur]

Why Locke, do you fear another ore

May outshine your own? Have I stolen

Your sunlight? Tis as the old sage said:

I am large. I contain multitudes.

[Marcus]

Aye and he also said something of

Niggers and watermellon, and other

Such mantras of hollow oneness.

Look. Something else has caught the sun.

What is this that approaches?

[Two men pull a mobile platform supporting a massive bust of Arthur’s head]

[Marcus]

It looks as if your likeness has been struck in bronze.

How now Arthur! I didn’t think you so vain!

[Arthur]

I ordered no such thing commissioned.

You two, what is this effigy you parade.

Upon whose orders do you act?

[Laborer 1]

Heil! Heil Good Consul!

[Laborer 2]

Heil! Heil the Long Armed!

[Arthur]

Enough. Answer my query.

[Laborer 1]

We’ve been paid to transport your majestic

Likeness on orders of the lodge.

[Laborer 2]

Commissioned by craftsman, sir.

[Laborer 1]

Please do not take offense sir.

In truth, we assumed you had ordered it.

[Marcus]

Don’t play coy Arthur, no need for bashfulness!

Tis a glorious business this.

[Arthur]

I am not in the business of gilding skulls.

[Marcus]

What’s gilded skulls to do with brass busts?

[Arthur]

I do not play with things that are dead.

[Marcus]

I do not like the taste of your tone. I do not like

The twilight contours that your tongue

seems to touch. Speak plain.

[Arthur]

This brazen head is an abomination.

I suggest nothing more.

[Marcus]

Is everything in this world abominable to you?

[Arthur]

Such is the curse of one with the eyes

Of Lynceus

[Marcus]

Lycaon? Speak! What poison does your

Palate brew? Speak!

[Arthur]

Never before have you spoken to me so.

What vexes you? Are your ears full of wax?

I am sick to death of memorials.

I am sick to death of death.

I wish not to see my genius doubled and

My countenance gilded before me

On a platter. I am not yet dead.

I need not a headstone.

[Marcus]

How can you be sick of death?

But a few days away from leading a host?

Have you lost your nerve, after all this?

[Arthur]

I have made war, and I am soon to make more,

But the smell of gunsmoke is souring on my senses,

and the croak of canons is growing old.

The crackle of bullets, once comforting as the scullery fire,

And her embers, the will o wisps latched to wizzing lead,

Tracing hot kernels which glide as twilight sylphs,

To pollinate the world in fresh tragedy, and sprout martial figs

On the banks of dirty blonde rivers

Ensnaring two more twins for the brood of the she wolf!

How fertile the day when a bullet meets its mark!

When a soldiers smote beside another,

and his comrade falls to hold his brother

Fecund the bloom of Plutos rose

Rising in the rays of hot nature!

Mark it o Mars! Another wick is spent.

Now tender the fare,

to the ferry-man owes his only debt,

and even that is sleight of hand.

For the loam of the battlefield is fertile still,

Only her cairns stink of solemn perdition.

And yet, after uttering these words

The sentiments taste has soured,

As if the tongue that spoke them has

Already left for another. I am large.

Marcus, I am large.

[Grimm enters the scene with a gun and the laborers flee]

[Grimm]

Arthur! Freeze!

[Arthur]

Hold the gun out from your bosom, ‘tis not a babe.

There’s no sport in slaying a wet nurse.

[Grimm]

Drop your arms!

[Arthur]

Arms? Of what need I for arms?

I could strike you down with a loose syllable,

Or blow your brains with but a brooding look

[Grimm]

Get down upon your knees Tyrant!

[Arthur]

My knees? To pray? Pray tell senator,

I do not pray in the presence of filth.

Nor do I pray to ebony idols

in the presence of hooded men who feign

omnipotence in impotence.

What is your purpose here, senator?

Is this an arrest or palace coup?

No, tis murder your intention, and yet

A slaying you will never carry through.

For to fell a war god you must strike quick,

Before his gaze has met your brow.

[Grimm]

Arthur do not mistake my mercy for meekness

Nor my justice for cowardice, for today…

[Arthur]

Think this through Grimm. If you were to act

Then your deed would have long transpired.

You have already surrendered. The mere

Fact we still speak is evidence enough.

[Grimm]

Today I avenge the senate and save

the republic from herself and the swine.

[Arthur]

The only swine are your brothers, Grimm

And salvation comes from our feast of pigs.

I can already smell flames on pork fat

The ablutions of smoke, an aroma reaching Gods throne.

Judgement is coming, and with your kin’s gore

I shall smear the doors blood crimson,

so that our angel may pass over this nation.

[Grimm]

This is your last chance, before I pull..

[Arthur]

Throw down your arms Grimm, before

I snap your neck as a wishbone,

And use this wish for something as listless

As your unambitious spine, aye

Your soul for a better breakfast.

[Grimm begins to shake]

[Arthur]

I may even let you live, no, no evens.

I am feeling much too odd, I will

Surely preserve your life, as a house cat

Who allows his prey to continue the game.

To preserve his plaything and hone his cunning.

But you are no whetstone for my wit,

For talc can never sharpen a sword.

[Grimm drops his gun]

[Gering enters the scene armed with a gun]

[Gering]

Fate speaks! As the Norns command!

The stars have sewn the station!

[Gering fires his gun at Arthur, the round misses and hits the bronze bust, collapsing it off the platform on top of Grimm, crushing him to death]

[Gering]

No!

[Gering drops his gun and flees]

[Marcus]

Is the age so old that the fates now dodder?

Has their blindness ossified out of allegory?

A double blind, twinned negation,

The crones now spar in ripe elation.

At least her Hecatomb suffered fitting declension.

[Arthur]

The Fates are never thrown into mistaken contention.

Our natures were not so estranged,

And so fate was sworn to snuff him out.

This hero deserved a far better end.

[Marcus]

Have my ears been hexed? A better end?

Grimm? Coward and Cuckold?

He who was showered in divine contempt?

[Arthur]

In a nobler time he would have been exempt

From the cruel logic of this smoldering age,

Showered in flowers on a garland’d stage.

Here was a man of most noble rage.

But providence in her ravenous appetite

consumes the virtuous.

Here lies a man who stood against fate.

Here dies a man aflame with life.

One of those souls so drunk on the amber

Of now ancient resin, the ‘ol dream,

That endless pleroma of possibility

That filled the fat pupils of this people,

that which sent his race to both

oceans pacific and Martian far.

The last ember of Washington’s hearth.

There goes the last American.

Only a weary god remains.

[Marcus]

If that was the last American,

then the nation deserves its fate.

[Arthur]

So sounds the words of a blindman.

[Marcus]

Blind? No Arthur. I think it you who is blind.

[Arthur]

No. Tis you. Just As sightless men

mistake square for compass,

And circumscribe straight souls in wicked circles.

[Marcus]

If the nation is dead then why do we fight?

Why do we prepare to strike north?

Is it all just game and sport?

[Arthur]

For the man to come.

The one who pours his presence out

To turn his skull into goblet for gods nectar.

Not a vacuous man, but one who wills

An evacuation of gods judgement.

To relinquish the organs of anthropos

And become a Krater for numen,

Dissolving his soul, in the same krater he forged,

From the midst of this crucible of monstrous ignorance.

But a certain blood quantum is required

To craft such a sterling vessel.

[Marcus]

Is this eschatology or something stranger?

What percolations pate that skull?

[Arthur]

Does the whine of the winds prickle

Your ears? Do you hear it?

All of creation cries out, in ecstatic

pain, A howl of tortured joy.

For Natures cruel telos is soon to crown.

But the man to come bursts from my skull

And my skull alone, a paragon

Formed from my cruciform fantasy.

An idea I proposed to the silent courts

Of ethereal splendor, and they

Responded with a bolt of ambiguous

Approval. The fates grip the thread

With white knuckled dread, the iron

Clad fetters of Moira have enough slack

For a rouge note upon the chord.

The hand of a hero may pluck that string

As the kithara of far shooting Apollo.

And with metis, and cunning, I shall

Steal from the hallow herd, and butcher

A bovine, and from the gore, forge

A lyre to transform the worlds song.

For the gods stand against nature

And the gods stand against fate.

And their chosen avatar may pull

Shivering man out from his long

Shrivations. I am nothing if not

Magnanimous. I believe in man.

None of the acts you have witnessed these weeks

Have a rhyme or reason below the flesh.

You dance in a hall of splattered mirrors,

A globule of veils compressed in folds,

To cover the kernel from unready eyes,

The Kerygma that hides in my holy heart.

You walk in the sediment abyss of scourged

Palimpsests, a krater of diffused sign.

Any meaning you think you’ve glimpsed

Is but your own pride shaping dolls of wax.

No mortal man will understand what they

Witnessed while I walked, this enigma

Shall only be unscrolled in the far future,

Or the distant past, while my passion

Is played out on some stage or screen,

Muddled but legible to the chosen few.

Myths collide as storm clouds to form thunder,

Smog of different shape but equal substance.

There will be rain all the same.

The storm is here. The squall to knock

The lights of heaven from every niche.

As the candles from their aediculae

Fall Into holier pockets of void.

It is time. I go to spill

the blood of the age

I go to offer the honey of the hecatomb.

The next time you see me,

There shall be little of me left.

[End scene]

Act 3 Scene 5

[The Oval Office. Arthur enters as the President sits at his desk]

[President Donavon]

And so my dreams take flesh.

The moment has found her fullness.

[Arthur]

Hello, old friend.

[President Donavon]

Every night I see that face

And those emerald eyes,

From the feathered stage

That entombs this cheek,

Ensepulchred in sweat.

And I awake adorned

In saline pearls, a panoply

Of dread and sapphire woe.

[Arthur]

In the end your tongue has lacquered poetic.

Where is that old roar I recall? That which

Bludgeoned the crowds into sterling unity?

Where is that wrought iron tongue that so

Enlivened my soul? Where has that old Bull gone?

[President Donavan]

I stand tall before the faena. Even if my limbs

Are too bruised to buck and bray.

The age will not blink as the watchers roar.

[Arthur]

Aye, those golden shoulders are still strong.

[President Donavan]

Do you remember, when we first met?

How I was girt in brawn and muscle.

When we stared each other down,

I knew my champion was surely found

In this black ore before me.

How could I have known then?

That the crowds that once twirled

In murmurations when I would but

Raise a hand, would be seduced

So thoroughly by that young soldier.

I should have known then, that there

Was no besting the seraph that stood before me.

[Arthur]

Aye, I could never forget, the day I met

The spirit of the age. How you wore

The sunlight as a somber suit. How the

Crowds dipped down before you,

A nation of heliotropes enjoined in prayer.

[President Donavan]

And yet I cannot even look upon you now,

Only in the corner of my gaze I glimpse you,

For the solar shards now splinter from your

Countenance, an orb to horrid and sound,

Casting umbrage in motion. My periphery

Swells with strange forms, scorpions

And serpents, canines and crows.

Who are those shadowed shades

That flank you? Who did you bring here?

[Arthur]

I come alone.

[President Donavan]

They bear torches. They bear torches.

[Arthur]

It is just you and I.

[President Donavan]

They bear torches. One erect

And one low. Perhaps Lady Liberty

Has come to witness her prodigal son’s

final throes.

[Arthur unsheaths a short sword]

[President Donavan]

I am scared. For the first time in my life

I am scared. I do not wish to forget.

I do not wish to transpire. I wish

To live on.

[Arthur]

Fear not old friend,

I shall carve you out a constellation,

And In stardust I’ll stencil your silhouette.

From nights bosom I shall cleave the soft flesh

So all men to come will call you blessed.

If you are not destined for the gods banquet

Then at least the bittersweet waters of Lethe’s

Baptism, will not extinguish all at death.

For when this forlorn soul rekindles afresh

It shall gaze skyward to find violet speculum

Reflecting the form of a once great god.

These stars I shall grant you, an eternal

Witness to remember what you can not

Recall in countless lives to come.

For All of night shall be your mirror,

The only orb big enough to bear your soul.

[President Donavan]

I can see it now, my soul already

Rising from this sheath skyward

To greet the gods as kin.

Tell me Arthur, was I not a bull?

Did my fibers not coil in brawny vigor,

to greet the goads

Of the gods?

[Arthur]

Aye, the mightiest of all men, who road

With titans and wrestled restless wights.

They will remember, nor can they forget,

Wrought iron Donovan.

He who gored the stillwater, the forerunner

Who baptized this nation for new dawn.

Rest easy now, noble bull, and know

Your labor is done.

[Arthur places his palm on Donovans’ shoulder]

[President Donovan]

…I see the Morningstar, she has lit

A jade candle by the window

to welcome me home.

[Arthur raises the sword and drives it into his neck, spilling the bull’s blood across the stage]

Act 4 Scene 1

[A Square in the Capital]

[Bystander 1]

The holy veil has been wrought asunder,

Mangled with the whistle of a riven heaven.

And the axle in the hubs let out the shriek of a pipe,

blazing from the pressure of well rounded wheels,

And I heard that sound when the aether was split,

But I knew not whose hand fate had given the knife.

[Bystander 2]

I feel as if my ribs have been warped

and mangled out, my chest is hollow.

[Bystander 1]

Have you seen the moon?

[Bystander 2]

I have seen the moon.

Every man still mad enough to know

That reason has left us, feels

these omens and signs in the sky.

[Bystander 1]

We have all died. It is the only

Conclusion. Our angel has left us.

[Bystander 2]

They say it was Arthur who slew

Old Donavan, for reasons unknown

To Gods and men.

[Hariman]

Lies! Conspiracy!

[Bystander 2]

Then who did the deed?

[Hariman]

The president was slain by a Persian plot!

Rid your heads of these thoughts conspiratorial,

These dour thoughts will clot the carotids of fortunes

Fickle neck, and expressing these thoughts

Will have your brickled napes lynched up next!

[Bystander 1]

Then how explain you the moon?

[Hariman]

Occultations and eclipses are natural fixtures

Of the watchman’s gears, regular rhythms

Are bound to coincide from time to time

With qualitative ruptures in earthly action.

The heavens never mirror the trifles of men.

[Bystander 1]

Do you not feel cold? Do you not feel

As if the spirit has left your chest?

Look at those around you. The mobs

Have been robbed of their vigor.

They no longer lynch for Arthur's honor,

But only to scalp and mount as beasts,

Clawing out at any soul associated with

The state. There is no logic behind this shift,

Their champion has gone to do as he said,

They still think him blameless. And yet,

Something in their soul has curdled in gnosis.

[Hariman]

There is nothing more holy than a touch of kenosis.

Cease your dread. Know this– nobody here has lost their head.

[A mob passes with the corpse of Gering]

[Hariman]

See, logic still lives! That man was slain

For trying to riddle Arthur with lead.

This noble violence is the heir of our unity,

Look how our nation serves the war effort.

[Another mob passes with Noir being dragged by the hair]

[Bystander 1]

And him? Senator Noir was a staunch defender in the end,

Opposing even his own blood and brothers honor

To advance the claims of stalwart arthur.

[Hariman]

The Senate are swine. The whole unclean herd

Must be thrown from the heavens.

[Bystander 1]

Does it not seem to you, as if the world

Has lost its sense?

[Hariman]

Sed Contra! Tis finally produced its due,

And the broke bastard will cough interest too.

[Bystander 2]

You have a dark look about you.

[Enter whistling child]

[Child]

I came from menok, tis not getik

That I began to be. To think of him,

Sovereignty…

[Bystander 1]

Where go you child? Tis not safe here.

Tis not the time to be out and about.

[Child]

Time itself is a man. A man,

Who can be touched.

[Exist child]

[Hariman]

I must depart.

[Hariman leaves in the direction of the child]

[Enter the Veteran, he is missing a leg and a hand, he hobbles now on crutches]

[Bystander 2]

Evening friend.

[Veteran]

What words were just spoken before my approach?

[Bystander]

By who? The man who was just with us?

[Veteran]

That is no man.

[Bystander 1]

I do not follow. But if you have words

For him, he went in the direction

Of that child who passed.

[Veteran]

That is no child.

[Enter Drunkard. He sways and wobbles]

[Bystander 2]

Look at this sorry specimen.

[Bystander 1]

Get your wits. Drown your sorrows

Elsewhere.

[The drunkard swoons]

[Veteran]

By God! I know you!

Show me your face, come!

[Drunkard]

پدرسگ

[Veteran]

You! The Legate! By God,

What has become of you?

Why are you here? Where

Is that dignity and pride that

Once contoured every strut and stride?

Where is that man who once put

A sword through Arthur’s sternum?

[The Drunkard vomits and hobbles off]

[Bystander 1]

What sense is there in this?

[Veteran]

Sense fills all things, just as all things are just.

It is only mortal man who cannot see it as such.

[Bystander 1]

Then the gods are blind as well.

[Veteran]

Aye, for men are mortal gods,

and gods immortal men.

[Act 4 Scene 2]

[Greenland. Marcus paces inside Arthurs tent, he is nowhere to be found. Americas legions surround the spot, waiting for word to strike]

[Marcus]

Twelve legions surround our tent, loyal

Little fishermen to a Levantine lamb, and

Those scales that scallop their eyes

Shall hold fast to jellied shells, for

No theophany’s sent to clear pupil’d

Umbrage. God, in his infinite mirth,

Set onyx as inlay betwixt iris throngs,

Deepest black besetting brilliant rings

Of every hue, both emerald and blue,

To remind the blind that his vision is pitch.

I am not Ananias, and Damascus

is not so cold. Oh sons of man!

Dip your orbs to soles, lower forlorn brow,

And see that we all walk on water now.

A Miracle? Tis but a change in state.

The tabernacles empty, their god absconds,

O foregone wind! Clip a quill from an albatross,

And dip the feather in a pelicans chest.

Ink the riven nectar in the clouds own flesh!

And send word to the tribe of Judah,

Send word to the camp of Dan.

Tell them their army circumscribes

A swindler, that their god’s made off

With that right of birth, they’ve bartered

Their souls for a madman’s brunch.

Look at me. Pilfered like the rest.

Robbed of all. Intrigue and carnage.

No knives in necks, no bullets in bladders,

O Arthur! Where have you gone? Is our

Consul a coward in the end? I think not.

The Norns have torn my gossamer plots

And now the long arm blocks even my blade

In his absence, as he goes to meditate

In some cave, or so he said, but seven

Days have passed, so hes surely dead.

Robbing a god! Is this the plot?

Swindled by a thief in the night,

aye, I’m the mark in the end! I think

the golden orb up high shall soon bruise black,

as this swart thief entreats to hoodwink heaven.

And yet, does fate send curses or a crown?

Ive the full force of this rump empire around me.

Arthurs evaporation may yield a new rapture,

For now a remnant citadel surrounds my form,

armed with canons and providential scorn,

Awaiting the charge of their masters horn.

Shall I raise a scepter and don his face?

Is this the meaning of the riddle at last?

To wear their gods countenance as a curtain?

Aye now I’m fairly certain, upon fairy castles throne

A changelings ass, shall soon kiss Scone’s Stone.

Ill conceal splendor’d pearl in one of three cups

And by the powers of Puck, shuffle them around,

To grift cronish fate, with a gypsies frown.

Locke? No longer. I am Arthur now.

The gates unlocked, the fate’s forked aside

Like once slack’d gown of horned husband’s bride.

Generals! Come! Assemble by my side!

[June, Jules, and Jude enter into the tent]

[June]

We stand at your command o’ sterling general!

[Marcus]

Stand with steel, for I’ve just received word,

Our Consul shall return before twilights interred.

So girt your legions, prepare jets for flight,

Our battle shall be birthed within hours of night.

[Jules]

Heil Arthur!

[Marcus]

Aye Heil him, and heil him well!

Heil him forever, from heaven to hell!

[Jude]

Aye we’ve heiled him in heaven

And we’ve heiled him in hell

[June]

We heil the stars seven

where the other bear dwells

[Marcus]

Now hold! Hold on, what are these aprons you don?

[June]

They are but bibs to dab spittle from chests, good sir

[Jules]

And clean crystal from ribs, after feasting on fibs

[Marcus]

Seems you three have strange appetites.

[Jude]

No sir, we lost them with our lives

After the lies of a ruffians lunch.

[Marcus]

By the Gods! The three juwes!

But you are dead!

[June]

Aye! We are but the chimeras of cranial heat!

[Jules]

A troupe of puckish pixies at play!

[Jude]

Devilish thespians dissimulating life!

[June]

In life we were children of your puckish tradition

In death we are children of your bloody tongue!

[Jude]

For by pucks own power flew seminal emission

A few impetuous syllables and the world's undone!

[All three juwes in unison]

What fun! What fun! The worlds undone!

[Marcus]

No, I think not. Afterwash is not so acidic.

There is a darker providence at work.

You must be ghosts of some bygone god,

Who I scorned or scourged with my fiery rods.

[Jude]

No goodfellow you’ve got it hobbed and twisted

We are but the listless vapors of a mind mid thaw.

[Marcus]

Gods do not have visions in this realm

without discrimination. Only men go mad.

[June]
Then maybe you are but a man?

[Marcus]

Locke? But a man? If I were a man

This polar wind would scald my skin

If this skin were truly skin

And the Arctic ice would blind these eyes

If my eyes were truly eyes

the boreal breath would arrest my blood

If my blood werent a chest of boiling mud

[Jules]

And if your mind weren’t a cleft of cud?

[Marcus]

Enough.

[Jules]

Or what? Shall you turn us to sludge?

[Marcus]

I said enough.

[Jules]

I am not yet full!

[Marcus]

Why are you not melting or boiling.

Or seething or coiling.

[Jude]

Oh marcus oh marcus, as deaf as hes rude,

We are not pixies or sprites, nor gods of winged shoe

We are creatures of that which you cannot subdue

[Marcus]

Which foul substance do you speak?

What witches brew can conjure your kind?

[June]

Your mind!

[Jules]

Your mind!

[Jude]

You’re mine!

[All three juwes]

You’re mine!

[Jude]

AEEIOUO!

[All three juwes]

AEEIOUO!

[Act 4 Scene 3]

[Arthur is alone in a cave. He is naked. His flesh is covered in woad runes. The cave is covered in woad runes. His left foot bears a bronze sandal. His thigh glimmers gold]

[Arthur]

And what shall I tell them?

What shall I tell them when I return

from Sheol without a soul in hand,

when I descend Meru sans decalogue

in hand, bearing nothing but false purgation

and auspicious creases upon my hand.

The mantras taste bitter, the sounds

taste of sand, the flavor is gone.

The flavor is gone, but stillwater remains

and the stains of blood still untransfigured.

Blood upon my hands. How many souls

have I slaughtered for an end unknown,

an end I felt, seared in bone, that truth

You carved within me, you butcher.

Denying me even the satisfaction

Of knowing who I address, oh wretched

Pleroma, oh foregone fullness, why,

Why suffocate my senses with a million palms?

No. I will not lose my nerve. I am stalwart.

I spit my soul from ear and nothing

Has come to fill it. No. The goblet is null.

Noontide refuses to transpire.

Eternity has turned her halt cheek

From the gaze of another beau,

That cruel coquette continues

For to concede would negate her nature,

And so she forever defers beyond.

I lack the defects to defeat time.

Know this, you who have left,

I will not bleat as a goat in desperation.

I will not rip my tunic and beat my breast.

Sooner still shall Hera’s milk curdle upon stellar belt

Then I cry out for the immortal’s teat.

Stay silent. Stay silent o’ gods.

Fate has bound it to be whole, unmoving.

And yet, if this liturgy were to fail?

The man to come would never come,

And thus pass the womb stillborn.

A dormant palpebra has winked open,

A crevice formed betwixt my brow,

A truth organ, a hence unknown sense,

Has blossomed in the spring of ignorance,

To let terrible clarity drown my hearth.

The stone of my soul is set uneven.

This fractured crystal, tis but

A shard of glass, which casts,

Auroras from moonbeams.

A trick of the limelight.

viridescent pyrite.

A false dawn.

Perhaps this world is all for naught.

[Thunder splits the cave as nature cries out. Arthur falls back and collapses at the unseen figure before him]

[Arthur]

Who art thou. Who art thou!

[Silence]

[Arthur]

No! My son is fragrant and luminous,

Thou art dark and foul smelling.

[Silence]

[Arthur]

It cannot be. It cannot be.

[Arthur wails and runs to the corner of the cave. Heaving and panting tears fill his emerald eyes]

[Arthur]

What twisted seed has my soul emitted?

My first born son? The man to come?

I’ve grasped no heels. “He will laugh!”

“He will laugh!” Bind me in my blindness.

Ive cuckolded myself with this thought of doubt

And so fate has veiled me in goatish hide.

This cannot be the end. This swine before me,

This swine that threatens to trample the earth

Under cleft foot, this aborted swine, son of my mind…

[A green flash flickers from Arthurs eyes. He reaches down in his pocket and retrieves the pearl]

[Arthur]

And so the egg offers up her yolk,

The world to come upon my palm,

In this pregnant fullness of an hour late,

Blind chance transformed into fate.

The words have hatched upon my tongue

And I’ll find them sweet when they’ve been sung.

In this Malagrotta, as forefather prefigured

From the breath of my mouth, the earth transfigured

[Arthur sings the hymn of the Pearl]

[Arthur]

yaθā ahū vairyō aθā ratuš aṣ̌āt̰cīt̰ hacā

vaŋhə̄uš dazdā manaŋhō š́yaoθananąm aŋhə̄uš mazdāi

xṣ̌aθrəmcā ahurāi ā yim drigubyō dadat̰ vāstārəm

[Emerald light floods the cave]

[Arthur]

Fall prostrate now in the dark well of time

A vision of my victory in the highest clime

[A black light emerges and a luminous maiden appears. Arthur falls prostrate to his knees. She lifts him up by his hands and kisses him]

[SHE]

I taste dawn upon our tongue.

Turn your cheek. Look at our son.

The man to come.

[Arthur turns and all of nature rejoices]

[Act 4 Scene 4]

[Marcus barges into Arthur’s tent. Arthur is seated on a throne]

[Marcus]

You have returned.

[Arthur]

That we have. And Im almost surprised

Old friend, we half expected a bronze replica

To face staring in our stead.

[Marcus]

And where have you been?

[Arthur]

There, in a realm where your kind

Cannot possibly comprehend,

For mundane heads lack the mind

And the ken.

[Marcus paces, dropping on all fours and back up again, walking backwards and forwards, twisting and contorting, hissing and spitting]

[Marcus]

Tell me, tell me Arthur,

Do you remember, when in bygone days
we mixed our blood together?

When we weathered the gales of airy lead

In trenches of mortar and brimstone.
You said you would never drink ale
unless it were brought to both of us.

[Arthur]

We have no such recollection Locke,

You mistake us for another

[Marcus]

So it seems Arthur, but tell me,

Do you remember in a time far off,

When a crone refused to cry?

When all the world shared despair

But a single witch wouldn’t shed a tear?

[Arthur]

We fear this man is still another

[Marcus]

Then do you recall saint Sylvester’s day,

I came to court with a game to play,

In plated green, in plated woe,

I held an axe and a holly bough.

[Arthur]

No.

[Marcus]

Or what of foregone hour on holy cliff

You rebuked the challenge that I did hiss

But I had my due with my doubles kiss

And your limbs went slack in cold Golgotha.

[Arthur]

We know not the men you speak.

Depart from us.

We know what you do not.

[Marcus exits and returns in the form of a glittering angel]

[Marcus]

Contend with me, I stand to grapple

[Arthur]

Shall I wrestle a crone, or perhaps a fly?

Shall we struggle till dawn, will you touch my thigh?

Behold my palm, it holds the golden shoulder

of a young bull. This place is not Peniel,

nor the cross of Jabboks ford.

I am not Jacob, nor Yahweh you,

I am the bear, which moves and turns heaven.

You will see lightning leaping from my eyes

and stars glittering from our flesh.

[Marcus reverts to his normal shape]

[Marcus]

So you are a god.

And we, two of one kind.

My double, my twin,

My only true kin.

And together, we shall

Summon my sons

The Midgard serpent

And Fenrir wolf

To consume the earth

And end the age

[Arthur]

You are not my double Locke,

Nor my partner, Marcus thou art

A wayward comet who comes blazed in black,

You, void bound wanderer, who scarred mute space

With hiss whistled shrieks of sheol contempt

For shivering man’s long shrivations.

Chance has crashed you into my countenance

To snare your orb in my great orbit

Reduced to lunar ring, circumscribing

my presence in purest ignorance,

a nebulous nadir in my retinues sphere

Blot darkness approaching the pole.

And yet, within the chambers of this heart

A fondness lingers for your flame.

But I abide your sordid motions not

For tenderness nor any other superfluity,

Nor out of need, you have no utility

To the grand designs of my intellect.

But a karmic current has shored you here

So you may cease your smoldering sighs

Of brimstone, silicate, and self digestion

To take refuge in my glittering gravity.

You, Locke, may reform yourself in our fields

And become something more noble

Than another rogue stone in space

[Marcus draws his sword]

[Arthur]

Throw down your sword

and take my hand

Embrace our flesh

and I’ll restore you.

[Marcus lunges at Arthur with his blade; they duel for forty days in the span of forty seconds]

[Marcus]

How many more days shall we clash,

How many more hours will this stalemate last?

[Arthur]

Days? It’s been but a few flicks of the little hand

Up eternal face. I am the master of time and space.

[marcus throws his sword down before tossing the emerald and sapphire before them]

[Marcus]

Turn them to bread O son of man!

Where is thy sovereignty?

You were born of woman, and you shall die

As any widow born man who has walked this earth!

[Arthur]

I am spawn of no widowed woman,

I am the son of the Widower.

Look down. It is done.

[Marcus, heaving and panting, sits on the ground and picks up the two morsels of bread. Arthur sits down next to him]

[Arthur]

Take this morsel in hand, hold it with calm,

And dab it in the oil that flows from my palm.

It’s time we both broke the gods long fast,

Indulge with me now in this mystical repast.

[Marcus]

This oil is so subtle, it is hardly a substance

[Arthur]

And for this reason tis the only true one.

Tell me, what is this oil?

[Marcus]

Tis oil from apertures seven, Ursa Major,

The septentrions twin, incestuous kin,

Tis oil from Arktos, the polar dew,

Which doth sweeten the high vault of heaven.

A chrism to glisten upon the brow of sages

And christen those who listen across the ages.

[The room transforms into the threshold of the beyond and the place of theophanies. A palace ablaze with immaterial matter. Both partake in the meal]

[Arthur]

Marcus, I christen you Fortunate Day.

From this day on you shall be known this way.

Look up. Look to the heavens. What do you see?

[Fortunate Day]

I see the constellation of the bear.

I see seven apertures of the throne.

And lo! They are open. The pleroma

Manifests in seven thousand thresholds,

The aurora is but his luminous cloak.

And all the world is not what I thought.

I see angels and gods loosening their fetters.

And a smouldering host raising fiery swords

From the sun beyond the sun. From the pole

Beyond the pole. I see the end at last descending.

I see the thunder riding swart with frenzy.

[Arthur]

Look down. Look at us. What do you see?

[Fortunate Day]

I see no difference.

I see no difference.

[Arthur]

The center of the earth kisses my soles,

Where I roam, so too, there roams the pole.

O Fortunate Day!

Seek refuge in the Lord of Daybreak.

Seek refuge in the Pivot of Jade.

For I am the conductor of thunder,

I am the Witness of the Pact;

I am the Face of God,

I am the eye of God,

I am the hand, the tongue,

and the light of God.

I am the Treasure of God in the heavens,

and on the earth; I am the Power;

the Manifestation, the Rewarder.

His proof and His pole.

I am He who concluded the pact with the spirits,

and He who declared by divine decree:

“Am I not your Lord?”

“Am I not your Lord?”

I am the Pearl of the Oysters;

I am the Mountain of Qāf;

I am He who traverses the seven heavens

and the seven earths in the blink of an eye.

I am He who wipes away the world’s errors

by the blade of a foresworn sword.

From the hermeneutics of my breath,

I bring forth resurrection.

I am the Mahdī of all moments;

I am the Jesus of the Time;

I am Zeus in the high heavens,

and Phanes in the eighth clime.

I am the Lion of the Tribe of Judah,

I am the Lion that rises in the east,

I am the Lion that flanks the Virgin,

And I am the Lion that serpents entwine.

But I am the Bear that turns the Lion,

And I am the Word that rules the Bear.

I am He.

Alif Lam Mim.

[End scene]

[Epilogue]

[Two soldiers stand several miles from the camp]

[Soldier 1]

Do you see that pillar that twists and turns,

Those tongues of fire, from the camp they burn?

What is this flame in the northern sky?

[Soldier 2]

That is no flame. That is no flame.

The ground, my skin, they grow lucid,

Transparent. I gaze upon your face

Through the palm of my hand.

[Soldier 1]

The aurora flows thick and amniotic.

Look how heavy that plasmation runs,

A cascade of yoke to swallow the night,

I fear the glow shall overtake the earth.

Look at the falling stars which scar the sky,

Numinous green and luminous black.

These horrid comets shrieking with the wind!

[Soldier 2]

Those are no stones. They bear swords in hand.

The host of heaven rains down the battlements.

Be these angels or gods? The night, she burns.

[Soldier 1]

The banners and the regiments have returned.

[End]

On the Ides the altars of rustic Faunus smoke, there where the island breaks the parted waters.

-Ovid’s Fasti