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From Rumi: Ghazal 2133
wake up, wake up
this night is gone
wake up
abandon abandon
even your dear self
abandon
there is an idiot
in our market place
selling a precious soul
if you doubt my word
get up this moment
and head for the market now
dont listen to trickery
dont listen to the witches
dont wash blood with blood
first turn yourself upside down
empty yourself like a cup of wine
then fill to the brim with the essence
a voice is descending
from the heavens
a healer is coming
if you desire healing
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill
______
Welcome to Sunday… Visited our Tom and Cheryl last night, it was very pleasant, we got to see friends that we haven’t seen for quite awhile, Darren & Donna and their son Gavin. Gavin and Rowan were friends when they were young(er), until we moved over to the Hawthorne District (The People’s Autonomous Region Of Hawthorne) Gavin is a drummer, a very good singer and an actor. It was nice to see the connection being made again. We had a great time, staying later than we planned originally but that was nice as well.
Heating up at this point, about to head out to Sauvie Island for some relief from right angles.
Stay tuned….
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Tim Buckley – Song To The Siren
Tom Moore and the Seal Woman
Poems – Ira Cohen
Art by Nicholas Kalmakoff
Tim Buckley – Song To The Siren
__________
Tom Moore and the Seal Woman
A PROPOS of the following tale, I may say: The intermarriage with and descent of men from beings not human touches upon one of the most interesting and important points in primitive belief. Totemism among savage races in our day, and descent from the gods in antiquity are the best examples of this belief; derived from it, in all probability but remotely, are family escutcheons with their animals and birds and the emblematic beasts and birds of nations, such as the Roman eagle, the British lion, the American eagle, the Russian bear. The Roman eagle and the wolf which suckled Romulus may have been totems, if not for the Romans, at least for some earlier people. The lion, eagle, and bear of England, America, and Russia are of course not totemic, though adopted in imitation of people who, if they had not totems, had as national emblems birds or beasts that at some previous period were real totems for some social body.
There is a tale in Scotland concerning people of the clan MacCodrum, who were seals in the daytime, but men and women at night. No man of the MacCodrums, it is said, would kill a seal. The MacCodrums are mentioned in Gaelic as “Clann Mhic Codruim nan rón” (Clan MacCodrum of the seals).
In the village of Kilshanig, two miles north-east of Castlegregory, there lived at one time a fine, brave young man named Tom Moore, a good dancer and singer. ‘Tis often he was heard singing among the cliffs and in the fields of a night.
Tom’s father and mother died and he was alone in the house and in need of a wife. One morning early, when he was at work near the strand, he saw the finest woman ever seen in that part of the kingdom, sitting on a rock, fast asleep. The tide was gone from the rocks then, and Tom was curious to know who was she or what brought her, so he walked toward the rock.
“Wake up!” cried Tom to the woman; “if the tide comes ’twill drown you.”
She raised her head and only laughed. Tom left her there, but as he was going he turned every minute to look at the woman. When he came back be caught the spade, but couldn’t work; he had to look at the beautiful woman on the rock. At last the tide swept over the rock. He threw the spade down and away to the strand with him, but she slipped into the sea and he saw no more of her that time.
Tom spent the day cursing himself for not taking the woman from the rock when it was God that sent her to him. He couldn’t work out the day. He went home.
Tom could not sleep a wink all that night. He was up early next morning and went to the rock. The woman was there. He called to her.
No answer. He went up to the rock. “You may as well come home with me now,” said Tom. Not a word from the woman. Tom took the hood from her head and said, “I’ll have this!”
The moment be did that she cried: “Give back my hood, Tom Moore!”
“Indeed I will not, for ’twas God sent you to me, and now that you have speech I’m well satisfied! And taking her by the arm he led her to the house. The woman cooked breakfast, and they sat down together to eat it.
“Now,” said Tom, “in the name of God you and I’ll go to the priest and get married, for the neighbours around here are very watchful; they’d be talking.” So after breakfast they went to the priest, and Tom asked him to marry them.
“Where did you get the wife?” asked the priest.
Tom told the whole story. When the priest saw Tom was so anxious to marry be charged £5, and Tom paid the money. He took the wife home with him, and she was as good a woman as ever went into a man’s house. She lived with Tom seven years, and had three sons and two daughters.
One day Tom was ploughing, and some part of the plough rigging broke. He thought there were bolts on the loft at home, so he climbed up to get them. He threw down bags and ropes while he was looking for the bolts, and what should he throw down but the hood which he took from the wife seven years before. She saw it the moment it fell, picked it up, and hid it. At that time people heard a great seal roaring out in the sea.
“Ah,” said Tom’s wife, “that’s my brother looking for me.”
Some men who were hunting killed three seals that day. All the women of the village ran down to the strand to look at the seals, and Tom’s wife with the others. She began to moan, and going up to the dead seals she spoke some words to each and then cried out, “Oh, the murder!”
When they saw her crying the men said: “We’ll have nothing more to do with these seals.” So they dug a great hole, and the three seals were put into it and covered. But some thought in the night: “Tis a great shame to bury those seals, after all the trouble in taking them.” Those men went with shovels and dug up the earth, but found no trace of the seals.
All this time the big seal in the sea was roaring. Next day when Tom was at work his wife swept the house, put everything in order, washed the children and combed their hair; then, taking them one by one, she kissed each. She went next to the rock, and, putting the hood on her head, gave a plunge. That moment the big seal rose and roared so that people ten miles away could hear him.
Tom’s wife went away with the seal swimming in the sea. All the five children that she left had webs between their fingers and toes, half-way to the tips.
The descendants of Tom Moore and the seal woman are living near Castlegregory to this day, and the webs are not gone yet from between their fingers and toes, though decreasing with each generation.
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Poetry: Ira Cohen, 3 more…
Atlantis Express
Lets take a silver train underground
to the back streets of Atlantis
thru the corrugated iron roots &
then to the peak itself, to the
saddle of the last ridge past strewn
boulders,
finally meandering thru cascading snow
wearing miners hats on the perpendicular
dark night &
going up to the edge of the Southern Cross
where we reach at last the pure white
glistening glaciers &
begin to chant over bones in rags
of Scorpio
Armless in the sticky substance how could
they ever have had a chance?
Permission will not be required
only poems of blood offered to
the memory of TREE
It is not ice which is eternal
but the fury of the absolute
separating the void from the spirit
of man,
uplifting like life when it is used
against itself,
that is, Radical Love — & again, we
are reduced to living beings
Caught by the instant
we are taken away
We live in the imprint of the flame
& we are helmeted within the internal
blackness
where the ray begins its passage
across the indignant sky
Vain clouds uncaring in a tangle of
crossbeams
culminate in the hermaphroditic mirror
of the epileptic dancer
asleep
And during sleep
the light is joined
to the light
It is all a matter of getting up
and then to abandon the pain
It is there that the journey beings
in the self generated flame of
Spontaneous Combustion
(Swayambhunath)
The main line running counter
to the triangle comprising the
MAELSTROM, the DOLDROMS & the
SARGASSO SEA where sleeping Atlanteans
dream forever,
this line, this battlefield of the ages,
crosses the divide of my most wandering
backdoor heart.
We will all have to go
if we want to reappear
in the rhythm of the ritual
Its the wheel of fools spinning
over my bed
If I put my left foot first
they will find a way to call me
by that name
tracking tremors
like glyphs
on drunken walls
in the negative palace
just before taking eave
of my senses
the white powder dissolves
in the sunlight
& making noise like a peacock
he hops on one foot up the mountain.
—
Song to Nothing
And surely we will die without memory
coming to cold in the shadow of space
& if it isnt too late
for the star to love you
spraying the sky w/ whispers
attuned to galaxies hungry for flame
And if the tongue of night sings
of Albino winos
till the morning light shafts
the doorway
then surely we will die tonight
faceless at the White
Gate
sharing the smoke
w/ ancient shapes in future garb
and you stand somewhere there
on the other side
feeding on the pain of dreamlessness
Wherefrom the misty morning of
white shadows
& the unresisting need to destroy?
Samael, Samael, I beg it may be forgiven
that they may be driven
out of the black into the white
Only let the dazzle remain
for gamblers to surprise,
the strategic diamond, the throne
of compressed bone
in the unshored dark
where only light can forgive
& your mind is singed
Embers of echoes in the vastness
disguise the yearning to burn
blind eyes
in arrogant displays of feeling
Running wild these beasts will feast
on the newborn kind
for surely we will die tonight
unless we learn to ignore
what the others live for
on the other side of morning
& the Skin of Nothing left by the same
summer
masks the faceless wanderer
O let it happen,
this weird to discover
the shape of Beauty in everything
extreme
for surely we will die tonight
whether we will or whether we
dream
O Samael, forgive the dreamer
forgive the dream
The Song of Nothing is your lullabye.
—-
If my heart were made of bread
I would wait at least one moment
before breaking the sunrise —
The Arm of the Dorje
Sunyata Song to the Winter Sun
There was much wind
but I new not how to call it,
a roomful of strangers,
how familiar the feeling,
how cold it must be barefoot
at the fountain when the sun goes down,
how the brown people love the blond baby
The white horse which looks out
from the wall suggests a journey
I once might have taken,
a covered memory reeking of sulphur
Words, they can go anywhere,
can they tell me where I come from,
the name of my planet,
the empty space which was my home?
The condemned murderer longs for
a firing squad, knows
where to put the shadows
you keep inside
Between hands there are worlds
of ashes & thunder,
silent collisions of meaning,
the utter sugar of nights
taken for granted
They say the sun rises every day,
that sleep is incidental
I say myself
& so I look for your face at dawn
rising over my grief, over
the twice told terrain, violet w/ciphers,
Suffused w/ yr eternal smile
I would offer my flesh to your tiger,
turn your stone wheels w/ my water
Longing for the peaks the stars say
it will be clear
Let us meet in the sky then
till we come closer down here.
The Day of the Basilisk The Wayfarers Song
It started in the dark room
thinking that night had fallen at dawn
Then arising we glued red eyes
into the dry sockets of a dead bird
its belly full of dirty cotton
Then across the paddies & out of
the town
where familiar figures of Kleist &
Eschenbach
rise from the road in eddies of dust
The voice of the Changeling names the day,
the day of the Basilisk, usurped
from the tyrants quest to know
how not to maim the Gilded Hind of
self knowledge
Licchavi sirens shortchanged of a renaissance
spread out cracked wooden arms,
split skulls of haunting beauty, smiling
Mud murtis made by nature distract
Goethean comments fearful of what is hidden
while the delicate head of Mahadev
whittled by the wind
still seals the lingam in the ancient temple
We look with Mudusas eyes
at the first born fruits,
the full breasts of the river
where there is no infidelity
The golden larva w/ the royal face of Narayan,
hold it by its tail & call it by its name
Narayan, Narayan
it will dance for you & shake its head,
it lives only on air we do not know if
it is alive or if it is dead, so gilded
its beauty
The face of Vishnu etches a dream of
ancient seas tinted w/ fallen light
Your face is everywhere
Your glory rings out over the peaks
capped w/ flame
Your shadow is enclosed within your shadow
You watch yourself falling
While falling you watch yourself looking down
You want to pick up the Tamang corpse
no one will touch
You call the children of darkness,
refute the wasted years of salt
poured into furrows
You see the thread needled to the hem of Night
betrayed by the shinbone of Day
where the fear is burned away
You look w/ basilisk eyes
turning the day to stone,
touched & transfigured
by the human, by the changing,
by the eternal, the always repeating
Alone.
Dhulikel/Panauti
