"A SONG OF THE END
OF THE WORI LD"
Maurice Rowdon


Come; a passionate speech
we dare not go out on the stage
we clothe it in past scenes
then masked as the dead
we love to perform
fear being a deep attachment to survival
we aren't afraid
what fear of the end
do we read in each other's faces
now that survival is out of the question
shame would bind us equally
but we find neither fearful nor shameful
what has already abandoned us
our hope in this solemn moment
is that we shall all be liberated
from every kind of obligation
that of love
that of fear
that of survival


The Midnight Bell
we work to pass the time
the time that remains
or we cease to work
so as not to lose
the time that remains
for only work prevents madness
screams of death
work gives the impression that things are all right
that the world is going along as it always did
work is a lie
get in car start her up
looking forward to the cup
pull to right drive her off
see the doctor about that cough
watch lights slow down
what a lovely dressing gown
wait for green switch on lights
wish the tele had more fights
in with gear push her home
mattress silent rubber foam


put out blinker foot on brake
wonder if those seeds will take
here's a street another too
remind me take the boys to ZOO
here flash lights at tricky bend
sometimes feel this is the end
get antifreeze renew the oil
ask the chemist lance that boil
patter of rain but wipers on
job's all right but magic's gone
keep to left let madman pass
like to kick him in the arse
no stopping now for mile and half
wish she'd wear a hat not scarf
lower gear when going downhill
some say celery some say pill
watch at the top for oncoming cars
might be better if I took her to bars
here comes bridge and traffic lights
go to town and see the sights
petrol's low but gauge m ight be wrong
twice my age and still going strong
try the radio switch on heat
must get covers for this seat
that's a nice model does ninety in third
he said the typist called me turd
pull out now the right lane's clear
fifteen years since she called me dear
watch out here for nasty skids
I hate the wife the job the kids


The Death of Incarnation
our tragedy being
that we must always look bac k
history pours down on us
we are the drowning man
seeing his life in a moment
to see the past
is to see the end
when thought disintegrates
money becomes the government
brass wits and golden foolery
their skin hung from their fingers like gloves
to the sound of the pipe the tabor and the trembling crowd
for the body insists
on being the finale
of all these destructions
on the understandable ground
that all else having been lost
the body at least remains
we eaters march aghast out of history
gorging on the dead
in the hope of being fed


A New Spartakus Manifesto
it would not happen
if we believed it would happen
it was promised
that when the poor became rich
the problem of survival would cease
but we rich have no other problem
than that of survival
(and we could not help but notice
how in that dream of future life
the hu man being was missing)
what misfortune
to fight so long for our rights
against the cruel rich
to inherit this dried leaf of a world
which won't last for many more holidays
many more wage increases
I remember once upon a time
I remember
Iremember
because it didn't happen
Iremember heavens that led to hell
the trams clattered like lighted ships
and carried our nightmares away
in a smell of fish and chips
to the next frightened day
we limped and smiled good night
in the full stare of day


and looked to the end of the street
to beguile the nightmare away
what thinkers will help us
the higher the thought
the bigger the detonation
thought and number and time
children of order mothers of crime
when shall we three meet again
in thunder lightning or in rain
down by pleasant tempe's shore
no skins were found to fit any more
the theory decides the observed
the doctrine the law
Be stone no more
much of our interest in past peoples
was wanting to know how they did it
inhabiting present time
with apparent ease
we have seen so many films in the making
we hardly turn round to look any more
ashamed of recording any more
that which did not happen


the arena hired
the lions amenable
now we want the scene to be real
when the time comes
we shall make so much history
we patient ones
there will be no occasion for filming
how bold we shall be
when the time comes for us to be admitted
into present time
but meanwhile we are quite happy
we orphans of tragedy
to call the event real which never happened
The Mask of Cupid
we have done everything to seem
and not to live
look at all the things that have been done to seem
it isn't enough any more
it's all seeming and no living
look at the wife of him who seems so much
how she trembles


in her right hand a firebrand tossed
fury in rags
and he's afraid of giving up work
that is seeming
The Host
who is the host
who floods the rooms with light
and in morning ablutions
secures your happiness
who brings news of serpents to unsuspecting husbands
working in the garden
and ordains that at table
among the chink of glass
you shall not grow old
who is the host that tunes the voice
to sweetly differentiate in evening dialogue
the male and the female
who Shakes the earth like a head of hair
who wanders with the bear
who signals at night to the lost
and comes to the window
uninvited like the sound of leaves
who lies down by lovers
and rises with the dead


who rouses old men with a morning cup of tea
engaging them with whispers
full of a wit that we would think black
who drives at speed in strange vehicles
and is seen for a moment
and then denied
and dances sometimes under trees
without apparent awareness of audience
who hugs an old friend
and later reveals that they have not met
who is my lover
who is my father
who dances for me
who recognises me
who floods the house with light
and will if he is lost return
whose touch is so much
I complain of its not
being there on the sheet
turned back at night
and whose touch is such
that those who have no eyes
who do not recognise
live in the brightest trust
knowing the rooms will be set
so perfectly with light
that no host will be sought


Whence is that knocking ?
it's true we've been liberated
the shadow of obligation
has ceased to fall on. us
delicious lack of seriousness
it has been too much for us
the civilisation that never came
the more we made it
the more it fell to pieces
it was too much for us
those armies churches chambers of commerce
now all that can go to the devil
or rather back to him
gone the obligation of those lovely summers
and those intimate winters
deliciously useless making projects
because the expected is always missing


make me a raw red steak
and then I can feel my roots
stretch downwards through the brutes
into the raw red earth
where I had my birth
as long as someone willing
does the necessary killing
and I do not hear the screams
or see the blood in streams
or suffer the frightened eyes
that make me recognise
the murders for my sake
the sound is tuned to the ear
like hope or sin or fear
each to his frequency
the summoning of his bell
each to his degree
the sound is tuned to the ear
the wound to the fear
some find it made
others weave it everywhere
for heaven and hell
are here and now


Unruly Night
in a certain sense
the philistines have been beaten
for certainty cannot now be of a worldly kind
the roses are already dead
or mad
and don't watch us any more
the grape smiles
because a little drunk
hope makes all things grow
this hope
lies in wanting that which is not
the jasmine is smiling in the hope at last
of not being
the grape is drunk on its future
and now I can see that the willow
is weeping with laughter
and with how sad steps the moon is climbing


I shall not intimidate softly or otherwise
your certain knot of peace
nor cause my desolation
to become how ever so softly your distress
nor shall I make my bargains drive
how ever so lightly
on your head
nor strike my hours
of how ever so deep a darkness
on your light
and I shall not uncover in all my paths
how ever so thick
one thorn for you
and shall not halt how ever so soft
your silver tread
Song of the Mediterranean
troy is now no more a city
seat of civilisation
still lovely to see
still crowned
if madly
lovely civilisation
that never existed
and crime the government


troy is now a tribal chamber
roof of gold
floor of amber
Eastward in Eden
mary came to my door
I love you she said
looking at my side
are you my mother I asked her
no she replied
I am the one who died
but surely I said
it was not you who died
but the one with thorns round his head
Iam the one who mothered him
and also the one who fled
Iam the one who gave him that kiss
and took him down from the bitter cross
and you my son were the one who bled she said
once I was a ghost
it happened long ago
on a hilltop it came about
in a universe of snow
someone saw me lying dead
in a fairhaired heap on the ground


and then I came round the corner
large as ever in all my parts
and they took me for a ghost
for indeed I had died
crumpled on the path
consanguineous at last
with the gleaming earth
in the first of my deaths
This filthy Witness
christmas is over
the geese are dead
presents have been given
and uncles fed
carols still lovely
are no longer heard
and death was done
to many a bird
chickens were throttled
turkeys were split
geese knocked out
and wild ducks hit
christmas is over
we had a fine time
our fingers are twitching
from a future crime
we live like lords
we give the best
but more than a bird
has died in its nest
crackers were pulled
the port was passed
suddenly a voice
said it couldn't last


the birds all lay
sizzling in fat
while crop and beak
were kept for the cat
tea and sandwiches
at half past ten
we'll have to make life
all over again
take wing like the birds
build us a nest
be alive again
to unearthly request
we can't accept
these meals from the past
but change the scenery
alter the cast
Now the hungry lion roars
but what shall we do
we bodies
if undoing everything
there remains nothing for ourselves
feeling our selves to be bodies
in remembrance of a shroud
we required the support of number
and the presence of a crowd
but what shall we do
if nothing but one remains
thought and number and time
children of order mothers of crime
when shall we three meet again
in thunder lightning or in rain


NOTES ON THE SONG OF THE END OF THE WORLD
The title: 'On August 24, an hour before dawn, a whirlwind made
up of dense black vapour, spreading in all directions for about two
miles on either side, emerged from the upper sea near Ancona,
and began crossing Italy as far as the lower sea near Pisa. This
vapour, driven by irresistible forces, whether natural or super-
natural I do not know, and torn and galvanised by struggles
within itself, split up into clouds, some of which rose further into
the sky and some of which descended to the earth, crashing against
one another or whirling round with incredible speed, : sweeping before
them a wind of staggering violence, while their struggles resulted in
frequent lightning and blinding flames. From these clouds,, thus broken
up and embroiled with each: other, from this furious. wind, and the
stuttering sheets of flame, came a sound louder than the roar of thunder
or earthquake, and so terrible that whosoever heard it thought that the
end of the world had come.' (Leonardo da Vinci, 1516).
Come, a Passionate Speech
'Come, give us a taste of your quality, I says Hamlet to the
players, 'come, a passionate speech.'
Line 1. The players are ourselves. We are absorbed in history -
in studying it rather than making it. It is not easy to identify us
socially: our classes are mixed, our roles are confused one with
the other. History, to be made, requires shared objectives, and
recognisable social distinctions. Lacking these, we are reluctant
to perform contemporary roles, especially as we are not sure of
the existence of the future.
Line 3: But what we can do is dream ourselves into the past.
Nearly all public activity is reduced to this by the collapse of the
future which is nothing but the collapse of history.


Lines 5-10: Fear and shame are here connected. They are the two
sides of a triangle of which the third side is pride. With the collapse
of the conviction of survival this binding triangular force ceases to
operate. Only the certainty of survival provokes a sharp sense of
terror at the thought of not surviving. As the historians say, despair
never caused a revolution: only hope can do that.
Lines 13-18: The only hope open to those who feel robbed of survival
is the hope of liberation, even from the obligation of survival.
The Midnight Bell
It is Lady Macbeth's bell that calls Macbeth to murder. It is in fact
after midnight. Here the midnight bell is a warning of 'strange
screams of death':
Line 25: 'Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible.'
(Macbeth, 11,3)
Lines 26-28: Work, with its suggestion of order (and therefore
a discernible future), is an effective veil over the 'madness'. It
helps us to forget the terrible bell.
The Death of Incarnation
The title refers to the state of the world when Krishna has at last
lost his patience with its follies. There are no classes any more,
one person cannot be distinguished from another, there is jealousy
and resentment between people, and the holy men are bogus.
Krishna then destroys the world. This is at the end of Kaliyuga, the
era of destruction, which lasts three or four hundred thousand years.
The Vishnu Paràna says, When society reaches a stage where


property confers rank, wealth becomes the only source of virtue,
passion the sole bond of union between husband and wife, falsehood
the source of success in life, sex the only means of enjoyment, and
when outer trappings are confused with inner religion, then we
are in the Kaliyuga. (Trans. by H. H. Wilson, London, 1840 - see
Heinrich Zimmer's Myths and Symbols of Indian Art, Bollingen,
Princeton Univ. Press. 1946). The current Kaliyuga, in which we
are said to be living, began three thousand years before Christ.
The end-of-the-world conviction which has well-nigh obsessed
Christian thinking until today, is simply awareness of our living,
a grand 'rehearsal' for the end that is coming all the time. The
'death of incarnation' here refers to the lack of men incarnating
God, during the climax of the Kaliyuga. 'In the Kaliyuga one does
not hear the voice of God, it is said, except through the mouth of
a child or a madman or some such person' (Sri Ramakrishna,
died August 1886).
Lines 70-80: With the dethronement of thought, pure power
(money) is exercised as an end in itself. In history, power was
always towards a visionary end of some kind. The collapse of
visionary ends meant the collapse of history.
Line 80: From men's brass wits and golden foolery
Weep, weep your souls, into felicity.
(Chapman, 'The Shadow of Nights')
This refers to the 'expense of spirit in a waste of shame' that
Shakespeare talked about in Sonnet CXX1X, and which the pl ursuit
of power as an end in itself implies, money being its perfectly
depersonalised medium. This modern role of money began
explicitly in the sixteenth century, in the form of "bullionism'.
The bullionist obsession has never left the Christian world since
that time. It was in the sixteenth century that the Church began to


collapse under the new mathematical rationalism, and began
itself turned rationalist
to argue and fight over definitions.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was horrified at the Diet of
Worms over the days spent quarrelling about the word
'transubstantiation', between the protestants and the catholics.
He had an essentially mediaeval mind, namely pre-rationalist.
Apropos of this theme, in parts of Tibet the robber chasing a
victim stopped in his tracks if his victim fell, and resumed the
chase when his victim got up. Above the power-consideration
there was the life-consideration. This is what collapsed in the
era of Charles V and his son Philip 11 of Spain. It spelled the
end of the attempt to make a Christian civilisation.
Lines 81-82: At Nagasaki, after the atomic explosion, sk in
hung from people's hands.
'Hark how the minstrels 'gin to shrill aloud
This merry music that resounds from far,
The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling crowd
dmund Spenser's Epithalamion)
The 'trembling' in my lines has changed to a different cause.
Eastern music survives the terrible detonation. As Eastern
thought survives the Kaliyuga.
Line 89: It is said that in the Kaliyuga, the last of the four world
cycles (Satya, Treta, Dwapara, Kali), we concentrate on food and
derive our energy principally from this. The four world cycles,
lasting many hundreds of thousands of years, are a descent stage-
by-stage from golden perfection to total disintegration. 'When the
mind is immersed in worldliness it dwells in the three lower planes
at the navel, at the sex organ, and at the organ of evacuation.
In that state the mind loses its higher visions
it broods only
on 'woman' and 'gold' e
In the Kaliyuga the life of a man depends


entirely on food . e In the Kaliyuga it is difficult to have the feeling,
I am not the body, I am not the mind, Iam above disease and
grief, old age and death' (Sri Ramakrishna).
The 'golden perfection to disintegration' development is easier to
see in the past (e.g. the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the
Alexandrians) than the theory of progress which began to obsess
the Christian mind in the nineteenth century. Obsessive rationalism
can even see in this century of the two fiercest wars ever known,
and the fiercest massacres, a climax of civilisation or 'knowledge'.
Line 90: 'gorging on the dead' etc. Namely on the dead of history,
and on the animal-dead (our meat-eating being unprecedented in
the history of the world, outside of cannibals and certain shortlived
noble classes). We return to cannibalism in the hope of receiving
visions again, precisely as the Voodoo-ists did.
A New Spartakus Manifesto
The title is a reference to the revolutionary movement in Germany
after the First World War. Germany was at that time a cauldron
of all the struggles that later spread throughout the globe.
Lines 94-107: The problem of survival reaches its most acute
when the 'visions' collapse because there is no further energy to
take the race forward. It may coincide with a period of maximum
prosperity and social liberation. These come about as a result of the
concentration on digestive, procreative and evacuative functions.
Line 102:
'yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads me to this hell'
(Shakespeare, Sonnet CXX1X)


The first ruthless industrialists, at the opening of the nineteenth
century, practised their cruelties on women and children in coal-
mines and weaving factories in the interests of future marvels.
The heaven of doctrine leads to a hell of an actual life.
Lines 113-120: An image from my childhood - an industrial
area, treeless, hopeless. An atmosphere of fear was perfectly
embodied in the white ambulance that arrived to take away the
sick and the dying, watched from behind curtains, and in the dark-
suited 'rent man' whose rat-tat-tat on the door struck terror in
the heart, and in the great number of cripples.
Lines 121-128: These lines are not only a reference to the
obvious connection between the progress of experimental physics.
and the progress of the explosion. It is a warning that rationalism
('child of order') is also 'mother of crime' (that is, irrationalism).
The Christian World, in the grip of this rational-irrational dichotomy,
has warped those powers of discovery which do not depend on the
mind. Its rational side relegates all these powers to the irrational
side ('instinct', 'nature' etc.) Such a psychology shows no way out
of the prison of thoughts. How can more and more thought solve
the nightmares produced by a thought-gripped society and a thought-
distorted nature ? With more thought, with more education, with
more kindliness in the civil population, we must expect greater
currents of hatred that again and again destroy the fabric of
intimacy that despite everything is always weaved. Education here
means the indoctrination of rationalism, or the view that the mind
alone is an avenue to truth. Serving this doctrine, it builds a
narrow space-time cosmology which can only explain a limited
field of experience. It narrows even the science, which it is
designed to realise. It naturally leads to regimes of terror, overt
or otherwise, for the simple reason that mind used as the only valid


medium of experience excites the animal powers to excessive
compensating action. Again we must return to the sixteenth century
for the first clear expression of this crisis: statistics, logarithms,
anatomy, book-printing come in for the first time and produce the
first book-consulting civilisation. If you want mass benefits you
must expect mass graves. Or, the greater the rationalism, the
greater the war.
Lines 124-7: The witches in Macbeth are the engineers of the
trage dy. They are here personified as 'thought and number and time',
that is the mathematical or rationalist analysis of th e universe.
Lines 128-9: 'Down by pleasant Tempe's shore', from Edmund
Spenser's Prothalamion. Tempe, the lovely. vale in ancient
Thessaly, is here the scene of an attempt to make new life, but
'no skins were found to fit any more', after Nagasaki.
Lines 129-130: Nevertheless, such a destruction was created.
'The theory decided what may be observed' (Einstein). Space and
time and form (see Kant's Critique of Pure Reason) are of the
person perceiving, not in the sensations received. Thus we bring
the rational universe forward ourselves as our own luggage of
perception. We need its 'laws' to pick our way through life. But
the laws are self-made. When one of Einstein's pupils argued that
there was no such thing as a scientific fact, only perceived
possibilities', Einstein thought this was going too far. He claimed
that God 'did not play at dice'. But it was a valid conclusion from
his own doct rine, which like Kant's undermined rationalism while
seeming to bolster it. Both Einstein and Kant clung to the belief
that certainty could only be attained through rationalism (i.e.
'the universe is rational, or in the form of the human mind'),
while showing that the objective world was a chimera.


Be stone no more
The title: Winter's Tale V, 3, the admonition to emerge again into
history, into life, after the stone-struck period of film- or two-
dimensional living.
Lines 136-141: Films are here regarded as the make-believe of
peoples who have lost the power to act. Other arts wilt before
this machine-form of the defeated. When history is being made
there is a strong sense of posterity. With the destruction of
posterity as a feasible concept the sense of a living present ceases
too. The past is closed off as dead, the future as an area of
catastrophe. The film began its importance with such a history-
less epoch. It derives from the novel, the work of an observer
who freely moves from town to town, continent to continent,
gener ation to generation in a moment with the authority of an all-
seeing and never-corrupting eye. Like the eye of the novelist
the camera suggests, but more effectively, that it is not a. relative
eye like human eyes but occupies an absolute position in' space and
time. The novelist was a child of rationalism. His medium
collapsed with relativism. The film will in time undergo the
same rejection. For only the rationalist yearns for the framed
story with nothing relative, nothing uncertain, except the relativism
and the uncertainties of the framed characters. With the withering-
away of the rationalism/irrationalism dichotomy, its media will
naturally fade too.
The Mask of Cupid
The title is that of Edmund Spenser's poem from The Faerie
Queen in which he describes a masque where ease, fancy, desire,
doubt, danger, fear, hope, dissemblance, grief and fury are


personified, with Cupid himself the fearful blind-folded engineer.
Lines 153-7: Here work is seen as Cupid's mask in the world,
transformed, beneath which the passions fester and burn. Work
is part of the operation of 'seeming'.
Lines 158-163: The executive who works night and day, namely the
determined egotist, has a 'trembling' wife because the mask of
work renders him unapproachable. The rationalist dare not break
his schedule to open the steaming cauldrons of intimacy. It also
creates rebellion in the woman
hence 'in her right hand a fire-
brand she did toss'
Edmund Spenser is describing Fury
('full ill apparelled in rags'), again The. Mask of Cupid.
The Host.
It is not a thought, it is not rational much less irrational, it is not
a sensation, it is not in space or in time. It cannot be perceived.
It is not a feeling. It is the absence of all these things. Certainty
is found not at all in the rational, as the rationalist hoped, nor
in the irrational, but in that which can be experienced without being
perceived.
Lines 170-2: An Italian saying, A tavola non S'invecchia mai,' I
'at table one never grows old.'
Lines 202-9: We are made so perfectly at home in the world, we
forget that the house was ever designed. In other words we take it
as real. But it is manifestation. This is surely the most wonder-
ful magician's trick! We may even believe that there is no
experience beyond our furniture and our rooms!


Whence is that Knocking ?
The title: the murderer asks this just after his crime (Macbeth 11,2)
The supreme crime ("Nagasaki") liberates, in destroying all law.
Rationalism never succeeded in creating genuine order. It only
achieved ordered plans in stark contrast to the wildest disorder
when the plans were realised. The ruin of earth, sea, air, the
eclipse of hope in the young. Rationalism and irrationalism are
necessary bedfellows.
Lines 216-7: The more we applied ourselves rationalistically to
the making of civilisation, the more it fell to pieces, since the
stronger human forces were not in play. The rational and the
irrational are here the weaker human forces which together
wrecked the possibility of a stable life. The eighteenth century,
or the epoch of encyclopedism, was the crucible of nineteenth-
century science, namely the analysis of matter defined as reality.
The self-named civilisation had to fall in order to liberate us from
this doctrine. For example, the reply to the nineteenth century was
the orgy of irrationalism called Nazism, which swept Christian
civilisation away. This refers to 'western' civilisation but the
whole globe is involved because the East has long been engaged in
absorbing western thought. The eastern collapse will follow
almost at once, after its spectacular repetition of the Christian
nineteenth century. Eastern doctrines will be disgested in the
heartbroken west, as we shall witness the reappearance of Christ
from the east! :
Lines 226-237: The more rarified the thought, the more obsessive
the meat-eating, because animal-desires are increased. Peasant
populations the world over subsisted on largely meatless diets until
this century.


Lines 238-246: Even in fear, when we seem to be purely the
victim, we are the creators of the so-called circumstance, which
is only thought to be objective. It is said that in the Kaliyuga we
only have a small inkling of this power of creation (Sri Ramakrishna).
Lines 247-8: Heaven and hell, as states to happen after death, were
the invention of the early monasteries, in the so-called Dark Ages,
to slake the barbarian thirst for reward and revenge. We must
remember that the monks themselves were "barbarians", with a
tribal background, and had the task of appealing to the barbarian
mind, and quelling its hot impulsive demands. The hottest demand
of all was to get paid for one's actions. A shining reward was there-:
fore offered for the future, after death, and alternatively a horrify-
ing revenge in eternal fire. The Old Testament shows no interest
whatsoever in such an idea, which was reached by an adroit mis-.
understanding of the New Testament. Here 'heaven and hell are now."
That is, the murderer has his hell in the horror of the act itself,
the creator has his heaven in the marvel of the act itself.
Unruly Night
The title, from Macbeth 11, 3 'The night had been unruly; where
we lay, our chimneys were blown down.' A reminder of global
catastrophe caused by rationalism. Thought operates destructively
when it is unsupported by the other human powers, and believes.
that it is the door to all reality.
Line 250: The philistines are here the worldly, not the 'inartistic',
since artistic interests are, in the Kaliyuga, the philistine's chief
mark and mask. It does not do socially to be without them. Under
rationalism the savage must curb his violent nature in order to
achieve his ends of bogus order. When no longer even he can act,


due to the catastrophes that engulf him, he is in a certain sense
'beaten'. Despite the fact that he controls rationalism, and quiet
thinkers are his S alaried tools, he cannot any more point to a.
safely ordered world as the guarantor of his operations. It is his
moment of conversion. In fact rationalism can be seen historically
as the crude effort of the barbarian races, groomed to a better life
by the monasteries, to grasp the order which they have just heard
about. The de-barbarianising process takes thousands of years,
and the Christian effort is barely two thousand years old. We have
to remember that the races of the western world were the most
unthinkably savage ever known, and it is therefore not at all
surprising that their successors, while purporting to be thinking
out reality, should in fact be plunging into the most frightful wars!
When control of the barbarian mind passed beyond the monasteries,
during the waning of the middle ages, the crude battle of thought
began. And every 'advance', whether in anatomy or astronomy,
was matched with some new terror.
Line 251: The certainty of the Host (see Part 7) survives all
catastrophe. The soul is always in joy, whatever happens.
Line 265: Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel.
Lines 266-280: These lines are addressed to the moon but also
to the adored one.
Song of the Mediterranean
The title refers to the Mediterranean as the most graphic scene of
catastrophe, and especially Italy.
Line 281: 'seat of civilisation' refers specifically to Italy, but by
deduction to ancient Greece. Hence 'Troy': see Thomas Dekker,
Troynovant.


Line 288: Government, due to the ravages of rationalism, with its
implacable plans and accounting systems that calculate the future
as well as the past, must become criminal and no longer even
purportedly a protector of the citizen. More than this, it must,
under pressure from the dominant power-groups, become the
chief protagonist of the irrational. The poisoning of the atmos-
phere, the soil, the seas has been under state protection, indeed
quite often state subsidy.
Lines 289-291: Thomas Dekker, Troynovant.
Eastward in Eden
The title: Genesis 2, 8.
Lines 306-9: The soldier is mistakenly thought dead by the rest of
his company during a battle. An event in my own life.
The Filthy Witness
The title: Macbeth again, 'go get some water, wash this filthy
witness from your hand'. Partly another reference to 'Nagasaki'.
Now the Hungry Lion roars
The title: Puck's lines in Midsummer Night's Dream.
In this section number is regarded as a convenient but false analysis
of matter mathematicae non sunt verae scientiae, Pico della
Mirandola). It is wrong, that is, to take e a useful mathematical
analysis as a statement about reality, as it would be to take the
crutch for the leg. Leonardo da Vinci was deeply disappointed when
mathematics did not y ield him the understanding of nature he was
after. The obsession with thought, the obsession with number, the


obsession with time as duration fragmented into ticking seconds and
'developing' into decay or birth, are the same obsession in the end:
a flight from a reality which is one, or numberless.