LAAURICE RowoN-
! SONGS OF THE
ENI OF THE EARTIT


"A SONG OF THE END
OF THE WORLD"
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
réar 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
a 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
foho 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 Na liat
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 put 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 come# bridge and traffic lights
go to town and see the sights
cmld
petrol's low but gauge might 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


A AIA
Pask
The Peatypf Incarnation
our tragedy being
that we must always look back
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 beeomes 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 tremblingemowd
fe 1l
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 Néw 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 wè rich have no other problem
than that of survival
(and wé could not help bat notice
how/in that dréam offuturenfe
thé hu manbeing was missing)
what misfortune l fyfe
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
Iremember
Iremember>
because it didn't happen
Iremember heavens that led to helt
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
thetheory decides theObserved
the doctrine thellaw
Be stone nomore
much of ourinterest in past peoples
was wanting to know how they did it
inhabiting present time
witha apparent ease
we have seen/so many films inthe making
we hardly, turn round to look anymore
ashamed of recording any more
that which did not happen


busripat
Bustrel m
the arena hired
the lions amenable
now wewant the Sceneto bereal
AKwhen 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 presenttime fte ning
but meanwhile we are quite happy
we orphans of tragedy Iter
to call the event real which never happened
TheMaskor Cupid
we have done everything to seem
and not to live
look at all the things that have been done to seem
fisn't enough anymore
itsallseenting and ho living
look at the wife of him who seems so much
how she trembles


Anbertighthandhtirebranttoased
fury in rags
and he's afraid of giving up
voia
thatis-seeming 7 /
fa 21 past rogp
The Host
who is the host 2
whofloods the rooms with light
and-in-morning ablutions
securesyour happiness
whobrings 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
nunr
and later reveals that they have-net 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
Lusk
and whose
hoveoen
touch is such so slighe
that,these-whohave no eyes
whodo
seys
not-recognise
Mvein-the-brightestteuust
Sety
4knowing the rooms willbeset
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 ggto thedevif
orratherbackj to him
gone the obligation of those lovely summers
and those intimate winters
deliciously useless making projects
becausetheexpected-1s-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
ad . rhen
some find it made
others weave it everywhere
for-heaven and hel
are béreand bow


Unruly Night
in 3/certaiy/sense
the philistines have been/beaten
for çértainty cannot now be of a worldly kind
the roses'are already dead
or mad/
and don't watch, jus any more
the grape smiles
because a little drunk
hope makes allthings grow
this hope
Aies inwanting that whichis not
thejasmine is smiling inthe hope atJast
ofnot-being
the grape is drunk on its future
and now I can see that the willow
is weeping with lai ughter
and with how sad steps the moon is climbing


Angel
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 01 the Mediterranean
troy is now no more a city
seat of civilisation
AUloseytesen
still crowned
if madly
lovely civilisation
that never existed
Capid 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
Iam 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
Irsmppeing - aci
once I was a ghost
it happened long ago
on a hilltop it came about
a 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 F 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


Spnige
hu wn Itae he Suo
Suw
whe bme
Itre md o A u
ad he Cerle
il wo ho Hy
slpe
7 Grd
ad tha L -
ttre A
loe
hal
ls Me
gur
Yn A -
trod
Jn Ce nhol .
hl s
tto ple gfr
1 wy us uel
fatty may fay
Slt my
ad Ur 3- e - cal
ynr pat aol Jo gel
i he claes hede


R gn linaj Senl
te uhe
K te wiiad
Jo hude 8
aurtanel - a
uttairdt
Spmge un tuue
lfiy
cud
y.u ltyu
AtE L
al uad
al luuar
woryi
al mild
al tya -
cag conpuyur


A Palace Revolution.
GAg
The king and qu een set light to their beds,
Pissed on the carpets and stood on their heads;
They pulled down the curtains and cut up the throne,
And hammered great goles in the pillars of stone.
They went on the balcony and did loud farts,
Heard by the people as far as St. Bart's;
They tipped up the carriages and set the mares free,
Sacked all the servants and spat in their tea.
They had a fine time and weretaken to gaol
In a van painted red and marked Vhoyal Mailv.
Touching your God.
Your God rests safe insi 106;
Aim
And you can touch 1t in/ unsafe moments
And find your way; it will make your speech
take
In childhood, push tou to manhood, too,
Bring the words to your mouth.
But comes a time when it will not be touched
For the asking; will have to be sought,
Even named; will have to be known;
Will have to be traced in the dark;
Lici
Will have to/be seen beyond, men;
And then you may touch Him again.


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
- wnid
houl
but what shalkwe do
if nothing but onegremainst
Traig?
thought and number and time
children of order mothers of crime
when shall we three meet again
Saui mip
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 Iouder than the roar of thunder
or earthquake, and so terrible that whosoever heard it thought'that the
end of the world had come. f (Leonardo da Vinci, 1516).
Come, a Passionate Speech
'Come, give us a taste of your quality,' says Hamlet to the
players, 'come, a passionate speech.'
Line 1. The players are ourselyes. 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 reduded to this by the collapse of the
future which is nothing but the çollapse 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 todayp 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 p 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 1 it broods only
on 'woman' and 'gold' . In the Kaliyuga the life of a man depends


entirely on food
In the Kaliyuga it is difficult to have the feeling,
Iam not the body, I am not the mind, I am 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 de estroy 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 decide's/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 15 8-163: 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,
'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 salaried 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 parbarian 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 account: ing 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 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 yield 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.


GEORGES. BORCHARDT, INC.
. LITERARY AGENCY
S2ND
145 EAST
BTRÉÉT
NEWYORKIN.Y, 10022
PLAZA 3-5785
-February: 3, 1975
IST OF SUBMISSIONS
MAURICÉ ROWDON
THE INDIAN CRUCIFIXION,
Praegér C
: Schocken :
ATUSCAN VILLAGE
f Bantheon
Praëger
Nortôn' -
Braziller
Houghton Mifflin
I i
Regnery
THE, HONEST COVE
Esquire
Playboy
A SONG' AT THE END-OF THE. WORLD
This-w was declined
only by. Hudson Réview


"A SONG OF THE END
OF THE WORLD"
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 put 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
Iremember once upon a time
I remember
Iremember
because it didn't hap ppen
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 ràw 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 mê 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
Iam 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, - 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 p 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
E dmund Spenser's Epithalamion)
The 'trembling' in my lines has changed to a different cause.
Eastern music survives the t errible 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' a 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, I am 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 sciencen 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 b00k-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', 9
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 decides 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-beli ieve 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 pf 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,
'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 mor e 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 digested 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 salaried 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 Mediterrahean
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 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.


SONGS OF THE END OF THE WORLD
Maurice Rowdon 2006


we stood where we were neither moving nor
whispering, my mother swayed a little on her
shoes which made a creak and squeak heard
only by us and our vigil was much like that
ofl Remembrance Day for the dead ofwars
the two-minute silence when the trams and
buses stopped and the people stood still in
the street and in shops they moved not eye
or finger the squeak of my mother's shoes
was the melancholy song that said we're
short of money and the rent man knew and
he quickly went to another door and the song
of my mother's shoes died gratefully and we
bustled about again but not too much it being
known that the rent man now and then came
back but he never did to us because he knew
my mother paid up and regular when she could
and the song of her shoes has echoed through my
life a hymn of being skint as we used to say and
short on tush (it rhymes with bush) and the thing
about this hymn was it changed to the clapping
of hands and luck and the touch of hidden wands
and the rent man smiled like the sun at the door
they also serve who only stand and wait indeed
Charm
A soldier grinned at me one lovely day,
a grin that I thought SO true and gay
except that his eyes were fixed in a stare
and blood was matted all over his hair,
he didn't even move to put out his hand
as I ran right past him across the sand,
his eyes didn't follow me to say hullo
or even wonder why I had to go,
he lay there thinking in his silent way
until the night had claimed the day
and we'd all moved on to another place
and only animals looked in his face
and still he grinned as they all came near
in a way that showed them he had no fear,


they hopped near his fingers, jogged his arm,
he bore it all with the same fixed charm.


Enteed smyp - 2pe ar
crtng
conely and
ael gir k
Jue LLLz
alens tyle LC
hrinns cllel pese, / le A
lorton uslor
Lo L licc
Nytu,
vnied aud Lo
Nas
Sxcig 6
brary pistif
arle a
Joslty
Ito racilauc
duce
heitti prety 1 1
Tle Id Je Lf
unr
enla ueus ninl.
Rentt
So Jue Jarcl wel a d Mue
Sr ltelt ul * Itce e QUr
lauy nl dicten
Jua
nelsfore
lat lup -
sia Sridl Iie dril enel
alil uy, -
Jiili ny tus pobnte
vo ire I the Uhsle puric ) tle
splut al uietialt
( too
LILL oail, Merat Pqu T Jhu
lel, Inng idea and eurn
Ju - aclin - pmey C ulo


INTRO
toyz tan
and - Hur
23 aun
SONES
aaAtel heine
My une
rytti UT myeted
atur
emr (t rilis hugy heh
hiis
- clesls hl
Munefalhtved un che
uul koi clleo pocty, halusg
s wun kion C Ite nuelalt
ceb an idide ) Naug laror
ChH tet
Stamen and Taghu
the he xameb Arr, lie,
Hue
lanhe i pndee I
) I Itain S Thred M-f eL
Uue a toys Se
any?
the euol ) the del
snyy
Unice do aolc
Smy
eE ttie aui mu
the tulud eud ) ttee crulel
tue Le
Called Elne I Weriy ae uel ceney
di Htac tu ay Ate puiis efhurc al


levenen
L 0
5U lamy Tly u
castt
enhece Laeh ton LLLC
heid 2 lur de Aree 9 und
uny Juiie y Lu ea Atan hal (
cafrlg fisa
Pespe terd
Auauli Pqui
taye
Geiltay
chery I
cnd
dih - A trizef dird Nu
deluckig 4
erlaamul
uol
Kaet, 1 enti
dirltion 1
u n2 Ite
lald kl nyuctlle 5
eatin,


Perce
EFBH 67 OV
2 EFBO5 Ove
I I EFB20 C VG
7 Ell 02 OvG 5.98
A t
EAEA à -
lamy tt L
l 45o
Psaoz Evar - -
gota
EIJ O
C VG
LEFCO2 C
2 EFB 14
C) V
Hore
L EIT-7
Chrauh Clanico


Smg
whe lou ttui Colecta
aryp
appruils ) the fru
Ital
ie 6L ay Senn Jul w u Ted
l cl C H dy Su lista,
"prelye Tuin
Ac -red
ste
khe dictem, nemeg
preaftu andl
ONET
tver ho aud rgnus
- t the Kanny
1 dicien letei mlu Ltil
Itri hero 2
Puty Ay Ireel wh hi U10
SUT TS
mife we he sl ttl ture
yut
Mex
Kesls
T ng lans Iune prated Wt tru brieniy
enubiti and hew ideas, uil it
unguy muce ttac aptrala
Rrjatined 1 har audiec
Ge d
Itre
C ttre Cex 1 Kel cu humined
Puitan toa itt L
- lernce, - 4 he,?
larelis d l


surd
Lou?
dis
agry
sed F.
S e y
Jlun
aid
Ste
lreup
gal
Acaule
Little Tinker ther
) od
Z11
3 y
doue
Mie
Come here you little tinker my
a dru ui R
mother used
STEIE
to say and let me
litil
wipe your nose which made the
Iaa dad
clock tick with joy and the cloth
feldoun
on the table look forward to its
thi Ham cil tt
tea, we had concrete steps to
a double garden and young Eric
downstairs of the
hand
trembling
railuy
and twisted walk and he stood a lot
watching with his nervous mind and
hummed and shifted balance
stam
his
like
Itu
a theme that took your fun away, he
Jh a
darkened dreams we lived in
1 AP
truiine
upstairs,
a Lt
Mngolg
crumbled
the coloured music and yet that was
dowatdp
nte
right, to have a truth upstairs and a
i L vhed
darker one below because both were
Lenit
truth, one day he called up the stairs
shaking all over and said his father
mtiu
had
and could dad
kir
passed away
come and
wash and him
fry
lay
out, it
was evening and my dad went down
doy
and calmed the wife and asked her have
bober
you called the doctor and she said yes,
her husband was a gentle wondering
man and he died without fuss just
nuy
as he had entered the house below
hul
and left
pels
night
it in the morning,
ith
mixing his truth with ours and this
was right being the mixing of dark
ele
with
these
Juo
light,
each
dall
being cognate
with
uel
the other like breathing in and
breathing out, the one unable to live
lesyimel
except attached, indeed they are one.
duk-
Risate
Battance Hes
TV l
Birthday
thr
ilia red
my birthday fell each year in dreaming
Muud
with
sctra
September
her promise of winter
S (wa
enihle
lng
aele
hud
soud cerl
Jo beer


AVR
I ho
pons
ur V, kid.
The went tue cocl
lis tuh Ls
en a L
ueeh 2 cm auild cne
b i aindl
ShenE
alig
cenio
adi
LGEAL tey
tom ad Jee Voice
ttaa
une le
Aype E
gndde uy
fie Al
tre nd myr f
saue
Drj Dey zh dutalon
Ban up motta ) Bma -
usllu Ihe
granla
Gainen
Gmu A t hu prilt )
and
C ka syhan
y yu
sal yhe hat
Jha tae docinf
She snid
Canar
carc
m lioied
I I I all u
tngrel
cure tt 207u0
wr C tad
Srarls yu
hn htu
nno tt contte
nubeed hs
Koe
lcl
corop. nig, kidf i
foul nun
cent humt peAns
A à
lir Thie
-Ito
cpu
rhputes


uur
Jn lufls
flee
and our parlour at the back was haven
Srick
to the
and
tty
day
when I was nine or ten
I ran from school and scrambled up
detrh
atili
hoaol
the stairs to seek the present that for sure
awaited me, a book, a book that glowed
Shas
tre
like the fire from the grate but this time
Braw
the
neither book nor even boy's magazine
Cah T
looked at me smiling, I hunted and I
2 ttoe
searched the eager room, I looked under
hoover
wondered
piles of papers and files and I
where is mother
the
clh
it's past time for
ecel
her to make us tea and the elms in the
uen St
tie
are dark and the clouds low
tavo
garden
but
neither mother nor book
aral
nor anything that
nchv
was usual for that day was there and at last
I sat and the silence in me waited and then
hortri
heard mother's S tread on
tre
the stairs and
Pae
I smiled at her and she at me and I knew
Scl
1 w
what it was that I mustn't say and what she
ttre
mustn't say and we didn't say what we knew, , erue 2
that money wasn't there for a book or
less,
father
sick and
Ltal
was
the hospital.saved him
rtil
in the nick of time and sickness was a
Lfr
blight
on our house, the
stef
neighbours stayed away
urg.
with
cuce
nothing to say, when you had no
LmT
job
you had no friend, you were not to be known
you carried the shame for that was the way
of the street where poverty the unseen skeleton
A H
pureded
stalked, and my mother and I had a nice cup of la
tea and she was dumb with wonder watching
the laughing fire for at least we had coal SO life
was kind and we sipped at our hot and steaming
cups and waited for the band at six pm BBC time
lhei
mescy
arnly
2-wed
The Rent Man
ceuce
Cnuales
On certain mornings if money was short you
had
to be careful to keep to the back of the
flat when
olwy
the rent man came with his rat tat tat
that echoed up the lino covered stairs and he
waited like Job and onlt walked on if he hard
Itev
yrnte
and
not a whisper nor a creak ofa floor SO when
rat tat
lwu
soundel
mother froze
and I froze too
l a
a RXt Clucc
Nes
STarad
uerild
acle
mahy lour
halis
focr
ryp,
SpRLe
ture
ed Jiece fue
he G
thg
tte
cires
dlesgi


Wripenn
mipy khoe
Hae k tt
Hue Mure -
Suile
hhuan ceic)


Little Tinker
Come here you little tinker my
mother used to say and let me
wipe your nose which made the
clock tick with joy and the cloth
on the table look forward to its
tea, we had concrete steps to
a double garden and young Eric
downstairs of the trembling hand
talu
and twisted walk and he stood a lot
H A
watching with his nervous mind and
hummed and shifted his balance like
a theme that took your fun away,he
darkened'dreams we lived upstairs,
the coloured music and yet that was
Gus right, to have a truth upstairs and a
darker one below because-both were
truth, one day he called up the stairs
shaking all over and said his father
had passed away and could my dad
come and wash and lay him out, it
was evening and my dad went down
and calmed the wife and asked her have
you called the doctor and she said yes,
her husband was a gentle wondering
man and he died without fuss just
as he had entered the house below
at night and left it in the morning,
mixing his truth with ours and this
Hax adif
dee
33 waslright being the mixing du
of dark
with light, these-being cognate each
with-the-ethert like breathing in and
breathing out,the one unable to live
excepratachedyindeed.they-are-one-
5 a - he c A
ennd m l
Snin LoTL Jueits u
lle nd uu cblo
mel Unelgn
EHEE
k lve 4
Mhey 5 A tarin Itp


screams of death
work gives the impression that things are all right
that the worldis going along as it always did
work is the liar at work inside me"
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 to lance that boil
patter of rain put 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 a half
wish she'd wear a hat not scarf
lower gear when going downhill
some say celery some say pill


ma Sed
enecrty iec G Ited C
lickl
Itue
C Cs
duc
come, a passionate speech
pll
we aclon
erps,
doun
we dare not go out onthe stagé AM lerned
we cmb Iewlee (Isd e
we Slare
clot ne
past t St enres
Hry
A bilo
lnc, docs
tr B
then masked as the dead 7
et Tte pucs
we love to perform K
Llly A
fear beingadeep attachment to survival
c a
we aren't afraid
dialu
what fear oft the end
ith
do we read in each other's faces itet
o ce
now that survival is out ofthe question
fear and shame would bind us equally
thi
VIV
ttu
but we find neither fearful or shameful
what has already abandoned us
de y
Ine
our
in this solemn moment
hope
is that we shall be liberated
from every kind of obligation
3 ane 7
that oflove
lEs
that of fear
that of suryival i the Lolze
2 Motup ogai
Ltreprd
wyr
tAFRH
Ireubes,
CE hidel
H.. buslr
yorr
gey
tanod ne
tu Cory
The Midnight Bell h
3 snsand ur
L A
we work to pass the time
fes L It W
the time that remains
un C
au tvee
et mm
or we cease to work
backud awe c
SO as not to lose
the time that remains
aottrl ms uev do
pe t -
1 d
only work prevents madness
tr a -
love
Ater E


-- Iter wamth cund tkei wilo Klow
ad ulen W a e
nov ttue ue tea
frhowca weter Jhe
- ttue
Cil w Cer do S shiner
rlpuid
and recoil tn walhiy a
drepe
Ae actolod Sho
the vexy Poard
the
Hie week und
shinp I
we Showip
DUAA : à I 4 .
cud i
ad the SuNc Cud ttelmp
Jwr the seal
itue auditmiin
(e iy X callaf
cnol
cud rean
oe uow eub.
bat JY
SnE
beese
rel like
ttaul were
beo onees
3 e cnuge
nile UoW
ttue I-ls Auul L
the
l A
Tres
geroduy
- Hre
ue )
i L
So how cor wr
Ite San
no V - Lur
La U
cuol Veuus
are actin Jo
smile
Kad in cl
Jay
no audienal
>oto
ho nsle t lLe
caploy
Noil ine Itul weodndt
loun
alood
low
I Le clo
nta upecdf
Az t scenriel
loxe,
2 L npelve
dre) Marh
tt dectui
excefl
M g
dnsta anol suuha)
au -
uol yy/ V
à Ly
a V aL
Ite
sul do
tun
I a
amh W
As Tet clustteri utt C- 3 ld
l.ci said,
s esi
dekuen
s Nueye noplas
we Cnald le
lahig iT vil
the zugu low
Sal
aesi, t
ratirp


watch at the top for oncoming cars
might be better ifI took her to bars
here come bridge and traffic lights
go to town and see the sights
petrol's low but gauge could 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 mejtt 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
Mercury chained at the heel
i n
ourtragedy being
that we must always/look back
hohe history pours down on us
lihe n w asm rai 2
W we are the drowning man
seeing his life in a moment
CTo live in the past i
isto see the end barthe
buttheend liog irfthe future,
Hesus
thghest round the bend
the
We ueisa leuu
tivingira-void
Itu neither here nor now
ow head in a cloud
6 hands to the plough


when thought disintegrates
money is the government
brasswits and golden foolery
their skin herg from their fingers like gloves
to the sound lofyle pipe thétbor and the bell
andthmhoie
wls dporlss forthe body insists
onbeing the finale
of all these destructions
bodef Hoteen
on-the-understandable.ground
Sncypu that all else having been lost
the body at least remains
a Ituen a L paluf-tue we
weeaters march aghast out ofhistory Tee
gorging on the dead
in the hope of being fed
New Spartacus Manifesto
it wouldn't 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 problems
than that of survival
what misfortune to fight
SO long for my right
against the cruel rich
to inherit this leaf ofa world
which won't last for many more holidays
many more wage increases
spartacus the enslaved
revolted and raved


81 lave 2 li 5
he got his wages/e
like-yorimyour-rage
(But-onee-you'vebeen-orrsale
aren'tyou-boundtorantandi rail?)
in the ancient Greek nation
(i.e. your civilisation)
the slaves were more than the population
1 remember once
upon a time
I remember because it didn't happen
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 said good night
in the full stare of day
and looked to the end ofthe 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
Everything ready
the arena hired
the lions amenable
when the time comes


we shall make SO much history
we patient ones,
there will be no occasion for filming
namely making it up
how bold we shall be
when the time comes for us to be admitted
at last into the ring
alone with the lion
but meanwhile we're quite happy
to call the event real that never happened
Is it wrong then to make up our future
if we made up our past?
Is it wrong to quiver with fear
as the bloody hour draws near?
look at all the things that have been done to seem
look at the wife ofhim who seems SO much
how she trembles
fury in rags
and he's afraid of giving up his job
for fear of the fury but more of the rags
The Host
who is the host
who in morning ablutions
secures your happiness
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 ofleaves
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 ofaudience
who hugs an old friend
and later reveals that they never met
who is my lover
who is my father
who dances for me
who recognises me
who floods the house with light
and will ifhe 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 SO slight
it fills my lonely court
SO perfectly with light


that no host is 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
gone the obligation ofthose lovely summers
tinkling with tea cups
gone the intimate winters
deliciously useless making projects
make me a raw red steak
and then I can feel my roots
stretch downwards through the brutes
into 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 ofhis bell
each to his degree
the sound is tuned to the ear
the wound to the fear
some find it waiting for them
others weave it all alone
the grape smiles
because a little drunk
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
Angel
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
however SO lightly
on your head
nor strike my hours
ofhow 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
troy is now no more a town
lurking by the hellespont
stream of plenty in Phrygian land
creating in plenty endless wars
and no doubt also plenty of whores
seat of civilisation
still crowned if madly
lovely civilisation that never was
the Iliad by Homer
means troy and a curse,
crime the government
war the hearse
war for the ancient Greek
was for what you hadn't got
and wished to get and could not
by being liar cheat or sneak
troy is now a tribal chamber
roof of gold
floor of amber
nine in number and each single city
one on the other in a kind of sheath,
sewage pipes rendering decidedly shitty
the ancestral ceilings underneath
each one reaching for the top and the trees
for the light and the air and the flirting breeze
for the silence heavy like sluggish seas
and huge wooden horses with messes therein
one for officers and one for men


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
I am the one who mothered him
and also the one who fled
I am the one who gave him the kiss
and took him down from the bitter cross
and you my son were the one who bled she said
Disappearing act
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 fair-haired heap on the ground
and then I came down the hill
large as ever in all my parts
and they took me for eternal
for indeed I had died
crumpled on the path
consanguineous at last
with the gleaming earth


in this 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
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
A hymn to Hugo
for sweet pot-bellied Horace
it was always the sacrifice
that counted, the blood
of the bullock, it had to be spilled
to revive the temples of Rome.
He bemoaned the daily demise
oft temples but who spills blood
except the uninitiated mad?
sweet pot-bellied Horace
(mocked and loved and doted on
by emperor Augustus
and given a farm for life---
it still makes Tivoli sweet to be in)
he sat there writing his odes and epodes
bestowing thought and worship
on a Rome he knew to be dead
but as sweet Victor Hugo said---
the victims of your temple sacrifice
they froth at the mouth with terror
but also unbeliefthat a fellow being
could be SO given over to madness
and such uninitiated badness


Palace Revolution
The king and queen set light to their beds
pissed on the carpets and stood on their heads
They pulled down the curtains and cut up the throne
and hammered great holes in the pillars of stone
They went on the balcony and did loud farts
heard by the people as far as St. Bart's
They tipped up the carriages and set the mares free
sacked all the servants and spat in their tea
They had a fine time and were taken to gaol
in a van painted red and marked Royal Mail
Spinoza
This was the man who saw
who bore
the world as it was
and because
it was nothing but God
that being the name
you had given to what
you cannot namé
but is the moment
of whatever may befall
and what you call
your pain and your gall
is but changes made
to your listening soul
in the mind ofwho made you
sustained you
entertained you
Spinoza was the
beginning and end


of all thought
all mind
all human
all world
all peace
all you and me
and any company
(what did sweet William say?
that we are but playthings ofthe gods?
he meant nothing less
than that far from being you
you know you're someone else.
And sweet William really knew
there is nothing of choice
in anything you do
if only you knew
Now the hungry lion roars
what shall we do
we bodies
if undoing everything
there remains nothing but ourselves?
feeling ourselves to be bodies
in remembrance of a shroud
we required the support of number
and the presence of a crowd
but what would we do
if nothing but one should remain
and we are thoughts
in another brain?
thought and number and time
children of order mothers of crime
when shall we three meet again
in thunder lightning or in rain?


On the banks of the Tigris
I knew a princess once
she spoke to me with golden hair
I sat with her by the waters ofBabylon
and have a photograph to prove it
I used to chase her up and down
my house that looked at the desert
through banana trees and behind
the desert shimmer lay the arch of
Tesiphon and the land of the Kurds
the little minx she swore at me
in Arabic and picked the bugs
out ofl little boys' hair on the street
in the hot khamsin that kept your breath
locked in your mouth and festering
she once tipped a bowl of dirty water
all over her Assyrian (namely Christian)
nurse and called her daughter of a whore
while from a minaret came the call to prayer
we rode on asses with
turquoise on our wrists
and veils against swearwords
and she was my daughter
and doesn't remember a word
least of all the photograph
by the waters of Babylon
(and at this present time when Baghdad
is burning what shall we say of my house
close to the southern gate or Bab al Muadham?)
I went to the races and one afternoon
after backing a strong tip from the madam
of a local brothel whose owner I knew
(he owned eight others too, all respectable
and clean establishments, no disorderly


conduct) I heard hysterical shouts from
high in the stadium in fact it was the box
of no less than the prince-regent and a hush
fell on the crowd and the voice was a jockey's
and what he screamed held everyone mute.
'Even now your arse is streaming with come'
were his words---this addressed to a prince
in a land where to be buggered was aib or
shame. And I thought as life went on what
a war lies underneath and indeed a year later
the poor prince was dragged through the
streets his feet cut off, he and his regime were
extinct like a dream, and still the Tigris flowed.
my closest friend was a surgeon
at the local hospital and tried to
persuade me to go on saturdays
to see the hangings at the city gate
yet he had no cruelty in him, in fact
was jovial, a laugh almost fixed in his
gentle cheeks, in fact he is lying
on the sand with the princess of the
golden hair, she is standing close to
him in the photo by the waters of
Babylon where we sat down and laughed
the spring sun lifted my heels for me
as I walked to college each morning
to teach the rape of the lock to girls
who arrived in the abba or black veil
and revealed jumpers underneath
marked Philadelphia here I come
or some such un-mystical slogan.
As Lytton Strachey said, only Alexander
Pope and Keats were erudite and
passionate in one, and how the girls
thrilled with cries of Allah and wa-Allah
at the feminine delicacies of feeling
in the wanton cutting ofa lock of hair
that earned the awful name of rape.
But on a certain day the croons
of my students changed to one
of glares and they almost spat
at me and that was the day when


according to an annual rite
the students rose up in rebellion
against the regime and threw stones
and held the teachers captive and
the Assyrian girl whose eyebrows met
in the middle put her face close to
mine and said with hatred how do
you feel now while the Arab girls
held back from insult, only glared,
and then the owner of brothels
suddenly appeared and rescued me,
took me outside to his limo which
apparently was untouchable for
restive students in annual rebellion
And then we would go by boat
the girls and I along water that
travelled in a paradise oflawns
and paved courts at one of which
the boat stopped and we all got off
and to a gramophone they danced
with each other and this canal
ofl heaven was drawn from the
Tigris waters and in the silence
bestowed by Allah the gentle scratch
of the record was heavenly too
in Kurdistan our host with pride
took us to a dismal field close
to the house where a humble
whining for mercy came from
a creature once a bear and now
unknowing of any single thing
but hate and hourly glee, tied
by a chain round the neck,
pale, even in fur a ghost in the
face wondering what creature
it was and knowing only the
turn of a long iron rod with
sharp points at the end which
our host from his distance
twisted in the waiting neck
as a sport to see the forlorn
unknowing unseeing only
the badness and madness
to be thrown unleavened bread


which lay in uneaten piles
at his or her feet, the sole
knowledge being hate
won god knows how and
waiting only for the next
grinning visitor (but this
one didn't grin) for the
torture that came with the
daily deadly tread of feet
from the barren human house
an English lady I knew visited
my surgeon friend's house
and sat in the leafy fountained
garden amid the family harem
and she said those ladies skipping
and bicycling round and round
were the most innocently happy
women she ever set eyes on
for matters of finance and my
monthly salary I went to a Jewish
gentleman in an office full of files
which he also kept in his head
thus making a double file system.
The Jews were employed for
government services and also
for their ability not simply to count
but to be honest beyond all doubt.
He asked me to give tuition in
English to his eldest son and thus
it was I came to enjoy that kind
of safety and repose which I
have always derived from those
whose unacknowledged prophet
tried to bring us all to imitate
the beasts of the field and the birds
in the air for their safety and repose,
their perfect acceptance which in
Sanskrit is sometimes called tantra
Sitting one day with my friend at
the Baghdad races, in his office
that seemed peacefully distant from
the frothing horses and bookies,


he pointed to an ugly building in
the distance and said that's a Jewish
school and often I dream ofit blowing
up, with the children inside it of
course. A man SO peaceful even
in the midst ofhis warring within
Not many months later the Jews
were evicted from the city and
the street was lined with Arabs
weeping some of them and all
respectfully saying goodbye,
such being the truth of the heart
before all the politics start
The hillside
On a stony hillside beyond Sperlonga
with the sea in sight silent and blue
I came across a man on a donkey
cloth round his calves and leather soles
tied under his feet, with a wide hat down
on his brow and his eyes a misty grey
suggesting the dark but dazzled and gleaming
I asked him ifhe knew of a certain house
and he made a slow shrug with his right shoulder
hugging down his neck, smiling like a woman.
His lips were wide and grey-misty red, his brow
full ofwatching the distances. How strange
to meet him on a blinding hillside, its stones
gleaming white, and the poppies swinging.
Ducking his head with a woman's charm
he asked me where I came from and when
I said Rome he nodded his head and said
I was there in '21. As a soldier. I remember
it well he said. Then after stillness like a breath
he turned and went off with a little clop ofhoofs,
watched by a child whose eyes were fiery.


Red
A robin perched on a soldier's S hand
who had lain for a week in the blinding sand
and seemed not to know that he was dead,
or that the sand was stained deep red.
The robin sang and blinked by the sea
treating his hand like the bough ofa tree
and the red ofi its breast was nearly as bright
as the sand that had drunk the blood one night
Not a boat to be seen, nor a moving truck,
only sea breezes that seemed to suck
the song from the bird and the bud from the tree
and shroud the lost battle in eternity
George 111's ditty
earth' s turning is SO fair what,
the heavens will permit it,
they revolve like falling braids ofl hair what
and the helpful sun has lit it
the air around is a chair what
that takes the royal sitter
and bears a message through the air what
that no other world is fitter
invisible cogs of peaceful blue what
unite the everlasting wheel
that turns the world SO well and true what
she never thinks to slip or reel


Early
Early there is militance, he finding he isn't
loved, she finding it isn't she he loves though
he is loving and she is loving yet love there
is not, an iron interferer stakes his camp despite
the love desired and the love intended as if
a stranger stalks the ground between them
early there is sorrow he finding that weak words
lead to strong effects and she in her dreams aware
of roots that blindly grow to entangling weeds
they walk as always arm in arm and people say
how bright the love it tints their hair and lifts
their feet and hearts and truly smiles in them
early there is recognition he finding that what
he desires is not what he wills and what he
desires in her is not what he wills her to be
and she finding that what she desires of herself
is not a person she knows, early they recognise that
someone else is there an iron third they never knew
Cerveteri
a man appeared and said he'd heard
of my interest in the Etruscan world
that came before the ancient Greeks
and he had access to their priceless pots
They lived eight hundred solid years
before Christ and their language was
like no other we know, not Greek nor
Latin nor Egyptian nor Labrador
he climbed ninety-three stairs from
the courtyard and we sat on my straw
covered terrace against the top-floor sun
and we gazed across the roofs to where


the cupola ofSt. Peter's blazed in the
blue and then he showed me with care
his Etruscan pots which were uncannily
like pottery baked and painted yesterday
nevertheless the design and the tints
suggested the ancient Greek but how
the Etruscans came into such a style
centuries ahead of their time no one,
least ofall he, could explain, though
certainly Greek statues bore a smile but
not this distant, rapt and dreaming smile
bearing peace of a kind unknown to Greece
which is why the ancient Roman walls
rest on Etruscan stones SO huge as to suggest
that Rome was built on Etruria, especially
when we consider that this contained
what is now called Tuscany and also much
ofUmbria, namely modern Italy's mystical
province with Assisi as its jewel, its hillside
basilica like a really fabulous row of teeth
these teeth were set there by the popes to
bury St. Francis in their official recognition,
thus smothering his choice of the naked and
the poor and Brother Sun and Sister Moon
only the Poor Clares remained as a relict
of St. Francis and his divine spouse Clare,
and ifyou visit these ladies you may talk to them
through a grill but nothing more, for ever
well this is a long way from Etruria and fake
Etruscan pots but it all goes to show that
the chosen path of poverty cannot be the choice
of governments such as popes and Rome.
through no fault of their own, being flames
that rose and tried SO hard and then died down
while the happier ones that made no war
were always engulfed by the warrior ones


and some like Christendom never properly
came about, due to too many roots, viz
Etruria+Greece+Rome all at odds with
each other but most with precious Judah
Isabel the Belgian wolf
By their ears, my dear,
shall ye know them, and yours
stood up straight from birth,
almost. Whatever young fear
like thunder roars
across your mind is secret. Earth
bears no mark when you pass.
You learn by smell and know
from the breeze what obstacles
wait. At the sight of grass
you leap and gambol, snow
you frisk with your nose. The tentacles
oftime make no claim
on your complexion, save perhaps
at the tip of your mouth, where grey
stole once, when you came
to woman's estate and the raps
of fortune multiplied, day
being night for a time; but
calm returned, stronger for this,
with a stay in the mountains
as lady of the house. And now your skin
is wonderfully black, you miss
no sounds. All the fountains
of pleasure are working again.
Surprise soft like a breeze
crosses your face and at night
you look up sometimes in plain
divination. Trees are now your
friends. That start of fear has
gone. You learned, it seemed in
the Tuscan hills what presence lay
within them. Rome hid it with
her streets, burned by sun and man,


with strangers' smells
at every corner of our ancient home.
And now you sit with glowing eyes, a
black queen, an Isabel of Spain, though
unlike her you wash. And when you
rise to see all's well
you go on soft feet, your fur
a moonlit night.
When you lift up your chin
to bay there might be a pack
nearby, but otherwise you're quite
alone, in fact prefer men
and follow their homely track.
Gleaming mysteries lie behind
you: palaces, hills and dreams
in silent state. Behind your brown
gaze are histories my lonely mind
can'tread. And such surprises lead
to the thought that Isabel always
rules for after all she chose the place
ofher birth with care---the house
on the Spanish steps where John Keats
died and you a Roman lady dark and
haunting (as he the poet would at once
confess) were true to him as he to you..
Horoscope
Meeting on the road to Ismailia
a thousandgears before I came
two men with sticks drew Lion on Virgin
and spoke my future name
and soft as a tear
in the sand near by
a Scorpion moved unseen


Fool
you are my son she said
and all you speak and
hear and feel is
clairvoyant my son
and the earth you call real and
true and the air that
quickens you through and
through are clairvoyant she
said and you are a fool
and when you seek to find your
path there is nowhere to go my
son she said you are a fool
Time and water
The fakir Shahab-el-Din
asked his king to put his head
in a bowl of water which
he did and nearly drowned at
sea and was saved by foresters,
for years the king worked as a
slave but won his freedom slowly,
becoming the father of seven.
Then on a hot hot day he plunged
in the sea and promptly became the
king again, lifting his head from
the bowl of water he saw the
fakir sitting before him. The courtiers
noticed nothing and thought
the fakir mad but the Sultan king
of Egypt called him master


Jowen
aed Wlad ufr
tuie: Jue Cauuar
wzi
Vey
poye
tie wenace
heeded t stad aggiie
1 tue n nauief
e nl 2
whicl sed lche
Sonse sofulriu
all
herlc 7 3 iuy
Blos d termad
nld 160
tte tarhen ) - Itie
did il as ded 1o
side and welluit
ues
toupl
aulded tre sewrul cre 2. y
re allie
S haal geuin Suo
ttuin A ou
Juue Huy
Itinlyany tha heusee gren
reninps
len
utt
mele 3 L ta
eups Tadal
did Hey
tte
wHh mr blese)
uad
(nqy
llui ttuy verue
aly wrr tie vey
Rrilcd
Ttuz
lw ard all mup
Tum
Yern
oul


Palts mud and
wun
guen oue
llte
ane
jeuir CL
slie
trnze <
lunce cudiau He
allo Jho
frin
Rertoy-e kucss El
lurey
Iy chmnmsi de c ttC tn cnd
poryn Le uamerel ah
uolty give hi pesple encle
no adere a fanle O
ecl
einr uohg ter ley uocs hailth
offt -
affa ttue uev- ihuge alliu aad
larstel tre Gelusus (ltas ay
luyres Ni) util itue pihs renald
Pamy tier cnd eute
I C L
lo aid belold tlue
oluc - loee geiu uesle hi
cub stany aga tt aul ttai L


OSPEDALE "VILLA SALUS"
OSPEDALE GENERALE DI ZONA
Via Terraglio 114 30174 Mestre Venezia
Cod Fisc. 00336090477
Documento: 2006-RIC-8731
Categoria: PRIVATO CONVENZIONATO
ES. ART. 10/19 DPR 633/72
ROWDON*MOURICE STANBURY
44 BROOKWOOD ROAD LONDON SWI8 5BY
REGNO UNITO
Cod. Fisc./P. IVA: RWDMCS22P20Z1140
Prestazione
Q.ta
Euro
IVA
33562 PRELIEVO DI SANGUE VENOSO
06752 EMOCROMOCITOMETRICO E MORFOLOGICO-ESAME
Importi Esenti: 7,40
Prestazioni: :
IVA:
Bollo:
Pagato:
Mestre: 20/04/2006
Per Quietanza - PAGATO