NEPTUNE
a Hymn to "The Hymn of the Hermit"
(Aleister Crowley)
You travel the early and outermost limits
of the universe
where the purpose of the world is hatched
there the soul wanders and surveys
pitiful yet pompous bulwarks
where the tide bespatters it
where the ebb dries it up
in a lightning flash.
You watch and keep your eyes closed. This is
profound depth
the ether distraught, the shadows themselves a dream.
You are at the lighthouse of the eclipse
it is blissful misery
and lust for drink
it is death and oblivion
lies and deception
it is opium for the Form!
When someone leans out of the window
beyond the other side of the limpid sky
between the shaped and unshaped
it means: Neptune has leaned;
Poseidon reaches out, in great fear.
The killer whale plunges into the heights
not the bottom of the abyss
not the shortest path
to the centre, the inner circle of Psyche
the imagined point, the instant morpheme:
No, one head to one side
the other head to the other
it plunges to the one beyond
and you, Medusa, eight-eyed leech,
you're just a warehouse for a back-up frequency
needed for restoration, to remove form
from power, or engage in a duel
to excite the public
to fill the auditorium.
You work out the action behind the scenes
lower the curtain
classically
rock the stage.
All the time, from afar, the Supreme one drifts
supernally, supercelestially
while beneath him smoulders
a watery articulation we call
Everything.
Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott
