HOLY FAMILY
In the beginning - a vessel crammed with honeycomb
a light repast of honey and milk
a jug full of water, water alive
a plate of wheat, sprouts
caviar and serpent's eggs.
A punctured Aquarius.
First birth, then creation of a world.
A solar order of things:
Saltcellar. Sand-glass,
the pouring of essence
little by little, bit by bit, down and up
up and down.
This is all some silent modification of a still-life
with landscapes suggesting infinity perhaps.
In the forefront, the symbolic skull for decoration.
Next to it dried fish, crabs and books
there is gilt lettering
Vita Nuova. Comedia Divina
17th Century Italian masters imposed such visions
on us.
****
Later, from chewing the honey too much,
pebbles of wax form in the mouth,
and you are filled with an urge to choke and to spit
there is a curious but also inevitable
feeling of being endangered.
We have arrived at a state of emptiness
the soul is elsewhere
Elsewhere is foreign, forbidden, unreachable.
What kind of love shall we plunge with
in the world?
Does anyone know? After all, everything is possible.
All IS
Ana, soror?
Conversion of "objects
called desire". Two views and two senses,
and a constant need to
tidy up, to adjust
the focus, to turn the lenses
of time. Our environment is only the past, that litter.
Taboo after taboo.
Yet the description of everything is ongoing.
Midnight, dead of night
imagine a bat, or a blind bird blindly
fluttering into the bedroom
these still can arouse
immediate fear, instinctive...
We are still haunted by the image
of that Finger pointed upwards to the sky
which itself is so white, so enticing
so impenetrable though it is fixed
in the universe like an unwashed nappy
in a corner of the picture.
There is a trace, barely noticable,
of an aureole. Of fervour. Of the Holy Spirit.
Spiritus Sanctus. The Holy Trinity.
An allegory of oblivion
and of sanctification.
The grammar of deliverance this is,
a sponge for everyone to soak
their own blood in,
and rinse it with nothingness.
The nightmare is memorised.
Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott
