246 Mythology poems

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep—the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made,— Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more—but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword—and how I row'd across And took it, and have worn it, like a king: And, wheresoever I am sung or told In aftertime, this also shall be known: But now delay not: take Excalibur, And fling him far into the middle mere: Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me word." To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: "It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm. A little thing may harm a wounded man. Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word." So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth work Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood, This way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw: but at the last it seem'd Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd There in the many-knotted water-flags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. So strode he back slow to the wounded King. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag." To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale: "Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud, "And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done? What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself? The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake; Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and much fame were lost." So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, And hid Excalibur the second time, And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily: "What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: "Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! Authority forgets a dying king, Laid widow'd of the power in his eye That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all, Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper, get thee hence: But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands." Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword, And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath: "Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him; But when I look'd again, behold an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere." And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard: "My end draws nigh; 't is time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not words, Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. But, as he walk'd, King Arthur panted hard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King Muttering and murmuring at his ear, "Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, and I shall die." But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels— And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by these Three Queens with crowns of gold—and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge," And to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white And colourless, and like the wither'd moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls— That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the daïs-throne—were parch'd with dust; Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shatter'd column lay the King; Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: "Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world; And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within Himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seëst—if indeed I go— (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away.

For Mabon (fall equinox), Sept. 21 Our voices press from us and twine around the year's fermenting wine

All my feelings are different and this one is the most Of all places here where women once retired from the men for fear of boring them I am so bloody in my own bath of wild hairs that I couldn't possibly join you tonight for that colonial thing Heroin or whore Babylon or Bethlehem No matter what I'm followed by mosquitos Flitting dicks who want me to teach them about themselves But everything I know is contained in capsules of macha that break down in my bloodstream And I wouldn't recommend it for the fairer sex who should buck up and study up on their condition I used to feel sick for all my sloth but not anymore In wanting to please I have sinned In leaning in I have sinned In breaking in two I feel sin So Vete ya A haircut and a hard cock is all I need To govern a family My rod cutting them down supplicant on the ground For I was the first real white girl ever born in this country of flat skulls That's why I'm so cocky with my staff and my rule rock hard and inconsistent with my favor The mouths of L'Age d'Or sucked well at my pre-war stockings before cocktail hour Bells rang and trays of mosquitos were served with tarts We hadn't meant to kill them with La Macha which includes but is not limited to: a goddess religion unfaultering at the altar of shade an erotics of object-identification and compassion extending beyond the grave My sister and I drank mournfully but afterwards we still danced all night wearing quite literally bedazzled bustiers and veils of a dead boy's smoke que mala after beating their macho dead in ultra-feminine swoops How do they want us to think of them now our brothers haviing left so little charisma behind on the internet to aggrandize Such small mosquitos And though we are mourning we are still so macha as we chip the thin teeth of traitors and huff the scent of babies and slap each other on the asses and father seven times and punish the bull with its own marbled horns But though we're cocky we are still martyrs My sister says quita la macha and I'm like why It's okay to make up slogans in the spirit of revolution and she's like ok but after you systematically destroy machismo you must put his teeth to gnash at your engorged breasts for any sort of catagenesis to occur and I'm like that could be hot But it isn't the new love conceived by and for macha or is it? idk idk either i really dk So we taught our brothers all these methods of cameo that they may take a small symbol of macha to wear around their necks to the part of culture where the money used to be kept May they remember the strength of their mother's biceps as they show mercy to their fathers who are teleological till the end of supremacy which is the beginning of macha Kiss the black lips that feed you the corn hips that rock you and blight the prayers after you've said them Santa Mala Madre de Mala ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la ahora de nuestra muerte Hand me my beads War without end Amén

He strolled from the hill sound of sacred scales. A sheet on his head (arrested for something), they surrounded him, Hera speaking through his mouth kept the lid on his appeal to Caeneus the Lapith, who had been a woman— moon spread on the all edge of standing water, the bleachers where they left the bodies. That was the sedgy day, invisible contagions stretching from our roof on which the fresh trails of spilled pink... to the aquatic plaza, one sandal at a time and the bottom of the room beguiled us, below the carpet covered with sand, where they used to run down the slums. Athena's oak prow, oracular, from the grove at Dodona: the team started the troika. Many leave. One went in. Many Jasons. At some point Orpheus was on that upside-down boat beneath the bridge, but now, through its hull (some planks missing), the ancestral bricks shimmer. Rare is their tide.

The time of breathing into clasped hands hovering over a lighter to make a flame not knowing that an angry man threw his eyes into the night the belly of his shattered father weeping rain for separation of earth and sky harvesting bitter grudges from minds like hardened soil packing up the wounds with mud and whiskey and opening doors to wait for those curious to know how sky maps granted our existence how the weight of earth pushed against tongues of oars and our tīpuna pushed back and won.

1 Sometimes I feel like Jonah fleeing Nineveh. Who wants to hear what is evil? Every day we make this earth less alive, various or legal. What is this diminishment but sin against god which is a program to generate complexity? I should go to Nineveh and cry against wickedness which halts love which wants the other’s different self to stay itself. 2 They say if you’re fair or moneyed or live on a mountain you won the lottery, everyone else, apologies — storms aren’t going away so play the game nicely. Lots are cast, blame allotted, men tossed to the ocean’s torsion, seaweed’s cage, foreclosing depths and then the blue whale’s curdled belly digesting everything we’ve done. 3 I visited a branch of Sea Life in an ex-county hall. Mops in corridors, half-empty vending machines. They took photos of us pretending to look scared in front of green screens. Rays took titbits from stinking cups. The sharks were gilled glide, ravenous for outside. We were vomited onto dry land by the Coca-Cola London Eye. 4 I must warn Nineveh. But who wants to hear me say what is evil? It is dominion. It is the law that makes goodness impossible, fasting in sackcloth the only option. But god will not say must only relent or sorrow as the whale does when her calf is taken — a harrowed sound that does not bear description.

Love of air and water Joined in apprehension, Perhaps you know what's there By way of fear, for while Living in pursuit of And going always forth Toward something that trembles. Its knowledge is your mind. What do you think about The great ocean's sullen Aristocrats—these small Headaches and dark affairs That bathe themselves in your Staging grounds, where you go To contemplate how what You want became your mind? The black oblivion Offers no reprieve for You, hunter—in its keep Your ears have grown too sharp, So sharp you almost hear Your own heartbeat over The subtle whispers of Water’s dismal gardens. Everything about you Is overblown, even Your mouth is uniquely Talented at its tasks, Gathering for slaughter Animals in their sleep, Speaking without a sound. Noah had seven laws, You have only one—eat To build life out of death, Survive above all things. The fatalistic moon Filtered down upon you Seems an imitation Of lives you will not live. Would you be its hero? Would you call out against The morning’s weaving light That shames the night before The passing of its cool? Would you be at the beach When the invisible Becomes a glow, to surprise? Inland, workers dreaming Of unitarian Proposals lose no sleep To fear about your mouth. It is their wayward friends, Who wandered too far west Into fevered chaos, That wake up with your name As screams exploding dreams. The inland ether holds Clouds in your dismal shape. Lucky are those who know Nothing, who cannot see Hell outlined in vapor. Somewhere a piano Plays a sorrowful song Half-written by the hate That a grieving loved one Would stick into your heart. Such are the arts of men. Beware. Your time is near. Someone has learned lessons You didn’t mean to teach. A crowd is gathering. Your skull is their kingdom.

Truth also is the pursuit of it: Like happiness, and it will not stand. Even the verse begins to eat away In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit; A wind moves a little, Moving in a circle, very cold. How shall we say? In ordinary discourse— We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words, The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable Is the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights Daily with that predominance And we have become the present. We must talk now. Fear Is fear. But we abandon one another.

The philosopher David Lewis spun a fantasy of two omniscient gods who know about one world, which might as well be ours. Each knows precisely all there is to know, the grand “totality of facts, not things.” Each knows the pattern of the light on each neglected leaf millennia ago. Each knows the number of the stars, their ages, all the distances between them, all the “things too tiny to be remembered in recorded history—the backfiring of a bus/In a Paris street in 1932,” as well as all the things that history distorts or just can’t see, like the thought that must have flashed across Patroklos’s mind (if he’d existed and had had a mind—the middle knowledge of the schoolmen) when Hektor split his stomach with a spear (if he’d existed too). Each one looks on, as though through ordinary eyes, as “Mme Swann’s enormous coachman, supervised by a groom no bigger than his fist and as infantile as St George in the picture, endeavored to curb the ardour of the quivering steel-tipped pinions with which they thundered over the ground,” and sees “the gray ‘toppers’ of old” the gentlemen strolling with her wore, the little “woolen cap from which stuck out two blade-like partridge feathers” that she wore (or would have worn if they and she’d been real). Each monitors the photons through the slits, the slow decay of radium, and knows the ratio of vermouth to gin in someone’s first martini at Larre’s. Each knows what Darragh, Geoff and Willy knew before the bullet or the pavement killed their worlds, and where the shots came from in Dallas. Each knows precisely what the other knows, in all the senses of those words, and if a question has a factual answer, each can answer it. Yet there’s a question neither can resolve: which god am I? The question posits both a world and a unique perspective on that world, which neither has. And if gods One and Two could reify themselves by wondering who or what they were, they’d have to know the answer—and, because they don’t, they can’t. Could gods like those be real, in something like the sense that you and I are real? But then, what sense is that? Gods One and Two are you and I writ large: I wander out into the day and feel the sunlight on my face. I see the sunlight on the first spring leaves like green foam on the trees, and so do you. The world we have in common, that the gods can comprehend in its entirety, remains beyond my grasp, and yours. The world I know belongs entirely to me, as yours belongs entirely to you. I know my world completely, as the gods know ours, because it’s nothing but my take on things, and starts and ends with me. I’m both the author and the captive of my world, because my take on things is all there is to me. When Mary, in Frank Jackson’s philosophical diversion, wanders from her room of black and white and shades of gray and finally sees a rose, and then goes on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, and drinks coffee, and talks for hours, it’s hard to see how all of this(as she might say) could be an artifact of her perspective. But it is. So what? Philosophers tell stories, but they make them up, and what are they to me? Sometimes I think I’m humoring myself (a good thing I suppose) with an extended exercise in nonsense.Have breakfast,have a cup of strong black common sense, get over it, I tell myself, refuting Berkeley with my foot. Instead of this entanglement of self with self, why can’t I just relax into my place inside the natural order, be a thing within the solid scheme of things, a Dane in Denmark? How can fantasies, unreal by definition, show me what I am, and know? How can the poetry of possibilities dissolve the prose of facts? My little life sustains me while it can, and that’s enough. It may be all contingent, but it’s real, and when catastrophes occur, as they inevitably do, I’d rather they occur to me, instead of writing them away, or redefining happiness or sorrow or tranquility as alterations of some abstract point of view that points at nothing. Inescapable illusions must be real, or might as well be real, no matter where reflection on them leads; and if accepting them means taking things on faith, that’s fine. Who wants to be a posit, or a site of possibilities? Who wants to walk out and evaporate into this green spring day? Who wants to have sex with a wraith? No matter where reflection on them leads. It leads, of course, to me. A cri de coeur is not an argument, but where the real argument begins. Hopkins: “searching nature I taste self at one tankard, that of my own being.” Kant: “the feeling of an existence without the least concept,” meaning that despite the certainty I have, I’ve no idea what I really am, or where, and as for “searching nature,” I have no idea even where to start. These matters mean the world to me, and yet no matter how I try to come to grips with them, they slip away.I and here and now are ever present, yet they vanish in the act of apprehension, as a poem turns into language as you write it down. Dimensionless, atemporal, imprisoned in the present—even as I say them to myself the words fall short of what I thought I started out to say, like the conclusion of an argument too close to me to share, or like an empty thought balloon that hangs above me in the air. It’s not the question of what makes me who I am through time—of how a figure in a photograph from 1985, a couple sitting in the garden of the small Hôtel des Marronniers just off the rue Jacob, could be the person who remembers her and thinks of him today—but of what constitutes me now, and of what made me then. If giving it a name won’t help, then neither will pretending it’s divine. If I should be supplanted by a bright recording angel knowing everything about me in the way the gods know all about their world, I wouldn’t have survived. She takes the whole thing in—the house on Maxim Street, the bike rides down the hill on Wabash Street, my high school friends, their friends, the friends of friends of friends—with eyes that monitor my back, my face, the traces in my brain projected on a screen, the n degrees of separation linking me to nearly everyone who’s ever lived, a thing within a wilderness of things, with each one locked inside a universe with no outside, of which there’s nothing she can see. How could it be an afterlife? It’s just a different life, another life, complete or incomplete as anyone’s, consumed by questions that elude it, not because she can’t remember, but because the words that make them up are undefined: which one of them was I? which world was mine?

I know better than to leave the house without my good dress, my good knife like Excalibur between my stone breasts. Mother would have me whipped, would have me kneeling on rice until I shrilled so loud I rang the church bells.Didn’t I tell you that elegance is our revenge, that there are neither victims nor victors but the bitch we envy in the end?