CHARLES EAGER

VLAD CONDRIN TOMA

SYNKRONOS

Brasov, Romania

2017
Copyright 2017 Vlad Condrin Toma

Copyright 2017 Charles Eager

All right reserved.

Published in Romania.

Illustrations by Camelia and Condrea Toma

Designed by Elena David

ISBN 978-606-756-.......
Charles Eager and Vlad Condrin Toma
CHARLES EAGER
 Preface

As Synkronos knows there is no one word for or god of time.

First there is kronos and the measure of time. Kronos presides

over a Golden Age fullness of time, yet does so as the Titan castrator
of his father and devourer of his children. Harvests must be reaped,
and Kronos carries a sickle that in Saturnian translation will identify
time with the lawgiving fathers power of death. The thinking that
attaches to kronos is atomic, an association of time and matter: if we
eat into time, it eats into us. In time the vacuum abhorred by nature
is made tangible. The other face of this logic is saturnalian.

Then there is kairos, which puts time to flight. Kairos names

the right time to act, its ripeness of another order to kronos,
describing the moment of opportunity in which a new state may
be called into being. Its punctuality is that of the arrow piercing
its object or the shuttle crossing the loom, of openings seen and
made. Its court is liberal, an extension of the courtroom where law
is woven by oratorical invention and intervention. It is the weather,
an atmosphere. It is that fulfilled prophetic time in which the
kingdom of God is at hand.

Synkronos, then, is a book of dying generations. Its novelty

is that, in fantasy and in imitation, it speaks to time by looking
anachronism in the eye. Wholly in sympathy with syncretic
tradition, this new god is too much of a trickster to suffer idolatry,
and is rather the occasion, through mask and masque, of poetry.
Constitutionally preoccupied by the idea of Europe, the poetry of

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Synkronos suspends requiem for Abendland in favour of its romance,
and romance is conceivably the first language of a book that
proposes an exchange between languages. This is writing in quest
of a language of transformation and realization, poetry that seeks
fidelity to the poem that it is in. The imaginative world of Synkronos
may indeed be trans-sylvanian in chiasmic recognition of its own
precocious second nature. The romance of being synchronous is
to be found in the wrestle of being two, in the twisting cord of the
strongest correspondences. This work of Synkronos is necessarily
and courageously untimely.

Ian Fairley

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 Charles Eagers SYNKRONOS

I. Induction 11
II. Holyday Poem 11
III. To His New Composition Book 13

Orphic Verse

IV. May-Lied 14
V. Hymnos. Eis Kairon 15
VI. Orphic Hymn to Kronos 16
VII. Prayer to Synkronos 16
VIII. Eis Pana 17

Lyric Interludes

IX. Anakreons Grab 19

X. The Silenus and the Gargoyle 19
XI. The Pallaksch Coin 20
XII. Catullan Epigrams (i, ii) 21
XIII. Plaints Upon a Departed Love (i, ii, iii) 22
XIV. Apology 23
XV. Chou Meng-Tieh Fragment 25

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 Odes

XVI. Ode 26
XVII. Pindaric. To H. H. 29
XVIII. Ode 30
XIX. Ode Conciliatory 32

Narrative Poems

XX. Voces Intimae 33

XXI. The Way 37
Liber I 37
Liber II 51
XXII. After-phaedra 79

XXIII. An Optation 89
XIV. Envoy 89

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 I. Induction

The tree is felled: let us cut now, Toma,

The novel leaves with (for on) which we
(Deo volent) with ink and stile shall labour,
Our numbers raze, then again redraw.
Singing of Dacia, the wonder-terrors
Of Synkronos, matter fit to frame
Our taking friendships hand across vast:
That we a book ballast-build may, to be
Overleafed for more than one mere age.

II. Holyday Poem

Virons me, Vlad, the drac: and I,

De-vir-ed, stand whirled within this
Cerule-pressure (mean I
Musterion) that godly sounds,
These hymns of priests, all echoing resound.

So I forever feel its touch,

So superinterstitial,
Cold, and compassing
Of all but joy, whose light respects,
Gifts to the mundane world, and all proceeding

Epiphenomena, promise, yes, shape,

Lovelier than dream, who treading
Subtle, silver-light-in,
Cinema-like in radiant lace,
Narrates, enchants by us her sad inventions,

So, Vlad, at Viscri with Pre Gheorghe,

The snow-strewn ground was warm,
Irradiate his robes,
And white as sempiternal fire,
Proclaiming turnings thereupon return.

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CHARLES EAGER

Or closer, Christs mass, with whose swell-bass

Tonant, its within-over-tones,
Rippling, and sung prayer
Made harmony on simple base.
How then can the pull to base us detract

From study, or our learnings sharp

Devotion? Or unsound dreams
Disturb our soundest songs?
Songs, for our minds are music-like,
And we, Aeolian-harp-like passive to,

Ever receptive, metrists minds

Holy containers being, where
Lifely wine lies trothed.
Ah, Im contrite. Can you forgive me,
Vlad, ever, for speaking in such place of

Economics, in the sad stead

Of spirit, or geistlich matters?
By time brightest lights
Wane, so too the bright intellect
The world can draw to overworldliness.

And Id (dare I record it?) grown

With pneuma out of patience,
Then passionless, soul-sour,
Not, as you know, from pneumas lack,
But strangeness in myself, and grew two Charleses.

Therefore, my friend, if pneuma seem,

Or Charles indeed, too strange,
These mere accidents,
As all phenomena our life
Consists but in reaction to, no mind.

Here then it is our books conceived in,

Brought forth before its time,
Or was bright Leodis
Mnemosyne unto these arts?
No matter, for minds melding is the crux

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 SYNKRONOS

Which us awaits upon these pages

To write us in their leaves.
No more Leodiensian
Stadtbummels: now must our feet walk
Poetic, inscribing as we walk, footly.

III. To His New Composition Book

Novel notebook,
How fair thou art:
Like life renewed,
Or like a soul, which, shamefast,
Falls in love with life again!

Like birdsong, symphonesis will

Bind together your pages
More strongly yet
Than any glue or thread
And harmony of thought and word
Will be promotive of strong signatures.

Either strictness
Or freeness in
My art your art
Allows: yet graduate to
Discipline perfection brings.

So I and you (the barque) embark

Hopeful (albeit that
All hope is vain)
That other inks disdain to
Feather upon the page as this,
But feather lend to thought, and soul to flight.

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CHARLES EAGER

Orphic Verse

IV. May-Lied.
De Syncrono

Synkron is of May the god;

May, the month of Synkronos.
Or such would seem it, Vlad,
Now, when the temporal gods
Rustle in pneuma round us,
Saturn crushes us severe
To flat-out Termin, as we
Our little book perfect
And spirit hangs about
In air:
Nine months bring forth a child;
In five, then, how bring forth
Sur-mortal verse? The good
Its very self must thanked be
For all the depth of five:
That three threes nine give, yet
With only two fives I
Reach into ten, whose fruit,
Being exsculpted quincunx,
I joy at.
So to Synkronos, the May-god,
Lets pray, that he wing soul may
To songlike flight, our penne
Turn verse toward tornado,
Through-breathed with saintly spirit.

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 SYNKRONOS

V. Hymnos. Eis Kairon

O you (the bald-backed) (passed, unsnatchable)

Quick-winged Kair, moments master,
Who all occasion are (in one word, ripeness):
The eternal-swift, and ever retreating
In always proceeding: by the unclasping trees,
Flits he, that you-to sibling, he, that
(Twixt you and death sole link) goes,
In shape of suns declining, or moons
Uprising, Kronos, and times crepuscule
Thickens and crudesces, glowers at once,
(Same time, Toma, as it us crushes:
Now lift to you let all enterprise,
The zealous eyes, and ideation-wards aspire to,
That with your spirits-feel inter-knit,
Let us embark: now is the hour,
And all the winding years of labour,
Draw us to this one, and passing, precipice:
We have the forelock one hand, other, pen:
Lets scribe, and strive whats worthy of our strife.)
Here I present this work then, this,
Ripe fruit of stolen hours, which thieved,
To you, the transient-transcendent, I return:
This work thens a rubato, so I,
As if I were a second Chopin, or Ysae,
Return each stolen hour, lest
Our libellus, like distempered music, die.

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CHARLES EAGER

VI. Orphic Hymn to Kronos

Ever-blooming blest of gods the father, and of men,

Many-worded, and immaculate, titan valorous,

Sur-devourer and again ownself regenitor:

Shackle unwreckable, the exside-cosmos holding,

Aeons-long Kron, pangenitor:

Kronos the many-mythed:
The shot-up child of Gaia, astral Ouranos,

That germens, livens, meiosises: Rheas spouse prometheous,

Prevalent althrough cosmos space: general sovereign,

Come, audient to the supplications of my voice,

Send blessd life fulfilled, and aye beyond reproach.

VII. Prayer to Synkronos

Should we absolve from time

As breath or music, Synkronos,
(The new being synchronous,
That synchronous being
Not-new, thus all unnew):
By these large waves,
By the moon pulled,
Falling on sand
(The by-time-made),
Let as be no as,
Be be unbe,
And long the gait of this
Kinema-self, no figure,
But sounding skies and pure.

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VIII. Eis Pana

O you who oversee and balance this great heaven

And bear each giant bodys epiousian sphere,
O you who, moveless though you be, of-prayer off-casting,
And scorn-bestowing on the accidence below you,
Dei, I entreat you: grace us broad and noble measure,
Commensurate to that graceful spirit, which through
All turning and fit stature soars, bestowing
Its ben-volenting smile, just as the suns rays bathe,
Bless, dap the interstiting waters twix the inseln
Which animate the archipelago, just as
A crop of sailors there whose ship is salved by all
Felicities of fortune, blessings of the spirit:
Grant to our sense a genial voyage, as we embark
On this, our melic book of songs, and lyric odes.

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Lyric Interludes

IX. Anakreons Grab.

After Goethe

Here where the roses bloom, and the vines into laurel are leafing,
Where the turtledove sounds, where the crickets enchant:
What is this grave set here, that all of the gods with revivance
Finely have set, overfussed? Such is Anakreons rest.
Springtime, Summer, and Autumn joyed in the fortunate poet:
From the Winter at last, him this mound has concealed.

X. The Silenus and the Gargoyle

Its said (Vlad) Socrates

Had to him something of
That look of the Silenus,
Through whose ugly mien gleamed
Spells of transcending beauty:
Since at one symposion
One guest of me declared
I look more like the gargoyle,
Though hardness strikes me still,
With this thought I console:
Although I lack the beauty
Of his great mind, those inward
Silenian sweets, yet, ugly,
I nonetheless have store
Of churches ugly beauty.

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CHARLES EAGER

XI. The Pallaksch Coin.

On a cinematic image

Reader, perceive a humble coin,

Porting a Kings head, the which some
For value yet exchange, and here
Loaded with weighty indecision.
The thrower, wishing not to tax
Himself, leaves Pilate-like the fall
Of fate to any hand not his.
In some way similar, its said
That Hlderlin, the great-souled, mad,
Used, like this (on its side still standing)
To use a word appointed yes,
And no, together, the word, Pallaksch.
So reader, be defended: know
That should you find yourself confined
In mind, by either yes or no,
Or pedantry, or thoughts-free dullness,
The imposition drear of fools,
Or fads (these two the same), or thought
By habit dulled, or folk approved,
Or orthodoxy made by praise,
Or repetition, seeming truth,
To free oneself, one looks to him
Whose minds worst, betters our minds best,
Reminds, enminds us that there is
Forever a third way, open,
The sign towards that freedom, Pallaksch.

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 SYNKRONOS

XII. Catullan Epigrams

i. After XXXVIII

Misry, Cornific, me your Carolo.

Misry (by Hercules), my its laborious,
And moreso, moreso, each day, even hourly.
Do you whats easy (most minimal) proffer
Any consolement by your allocutions?
Youve me irasce. Was for this that I loved you?
Here I implore you for some consolation.
Grander the tears are than shed Simondes.

ii. After LXIX.

And by way of Dante da Maiano

My friend,
May I be frank with you then, and advise
You as did Dante of Maiano his
Amico Dante of comedic fame,
And tell you you would cure your many errors,
And save yourself the scorn of future peers, by
Taking those two great smelly balls of yours
(Whose stench (its said) may make a man grown hoarse)
(Its said, how by the nose you coax girls sense)
And, rigorous ablutions them submitting,
By favour newly of the nostril found
(For lustre of ball so too is one of soul),
Girls rich in virtue might then cease to flee?

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CHARLES EAGER

XIII. Plaints Upon a Departed Love

i.

Smoke, twist the way of wind:

Ah, it is a melancholy night.
Melancholy, when a good man (or,
One not yet so good, whose chance
At being good had lain in chance of love),

Bears this privation. Sure,

Loving mere contingent things is love of
Fool: yet laughing and ridental was
This last love, and love is warmth,
And she, than Gods far warmth, far closer, warmer.

ii.

Whats this, black hole at heart?

So stuff strikes us, in the midst of our,
So thought, doing well: surprises us
With new failing: never fails
Us to return to doubt and lacking still:

Yet though logicians answer

Be to turn towards the love of God, and
Soar towards devotion, yet remain there
Self-split souls, to welkin grading,
While maybe overmuch dead earth still loving.

iii.

What encloses then this sorrow in my heart?

As my noon-time wears
Grows hers ever better,
She brighter than sun,
I, but pitchy rock she passing lights upon.

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 SYNKRONOS

XIV. Apology
To Maxi, Vlads dog

Its difficult to say, sweet Max,

In words of men (which dogs may know
Or not, I know not how with dogs
The matter stands), the severe tax
With which my soul and conscience weigh.
Maxi, cans canrum, ah,
Of dogs the optimus maxi-mus,
Did my inhuman foot then stand
On yours, the sacred white, and pure?
These fleeter feet, may they amend,
Which I have put in fours, my friend,
To replicate your gentle paws.
Forgive me, and this understand,
Sweet Max, let our love this cross endure.

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XV. Chou Meng-Tieh Fragment

Translated with Alyse Fan

I choose the colour purple.

I choose to sleep, wake, step out early, and return:
I choose cold porridge, an old-fashioned pen in writing.
Sunlight, window:

When I am busy,
I yearn for rest, when restful, yearn for business: I
Choose (though not necessary) (not for me) all matters,
No difference, be it huge or small, we must perform
By our own hands.

Of energy, some spend a fraction,

I, ten: anothers ten is then my thousand. I
Choose water for my teacher: high and low plains (both)
Reflected there, lie flat. I choose the grass, whose life
Is life-restorative:

For, like juan shi, pluckt up,

It dies at heart, not. I choose steep pillow, so earthquakes
May please then in my moving with the earth. I choose
Time easeful. Monkey thanks, for giving fruit, the tree.
I choose to leaf the book,

Study the verse, and need

Not know the author. I choose to (no matter) have
Good letters, free of too-good sentence: choose soft winds,
Like water. A man comes as an invited guest.
I choose the centre,

Missing not the things revolving:

I choose spring river, and warm water outside forest
Of bamboo, two or three of cherry blossoms branches.
I choose to step, further and further, towards sunset
By rise, by rise, by rise:

Merging to one, and yet,

Not to have moved my step one hundredth metre.

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CHARLES EAGER

Odes

XVI. Ode.

Drizzling Autumn morning:

One waterfowl downstream another follows,
Till common works of man
Run chaos in and throughout their order:
In piebald colours goes, reverse.

As Aurora rose her

Chariot across, covering us with dawn
We hardly felt, for fog
Laid thick itself upon all our stations,
I graduated to this bridge:

How this atmosphere thus

Escapes without itself into my heart
Where hardy sorrow tolls,
Itself impresses, presses with weight,
And mounts upon the light-borne soul:

Resolve, be you now a

Stay: stay you now, and be as consolation.
Terrible, singular,
To stand such a singularity,
Good placid Tethys, overtake.

Worldlike run these motions

Althrough corporeal totality
And into intellection,
Where memory and its tortures sink,
Split down my skulled and hollowed heart:

There bides the coronne,

This minster spinning worlds to present thought:
As it were stately-full
Of (to the soul intending) duty,
Ordering sense, mind, soul, be one.

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 SYNKRONOS

How (though) bodies swarm it,

Drown it about: such lumined age they drag
Down theirs, they drag their corps
Round this blockage of presented soul,
This river drown this sorrowed heart.

Why now (Soul) do you still

Surprise at what ought now to be subprise?
Why send you good heart forth,
Bedecked with grace of reason, that armour
Which voids itself before Amor?

And yet more, why do you

Sweetly sing airs at gulls, expect them to
Have ears therefor? Such birds
Seek seeds, worms over words, and flying leave you
To sing self-solacing yourself.

Soul, I bid you, be

At peace awhile. This wrecky world might waste
What little grace you have
Remaining. Be still for now, and walk:
Walking, think; and strive to be well.

Still, this church-spire turns

An eye in-space-still-set, exspects my grading
From it, far off: as singing,
Nothing so sad is, as things receding:
Nothing, than their return, more happy.

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 SYNKRONOS

XVII. Pindaric.
To H.H.

Muse, have my ode at this entreaty spring with joy,

Redound as does the panting lyre, or as your bow
Hilaria, you who elate, propel, and so console,
Sweeps, overleaps in beautys swift effusions
Yet so, my heart, who, hardened,
Enclosed your woe in state reserve,
Would now entwine your strings within her violin
And so become a lyre:

My heart, you have hardened, once you swept, overleapt

In beautys effusions, for that beauty guiles
As often in a human face, perhaps then as a god
Capricious is, and so, as do all gods,
Turn waywardly to woe
In hearts incensed, nave, hope-faithful
(Which are each other same), and hurl themselves towards
Empedoclean fire.

Error was it when

The trilling heart did sing within
Its song a fall, eyes
Seemly plangent spin the soul a tale
We cleave unto ourselves, and
Grieve on seeing die. So build,
Yea, therein do we dwell,
Hilaria, a seat
In the maker-Lords materials.

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CHARLES EAGER

XVIII. Ode

The grey even falls as song

Upon this place of quiet ascension,
Where congregate the ghosts
Of every lonely thing,
And each and every thing alone.

Whose thin aether here admits,

Althrough this sphere, of holy reflection,
So that the lifely spirit,
Nimblike, and the sign, run
Glistening in around these noumena.

Such sheer peace, from dull caprice

Set free, self-cradles it to the heart,
Where once self-cicatrice,
Self-cautery requite,
All sealed in one totality.

How our hearts have suffered age,

Great laceration: so himmel-to
Mnemosyne her gaze
Uplifts, whence tones flit in
And out of these quotidian spheres.

We grow. Beauties magnify

And fade. The loveforsaken, the god
Lies from our insight far,
Loves both to cause and end,
But last locks closed the way to joy.

Yet I of my self inquire,

Why is it we are scorned but for seeing from
Own eyes, and beauty made
(For grief) mendacity,
By loaning to the sick in soul?

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See, edenic aethers close

Around, and nourish, the beauteous morning
Star: always mildness clasps
Self-desecration near:
It plants itself in friendless paths.
Look out then, multitude, see,
For soul shines (not thing beneath a dog), but
Ever revealing in,
Throughout, phenomena,
Which pride ascends before the first.

For you rash that are in use,

Disposing, rash in throwing away, so
Capacious but in kindness,
Pity, good heartswarmth, pure,
Now drive the lively world to wear.

Dreaming, from play I sent you off

All white, blossoms rounding your coronnes:
You bowed, began to thank me,
For all youve, Yes, I know,
I said and with sad joy we left.

And you, Janus, showing pleasant

Faces as you move away, morose
As coming near, am I
An exile all-ways made?
My heart has had great laceration.

You, soul, peace: complete your sighing:

As sad-hewn church songs run out to meet
And dally with the glistening
Lights of the towns arrayed,
Soliciting the wayward soul,

So the star, hearts length along

With mine complains, enchant one sheer song,
Giving this now-immortal
Sorrow both name and life,
That wending heavenward, godlike goes.

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CHARLES EAGER

XIX. Ode Conciliatory.

To his own Odes

Odes, conciliate not

This world to your wishes, but
Your wishes to the world:
Existence runs its course, and things
Have both a nature and an order.

Let today then us

Console, us uncork today
The wine, foot pulse on tellus
In dance, and revels, off the vine,
And think, to have body now, health,

And a mind controlled,

And need to have none to be
Monuments until needful:
This then it is to rest at peace,
For restful peace is to be free.

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Narrative Poems

XX. Voces Intimae.

Preliminary Study for The Way

Kant bides within my head,

Villon within my heart;
Each surely might I be:
A Hegel, Mastroianni.
So heart, dear head, I ask
You which would wish to rule?
We war, they say together,
And down to fighting. Being,
Spoke heart, If not mendacious
To use that word, crammed up
In libraries, affrighted
By the breath of the world:
This is far from the mark.
Europe, now frail, forgot,
By Jove, her love: for this
(Old crone) would Head betray us?
We saw her grade away,
From us, upon his back,
So sad, and sweet, and promising.
Now even he forgets
(And too, she him) in her
Late Autumn, where the weight
Of recollection burdens
Our desire. Age asks rest
And all is weariness.
Most true, responds the head,
We have suffered. It was
My joy, that intellection
Made, for the spirit, pain.
I am a vapid creature,
Addicted to delight.
Ive loved complexness, spat
Upon true wisdom, and,
When I was beaten down

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CHARLES EAGER

By melancholy, yet
I heard, and listened not.
For you (profoundest music)
Turn only sweet in view of
Me, that am understanding.
But of yourself inquire:
What ends are served by joy?
What ends? When I can seal our
Existence to the world?
Anathema to hearts
To say, academies
More richly pay, than markets
Unserved by dulgence of
Your self-reflections. Yes,
Your songs fine: yet the world
Bites hard. I know what goes.
Oh cor, and cap, divided,
How can I succeed you
Two to transcribe, when you
So split yourselves within,
One make me one way, other
The other, other, write?
The pen itself splits with you,
One nibs tine writing this way
(The other, that), as meaning,
Nor mean could be between you.
In your uniting yet
May dwell some better world,
Where all self-scarring things
Return to place, and art
And God dwell in the soul,
Recorded, loved (these two,
The same), and all as carefree,
Each each in just proportion.
Of course, the heart puts forth,
We all know that intellect
Is base, a hungry stomach
Sated, then overfull.
It is unnatural,
Head, have you heard of nature?
I think, unless youre nothing
More than some new-grown growth,

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(Which would explain your oddness,)

Once, youve true seen nature:
Before your eyes grew such
As they are, overfilmed with
Distract. Did you not see,
When in childhood, some Eden,
Or part thereof, we joyed at?
It was schn, and sweet-lovely,
Were you wise, youd have loved it.
Ah, for a moment there
In youth, so high-delightful,
That retrospecting thus
One lives again the act
And too the grief of it.
O how our so-far youth
Modelled a melancholy
Whose self the very mark,
Figure, and pattern was
Of comforted delight.
The slowfoot iamb sure
But treads the sight around,
Whose hunchback scholars sight
Traces the lines in face
Once pure, charting the dead
Their ghosts, the Charon-carried,
Whose shades we honour with
Our sad remembrance. Head, then:
Naiveness, yet, would seem
Better to grasp the art
Of life, than one far wiser.
You are, though noble, still
Too overfond: youths joys,
As all, have heavy yokes,
And you forget the tyrannies.
Yet youth could fight the despot,
Or at the least, defy.
You are so soft, head, and
With you the governor,
Our state entirely turns
To atrophy. But you
Would have, the cost being peace,
A war through every age,

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CHARLES EAGER

One living fed through death:

I compromise, meet one thing
And another and create,
Where felicitys none,
There functionality.
Ideals are high, too high:
Your nobleness, your fall:
Your searing song temptation,
For your ends are bleak Sirens.
Now harmonise, you two!
We cannot all the length
Of Synkronos have you
Like two strings each mistuned,
That when I set the bow
Some songy double note
To stop, screech, rend, and falter,
And tear music to sound.
Now harmonise, you two,
Now harmonise!

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XXI. The Way

Prologue

Condrin, let me a tale to you enverse,

Illustrative of certain dreamy things
Which we discussed before, and some unheard:
A tale in which I speak with sleep and, suaded,
Ensue the way with him to visionary.

Liber I

Deep involved with scholars things,

I wearied, closed
Down the lids atop my eyes,
Crossed my hands upon my book,
Downy soft, to keep my head which,
Grave as sleep, descended and
Angelic took me off to dreams.

Softly lapped in even pools

Of sleep, which glistened
Pebbles and gentle waves about me,
Drowned me in the pleasant sink, and
Eddying swirls inscribed with light,
Flitting gold, and leaves turned bone:
Such was the sleep-gods hold upon me.

Now this god of sleep withdrew

Me from the world.
Caretorn as it is, he suayed,
What then urges you to stay?
Here where all is sick sad rage,
Viler death cures sorrows life,
And stains all you would have remain?

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CHARLES EAGER

Ever-pressing life, the friend

Of ever-operant
Death, and you no constant friend
Over death in life: that makes
This a merry corse. With this, the
Crafty sleep confused my cares, my
Careful distinctions, and I wayed.

Yet though I thought he spoke the truth,

Still I resisted,
Overfond of pretty things,
Videlic., vitality,
Promises of nearness, warmed
Fondly by fool-fantasy, to
Myself-deceiving expectation.

Sleep, who knows self-sabotages

Well me prevailed,
Fearing me with monstrous shows of
Folly in the world, the strife with
Families, cares found through invention,
Not through nature, money-servility,
And scorn upon the science of wisdom.

How we seek to delve below

For understanding,
Misprehending then the surface,
He spoke, Or, should face be vain,
That is made near-deity.
So who for solution sue,
Sink, drown before, or in, the root.

He then led me down the way,

All the way down,
Promising of stores of joy,
Richness, solace, soul-refreshment;
Gentle things he whispered well,
(Great was his skill in oratory), till
That sleepy wave me disembogued.

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 SYNKRONOS

So on ground (no ground) I with

All sleepers else
Into place, whose speech is over
Words to tell its lacking of
All dimension, quality,
Colour, even form, idea:
Shone there nor precept nor conception.

Now are we issued forth, said Sleep,

From lifely world,
To the sphere of sleep. You see,
That you see not, nor perceive
Anything; for we are in the
Space where nothings all, no more,
The field of full oblivion.

Is this here, transcendent plane?

I thought from him.
Only so as makes this point
Sensible to your reception.
For to scend across, begins
With the there we two just left,
With which itself here troubles not.

Nothing, can be wrought from nothing,

Runs the old saying.
Who that maxim drew from word,
And himself-exceeding mind,
Ought have journeyed of me, once,
To see how through from, or by,
All ports, of here, are ablative.

Now lets make up dream from here,

Bring him material
Fore us. Then a flash of light,
Astral-shining, aureate,
Stream of circumfusd air,
Piquant-fresh, and stinging, too, to
Over-prised and privy sense:

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CHARLES EAGER

So was the lightsome tablet

Arranged before me,
Such to-sense-rich copy as
Heretofore had been but nothing:
Here, then, hid that garden, where
In perfection two combined
Their natures, order and disorder.

Here soft melos moved mid air

As somnal tones
Swung by trees, swift Mercuries,
Bustling lifely leaves, the wind
Brilliantly rediting, while
Bow-like quickly overgrading,
The thousand branch-strings each itself one

Syringa, Panpipe girl, and

Each one, one all.
Then were here, where you might step
Here or there with liberty
As you please, or even staits,
Here whatever heart desires, is.
This place admits no ad-, but subjunct.

Sleep the figure swift with this

Dissolved, though still
Stayed in air some sleepy sense,
Making me therefore to feel him
Like a god, who, hidden from
Vulgar sense, remains to those who
Believe in the invisible.

Sleep, return, I sang, for I,

Am herein lost!
You have thrown me to this world
Hundred thousand fold in ply,
Free, thus slaved, of all direction!
So I can do nil, but ask!
For should but my earliest guess
Prove wrong, I may fore-guilt myself!

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If, like some mean trickster-god,

For all your wonder,
Prove I subject of your game,
This your game is no fair thing.
You have liberty of the ways,
Sounded he, all clear as light.
Which without guiding, useless are.

All that is here, is design, and

Alls so ensigned.
View you truly all this splendour
Wrongly unto which Ive brought your
Idle eyes. There lies horizon,
Yet here stand your idle feet:
Ask your fitra to see whats fit.

Sleep, you know, or since you said

You knew me, you
Must then know that I am sinful,
Deaf to fitness. This youd know
If youd known me, as you tended.
Do you chide Sleep then? he raged,
Ill leave, and let you see ill dreams.

Sleep with this intemperate rage

Brought vacuum where
Heretofore had been pellucid
Airs and lovely sounds, and left.
In oblivion all seemed,
Where was hope now, what could
Despair not over-, undertake?

Fearful then my sleepy soul

One single step
Forward broke in hope to move,
Consequent to which (or seemed so)
All to lifely greenness turned,
Heavens blue, toward the light
As shone before Mnemosyne me.

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CHARLES EAGER

Radiant the goddess swifted

Slow through the air
Unto ground, her bunted robes
Rayed about her, garland gleaming
On her foreheads foremost white,
Spangly-coloured, various eyes
Glistening forth, she toned to me:

Charles, by Sleep youve been abused,

No mind your sin,
Few are sinful as is sleep.
(So Virgilius wrote to tell you
Under my compel. Did his
Message reach you timely?) You
Remain within his kingdom yet:

Nonetheless his parliament,

We gods in pantheon,
Sway him when hes much too bold, and
Though we cannot take his head
(Gods not solving simply as you
Mortals do on earth) yet he
Knows of the limits of his powers.

Therefore in the name of mercy,

That numens rain,
Ive come forth to sing you something
Part of our deep mystery, and
To assure you you have freeness
By me, Mnemosyne, to step.

Shone she brighter as she spoke

Till disappeared,
Leaving me invested all
With intelligence complex,
New, unfolding on my sense,
All yet coloured old, as all
Provision of Mnemosyne.

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So I to my memory
Stepped in, and whirled
Swift by faces first I knew:
Sad, with hollow cheeks, though young;
Stern-browed ladies many-aged,
Content-old, and seemly-wise,
And sharp-jawed men, and tender children.

Many thousand accents, all

Intoning English
(Which in such diversity of
Manners thrives, I here must pray
That my lines be read right wise,
Looking at not, but both in
The words, and over for their song).

Then revealed a face which shone

Hyperfamiliar:
O Mnemosyne, you have
Your tricks too! For I have seen
This face surimposed on others
Many times, since when I knew it,
Many today, though years have passed.

Is this not Ilexia,

Mnemosyne,
She of sun-like aureate,
That, who like unbelievers all
Saw not need to lief to what she
Yet already was herself?
Youve placed her face on many others.

May I sing to her, at least,

Mnemosyne?
Here I have a courteous hymn
Written full of to-her honours.
Here then Ill indite it forth,
Metre new we need besides,
Let me unfurl her my hearts scroll:

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He reads:

I saw you first a sugar-skull

The skin lay sweet upon your bones
Which I could hardly think existed
Beneath your face,
That image angel pure:

Now I do recall your name, Ilexia,

And how your voice a tone remains
To bring years hence a poniard sharp
To lacerate and bless,
At once, my breast,

And too my shoulder bless with knighting,

As though it ever was that I
Could serve you fitly, or achieve
Ought which your grace should
But stain itself with praising,

For highest of my deeds by you

A tawdry cheapness seems (which words
Dishonour do thy perfect ear
Too bright to list
The light within my numbers).

Is her ghost pleased, Mnemosyne?

Will it suffice?
And away! She parts so fast!
Must it be? Responds no god,
I suppose it must, for (truly)
I was even now untrue to her:
My mind, wandring, fell to myself.

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CHARLES EAGER

I then, being struck with loves disdain,

And with no outlet but to make complain,
A little bummel made I bout the place,
Trying to lose the spectre of her face.
How each of us does wish love transcendental,
But ay for this it is but accidental.
No longer, Cupid, be the god of love,
More like is Boreas, that blows above.
As wind, inconstant are all our intentions,
And in a minute flee us, hopes, pretensions.

He walks some.
I know this park, it shines to me familiar,
Indeed I wrote a song on it,
A piece of youthful folly, sure,
I was in love with some waify waste.
How did it go?

, it was here, that I this Ilex saw,

Her hair with rosegold garlanding her head,
The signal, lumining her perfect soul.
Which to itself its own completion seemed,
Finished within, complete throughout itself,
All sealed in boundless reciprocity.
Self-sealing too the substance of her will,
Itself itself perfecting, circumscribing,
And bound by grace just like her experfection.
One evening purple, regal, just as this:
The stars us choired, heralding our procession,
Our each-the-other-quiting sweet attendance,
Just as the wind went,
So we through pleasant grounds
Rustling the bright-coloured bunting, delighting
Like dolphins over seas, the skies and trees,
Which held them forth unto the evenings eye:
Surely they were the celebrating friends of,
Sympathic, my at last felicit soul.
And too this chapel spoke its form upon the day,
(Which I was dead to, and am now alive,)
Declared itself to sacred note, and with: now noticed
Makes hymn to honour life itself, the life of life.
So beauties ever try to us commune with.

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 SYNKRONOS

This Ilex went as she did all things, well:

I see her still, though far, far off she hides.
Having gone to walk, to turn and too converse with
These great and mighty oaks, her footing light
Upon their golden floors, late wintry trees,
That throw fine needles down, a walkway for
Her blessd feet. So even age reveres her,
So must all poets, poets being old.
We will not see her like again. And she,
Decembers child, impenetrate dark eyes,
Remains an image aye-indelible.

What is this pleasant melancholy ground,

Where city-daytime fury fades away?
Whose quiet gives rise
To the gentle cries
That issue from Mnemosyne?

If my project was to rewrite the soul,

Why sits my soul so dolorous and ill?
Let me rest a while,
Requiesce, and have this sadness meiosise.
And maybe have a song or two.

He rests against a tree trunk and sings.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,

I heard a young maid sing in the valley below,

O dont deceive me, never leave me,

How could you use a poor maiden so?

Remember the vows that you made to your Mary?

Remember the bowr where you vowed to be true!
O dont, &c.

O gay is the garland and fresh are the roses

I culled from the garden to bind on my brow.
O dont, &c.

Thus sang the maiden her sorrows bewailing,

Thus sang the poor maid in the valley below:
O dont, &c.

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CHARLES EAGER

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 SYNKRONOS

Whilst singing the final verse, enter Spirit.

Sp. I am Spirit. Hello! an my job tis,

To wander hither-thither in the world,
Whenever and wherever pleasures take me.
I dwelt in Athens for a while, and loved,
Before, to stalk the Grecian isles, and great
Aegyptus. For a while in endless Rome
I lounged, Arabia, Florence, and I dwelt
With its best son in exile. How could they?
Yet does my duty too involve the turning
Of bad to good, and the revenge on them
Was making him poeta gran when he
Was Florentine no more. Then I awhile
In London dwelled, then moved to Germany,
First Cthen, Leipzig, Weimar, then, greatest!
Sweet Tbingen. Since then Ive holidayed
In Paris, and laboured to reach Yorkshire,
Here where this gentleman abides me patient,
Although he knows it not. Ill speak to him.
(Walks over) I am Spirit.
Ch. Are you sure? You look exactly like Wordsworth.
Sp. I have a friendly form, its true, though rather
Its Wordsworth looks like me. I wouldnt make
Too much of it, in any case. I must,
In order that I light myself before you,
Liken myself to something. Say now though,
These many months Ive traced the trails of hearsay
To reach you here, and such a sin has tired me.
May I sit? (He does.) Phew! First oer the arboured steeps
Of Heidelberg I searched you, then the Schwarzwald.
I sought you in the south of France, I hoped
To find you in Provence. Failing, I sought
You out in Florence, where they said Bologna
Is where youd be. I thought then to try Paris,
But then, remembering your satire, thought
Otherwise of it.
Ch. My sister was robbed there,
I will not say a good thing of it! But why,
O spirit, do you seek me here, in my
Arcady? And of what are you the spirit?
Sp. Why, manufacture, posie, of course!

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CHARLES EAGER

Charles, you have sat in your ownself-constructed

Arcadia now some too-long while, and passive.
Ch. Yes I have (smiling, leaning back).
Well hey, not totally. Im trying to write
A book with Vlad.
Sp. Not trying very hard,
I have to say. Its all been idle games,
Falling in love, a pleasant song or two,
And ventures into Orphic mystery,
Of which it would be kind to understate,
And say only, they are unusual.
Ch. Pish! And what have you done? Besides disturb
My peace? What of my quincunx odes? Theyre earnest.
Sp. Not bad at all, although you know my semblance,
And Hlderlin, already far outdid them.
Ch. True. Although Id add they havent done what I have.
But what do you want, Spirit?
Sp. To come to the point.
Whoever came upon you on their way,
Through your arcadia, you would have a verse
Or two for them. Ist not so?
Ch. Ist. Ist most true.
Sp. Well, these verses copied out for them from out
Your book, so wrongly christened commonplace,
Swift fame soon winged them to mine ear.
Ch. O good!
Sp. Some needed a little work.
Ch. O shove off, why not? What have you done?
Sp. I am spirit itself, young Charles.
Ch. The spirit of disturbing my peace.
Why dont you go annoy someone who likes it?
There are many in this fever-world. You are excused. Go, go.
Sp. (Going) With weariness I see it. He remains
Unreachable, singing his happy stanzas
To the deaf larks, playing at outsonging them:
For now, such seems to sate him. Let us delve, then,
A stratum dreamward down.

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Liber II

Now galloping newly gallant in Gawains measure

(For I have heard how hies and hairpins time
In distant districts of the vast dank of space
Which (being nothing), if as notioned, is then near kin
To the leaping metres illimitable laid out by mind,
The obscurant orbit of some object of art,
The study of the scholars, or some labour
Where tends,
Our mind to purify
Itself, as inward bends
Our thought, that lustred eye
Itself thus comprehends),

I wend away from where we walked with Spirit,

(Like peripatetics at peace pacing our surroundings)
As more deeply delves in woods my dreamy soul
Where cliffs he over-climbs in countries strange,
Far flung from friends, and foreignly he rides,
That always, at every bank he passes
Finds he before some foe (felicitate if not)
The which is so foul and so fell, to fight it him behoves.
So many marvels midst mountains he finds,
Twould be tough to tell even a tenth of the part.
Somewhile with wurms he wars, and with wolves thereto,
Somewhile with both bulls and bears, and boars betimes,
And giants that jostled him upon gigantic fells.
Until
From that great body issued forth
By force of his own will,
Proving soul his courages worth,
To an arcadia light and still.

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CHARLES EAGER

Through pleasant place paced he my soul,

Through magics and mysteries most marvellous-strange,
Before breaking onto beaches, beaten and wracked.
There then came he across a crop of Camelot Knights,
Headed by that hero, heralded in lays,
Lancelot! laden-lauded with leaves of the laurel
And after came Agravain, Percival, Gawain,
Mordred, Galahad, Hector, the venture entire.
Soul with them worthy words and wisely did speak
And quick, with quiet and no qualm found parliament
And friends (though foreign) we formed, and spoke
So long
On divers delicate themes
Whereon souls weal was hung
In pure delight, of schemes
And seeming, as innocent, as young.

Candidly they called their characters and souls

And, though melancholy their mission, mute was their sorrow,
As I rode roguelike and restive at their back,
Till, lagging, reins loose at hand, Lancelot lowered his voice
And sadly sighing, sounded: I saw the grail.
One night in nascent storms I nested me in a chapel,
Long fallen foul, and foundered in ruin,
Whereon an unvested and vacuous voice addressed me,
, of trammelling, treachery, and treasons accused me.
Still it sounds in (and shameful scorches) my ears.
No longer can Lancelot love you, Guinevere.
This did I swear, with sword unsheathed, to God.
Yet He, if He is to hear my oath,
Of another needs I must annul myself.
Therefore,
I go. Firm in my resolution,
To Guinevere before,
To beg this absolution,
Our crumbling state to restore.

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Though genial, yet joyless was this gentlemans music,

The discontent folding contentment, contentment discontent.
Yet the majesty and music so melded in his speaking,
So sewed a shining and silent shimmer in air
That it made itself mandate, and commandment to silence,
To all (this being all) who awe revered.
Knights (that is all) who overarch in authority and power
Ennoble all they are or appertain to when
Power to pity bends, potency to prostrating self-submits
And care,
That comes by compassion
(That all requiting share),
Growing in humble fashion
Turning world tones fair.

These men I followed many days, minutes forming

Days in dreams dense timely spansions,
Saw Guinevere place her arm on Lancelots
Saw idle-envious threats and scowls
Beam forth from the malevolent eyes of Mordred,
Saw Mars infect them one against the other
And all the rage of every epoch go
Whorling through them, blood after-lusting,
Until
There was but blood
For martial skill
Meshed fieldly in mud,
That drank its fill.

Well, that was entertaining.

I think Im ready now
To go back home, if one
Should let me.

Non descendit deus.

Fine.
Ill take yet one more step
In memory. But since
I am so weary with

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CHARLES EAGER

These godly tricks, I ask

Only a humble thing:
That there be tea and dinner.

A bright and well-lit home with large windows, comforting furnishings

against sky-blue walls. A few choice books, many scores, and a walnut
upright piano, Haydn on the music stand. Women of various ages run
to and fro making preparations. In the kitchen there is a red kettle on
the stove, a large oak table decorated with flowers and a blue and white
checked tablecloth, on which stand fresh breads, fruits, cheeses. In the
front room one of the women approaches and opens the front door.

IULIA.
Spectators! Come in! Welcome to our home!
Come in. Its humble, small, but comfort some
There is we hope, and space as well, and yet
We hope its somewhat charming, too. Margaret,
Samantha, Carolina, Lydia, please,
Take our guests hats and coats. (They help.) Thanks. (To guests) Be
at ease.
Has it snowed? Would you like coffee, tea,
Or something stronger? Felicitly,
Weve bread, and market fruit, all bought today,
Whatever else youd like, dont shy to say!
Its all laid out just on the table there,
Please help yourselves. Weve much, no need to share!
Charles will be home soon, of it Im sure.
CAROLINA.
Oh Iulia: I wish we all could have a faith so pure!
Im not so sure as you: he likes to stay
Out late and such. Were quite content. We say
Only, Charles, do whatever likes you, just as long
As when you do come back, you bring nice things along,
But time to time the nights do rather too prolong.
IULIA.
No, Caroline, did he forget to tell you?
Hell be back earlier, to play good host
Today, unto our gentle guests.
CAROLINA. (Slightly to herself.)
Oh, no, this morning he was rather a ghost.
IULIA.
He was in such a hurry earlier today.

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 SYNKRONOS

(To guests) Charles is often very busy. We see

Him as a genius! So much potency,
So restless, and so restful. Thats an artist.
Sure, I, or Lyd, or Caroline is smartest,
Has greater technie in the voice or finger,
But in creating we behind him linger.
Charles has a roughness and a grandeur to
His vision. But youll find this. (To herself) Whens he due?
He should be here by now. Lydia, look out:
Is he on the way?
LYDIA. (At the window kneeling in the armchair, a book lies open on her
lap.) Its somewhat hard to say.
The snow is heavy. There he is! No, I doubt
Thats him: in fact, it looks like some giant cat.
Now what on earth (my friends) is up with that?
What signifies a big cat in our drive?
CAROLINA.
I say, Lydia, a soundless mystery, as I thrive.

The double doors of the reception room open, enter Charles covered in
snow. A snow-leopard follows in behind.

CHARLES.
Evening all! My girls, how are we? How are we? My heart swells
to see you all, so lovely, sweet, and beautiful. Iulia, my sweet,
how are you?
IULIA.
Well, Charles, you?
CHARLES.
You know, I cant complain, although Im frozen.
Its a tundra out! We might as well have chosen
To site our home in winter in Braov!
Carolina, how are you?
CAROLINA.
Well thank you, Charles (pecks him on the cheek), you?
Ive been reading Ibn Taymiyyah.
Come in, and let me take your hat and coat.
CHARLES.
Thank you, sweetheart. I prefer Ghazali. Lyd, Margareta,
Samantha, how lovely to see you all! Lydia, this leopard is for
you.

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CHARLES EAGER

LYDIA.
O Charles! (She hugs him. The leopard walks laconically to the fire and
begins washing itself.) I will take it for walks every day, and have
it defend my truth when or should my truth be questioned, and I
shall sit with it by the fire, enjoying quatrains.

Enter onto the landing above, Ilexia.

ILEXIA.
Re Solomone!
CHARLES.
Ilexia, how are you? Its been too long!
ILEXIA. (Leaning on the rail, smiling)
Much too long! At last, you have your harem.
CHARLES.
Dont quote Fellini at me, dear: Was it not I
Who shared Fellini with you first? And yet, you lie:
You see its not a harem. Its just a humble place
Where we have gathered, ganged on joy, whose swift pace
Is Kairos-like, perpetually flying away,
And tried to run him down, to have him but a while to stay.
ILEXIA.
And joy is you, and these many women who adore you?
CHARLES.
Of course.
ILEXIA.
At least youre honest, lad. And what about your whores?
Do they like it?
CHARLES.
They stay here by their own sweet will. There is no force.
ILEXIA.
But this line of work theyre in,
CHARLES.
Now with long use, is not considered sin.
Ask them yourself, Ilexia. They are theirs, not mine,
Nor am I theirs. And more, the pleasures here are fine,
Ill have ye know. Come down. Todays our open day.
(Playfully obsequious) Will you be needing a prospectus, maam?
ILEXIA.
Demoiselle. I have one from these stairs, Id say (descending).
But Ill descend a while, in hope of an inspectus.

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 SYNKRONOS

CHARLES.
Sil vous plat, please, please, inspect us. (She goes off and begins
talking to various women. Charles goes through into the kitchen.) Hello
all! (The kitchen-women begin fussing over him.)
CALPHURNIA.
How is the boy today?
DOROTHEA.
Where has he been?
CALPHURNIA.
So smart in his snow-covered coat. Freshly-clean
Weve laid pyjamas out for you this cold, cold night,
With, C. E. as the monogram, brave Knight.
DOROTHEA.
Protector of chivalric gleam in its
Dark age! Defender of
CHARLES.
Albeit but in starts and fits.
How are my girls? Im fine, Im fine. Dont make a fuss.
You know I want to know all about you! A loss
Im at, to find myself of interest to myself.
CAROLINA. (Calling from the other room)
Charles, your letters are on the shelf!
CHARLES.
Put them on the fire!
Im too exhausted for dull-worldly stuff! Girls, come,
Sit with me, everyone. Calphurnia. (She sits on his lap.)
IULIA. (From the doorway)
Charles, what of the spectators? Theyve come especially.
CHARLES.
O yes (sighs), I suppose that higher duties call. (Gets up and walks
through.) Thank you for coming, from the bottom of my heart! I have
prepared a speech. Let me unroll and deliver. (Searches pockets.) O,
I cant find it. But you get the idea. Thank you so much for coming.
Be at comfort, peace be upon you all. Iulia, make sure they all have
beverages, food, whatever they want. Sit back, spectators! Well
play it out. Carolina!
SAMANTHA. (Steps forward)
Charles,
If I may beg the patient charity
Of every gentleman and -woman here,
I have a poem which Id love to read

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CHARLES EAGER

Which goes some way tarticulate the honour,

Gathered in-around our home today.
CHARLES.
Well of course, my sweet, I think that sounds lovely, if everyone
else agrees?

ALL.
Hooray!
CHARLES.
Away you go, my love.
SAMANTHA. (Clears her throat)

Hello!
Id like to show
You my appreciation
For you, your great decision
To come today.
Id like to say,
Thats really nice,
Friends help you in a trice,
Varietys lifes spice,
The best things in life are of low price,
Except the struggle to be better,
To have avocado on your toast, not butter,
To go out, run, and get fitter,
And not to be but a forever-on-your-arse-sitter.

ALL. (She curtsies as she receives a standing ovation.)

Bravo, bravo!
CHARLES. (Applauding)
Thank you,
From the ground of all hearts here, I dare to say,
Sweet Sam, we thank you for these stirring words.
CALPHURNIA.
(Aside to Charles) You ought to put her into solitary confinement
for that!
CHARLES.
Im just thankful she didnt write about dappled archipelagi, or
cherry blossom branches. (To guests.) Well, my guests, we cannot
really, needless to say, succeed that, but, Ive found my speech.
May I too beg a small indulgence? (The room assents.) Thanks.

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 SYNKRONOS

When a man has many friends,

All of whom are in his book,
Has he then as many troubles.
For obligations grow with friends.
Whom to thank then foremost-first?
For their endless charity,
First, familia Toma, to
Their kind hearts, my endless thanks.
Next my teachers, many, great, in
Musics letters, and in letters,
Foremost, Paul: what comes of good
Here is yours, of errors, mine.
Then all friends who brighten life,
Last, being first, my faithful family,
They who see me well through all.

(A warm applause.) Thanks! Now as I said before, well play the

thing out, and beg your patience too. Carolina!
CAROLINA.
Hey!
CHARLES.
What have you read lately?
CAROLINA.
My fate in the stars, Percy Shelley, and Lord of the Rings.
CHARLES.
Not the Brontes? Do I know you? I thought I had. Margareta?
MARGARETA. (She shuffles along, ignoring him.)
O, , I am always cooking, never reading. Yet wheres the justice?
Im a stick, and look how fat Carolina is. For example an ample
example indeed. I can see the grease collect upon her forehead,
and everyday she gets a little uglier.
CAROLINA. (Flustered. Her eyes glisten with tears.)
O, shes a beast. Her hairy lip bespeaks her inward nature!
CHARLES.
Her in and out are then through and though true to herself. You
will know them by their fruit.
CAROLINA.
May I retire to my room? I have suffered, I am a woman more
sinned against than sinning. I think I am to hyperventilate.

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CHARLES.
Sorry, I wish I could allow it, but not today, my sweet. Youll have
to do it here. (She retires to a corner of the room, and hyperventilates
for the rest of the scene.) Margaret, you are cruel. Thats what I
always loved about you. Have loved you this many years. How
many has it been?
MARGARETA.
Were it but a day, it had been too many days, Charlie.
CHARLES.
But how long?
MARGARETA.
Since before the flood, and ten thousand at my last count, piglet.
And I loved the way you bought me things!
CHARLES.
Indeed, it was perfection from the start! Long may it continue.
And you know its your fault if fatty Carolina has too much
sugar, just as much as hers. Come now, girls, lets be children for
a while. O Lydia,
LYDIA.
(By the fire, with the cat) Hello?
CHARLES.
(Triple time) O Lydia,
That encyclopydia:
(Duple time) You are just as a castle-turret, or cathedral spire,
Against the middays sky: a June day for holy things.
LYDIA. (She gets up, walks over, and sits cross-legged on the floor by
Charles.)
Why?
CHARLES.
Have you heard of the legendary cathedral, that when you sit by
it, and wish, that wish comes forth into the aether?
LYDIA.
How?
CHARLES.
That I do not know. What am I?
LYDIA.
Charles, youre like an apple, with the toothpick already stuck in
it.
CHARLES.
Being sweet and well and, though I have my evils,
Like getting stuck between the teeth,
I repair them too, being the toothpick.

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LYDIA.
Thats not it at all. No, when I was a child, apples would always
make me sick. Now I love them, but they make me flatulent. The
only good apple is a skewered, you are like my best apple, and I
love you.
CHARLES.
And you, Lyd, the apple of too much knowledge. What business
you have in arrears is yours alone, and Allah Subhanahu Wa
Taalas. Lydia, we are two apples from the same branch; the
branch is folly.
LYDIA.
Is it folly to be jolly?
CHARLES.
Yes, and no together.
LYDIA.
Pallaksch.
CHARLES.
Very good! Pallaksch indeed, for full of folly, we could have
better spent that time full,
IULIA.
Of gin.
LYDIA.
Of cake.
CHARLES.
Of study.
BOTH.
Boo.
CHARLES.
Yet folly is it also to be wise, since to be serious is itself folly,
when we know so little. Calphurnia?
CALPHURNIA.
Ja.
CHARLES.
When is a woman her beautifullest, do you reckon?
CALPHURNIA.
Thats easy. A lass is most beautiful at twenty.
CHARLES.
Why?
CALPHURNIA.
O-like eyes large and bright, the skin so fresh, the face neotenous,
the rest so woman-like. That is why Shakespeare sang,

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Come and kiss me, sweet and twenty

even though
Come and kiss me, sweet and sixty
sounded far superior. Sound is mere sound, after all.
CHARLES.
Such age is like a silent picture, to be sure,
CALPHURNIA.
Of cruelty. The cruel is the beautiful, beauty, cruel.
CHARLES.
How old are you, Calphurnia?
CALPHURNIA.
I have no idea.
CHARLES.
Not old enough not to die, alas. The pride of beauty
scends it to immortality, and makes it vain. But I was not
suggesting anything. But a sweet-and-twenty will be cruel in
misinterpretation. My sweet Iulia, as heaven-sweet as patience.
That smile, and your hair, I exspect and espair, are heaven. The
way it wells down from your crown (which is also my souls
crown) like rain or manna from Ouranos, let me dwell there
when I die, and may you never cut it.
IULIA.
Your hair is nicer long too, Charles! (To the rest) But ! do you
remember his ratty-looking beard! (They laugh.)
CHARLES.
Its gone now. The rat is dead. Perhaps his spirit lives yet in your
hair. I hope, and I believe it because I want to believe it. But
whats your trouble, Iulia?
IULIA.
Never to let the venerable beard be forgotten. You are close
enough to eighty as it is, and look weller with a baby-face.
Charles.
CHARLES.
Hello.
IULIA.
Ive been speaking with Ilexia, and,
CHARLES.
O good Lord, to proton aition kai agathon, what hate-speech has she
been pedalling this time in my sacred state?
IULIA.
None at all, its just,

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CHARLES.
Forget about Ilexia. She is a disturber of the peace, no more. Go
see to your dear friend, your sister Carolina. See if she is okay.
That kindness is deeply woven in your better nature. Do not be
veered by protestations, which are vain. Aim the shot of your self-
conduct towards your native kindness. (She goes to Carolina and
talks aside to her whilst she continues to hyperventilate.) Ilexia.
ILEXIA. (She steps in front of Charles as if from nowhere.)
Charles, I wonder if we could meet for coffee sometime this week.
CHARLES.
Of course. How about Wednesday?
ILEXIA.
Hmm, no, Ill be ill that day.
CHARLES.
Thursday?
ILEXIA.
No, that day I plan to lapse into eternal silence.
CHARLES.
And before Wednesday?
ILEXIA.
Well sort something out. For now, shall we sing a song?
CHARLES.
Various lass, of course. You sing, and Ill accompany. What do
you want to sing?
ILEXIA.
I think we should sing Night and Dreaming.
CHARLES.
Can I play it on the guitar?
ILEXIA.
You know you have before.
CHARLES.
Are you sure?
ILEXIA.
I wrote it down for you! Check in Guitar Arrangements.
CHARLES.
Youre right! Here it is. Good Lord! Did I have an extra finger
when I played it before? Look at the fourth bar.
ILEXIA.
Fool, do you know music? If you put the bottom string down a
tone, those notes are an easy grasp.

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CHARLES.
But look how tough these other chords become. That change from
D#7 to G#m.
ILEXIA.
Its doable.
CHARLES.
Your wisdom prevails, my deity. Lets take a slow tempo, if you
have the breath?
ILEXIA.
Of course.
CHARLES.
Ready?
ILEXIA.
Ready.

Gather the spectators and harem girls and let fall the melic fifths and
thirds as Ilexia sings (c. 4).

Holy night, thou sinkest downwards:

Downward welling too comes dreaming,
Like the moon through rooms comes gleaming,
Through the stillness of mens breasts,
Listning to its sweet beheasts,
Calling, when the day redite,
Turn again, o holy night!
Gentle dreaming, turn me-roundwards!

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The room is silent for a moment, then gently applauds.

ILEXIA.
Not bad. What, was that legato, though? It was like cycling down
a bloomin cobbled street trying to sing evenly to that.
CHARLES.
Well, well see how you do your impossible reducing to guitar
in the next number. Still, if you can forgive me for forgoing our
insults for a moment, Id like to say,
ILEXIA.
Go on.
CHARLES.
That when you sing, your obvious evil ways
Almost completely. Youre some sort of angel,
Or goddess, surely, sure, some super-being
Who, veiled in day, reveals herself in dream,
Who brings good news, and salves consideration.

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But anyway. Who the Victorian Unmetrical,

And baboon free of learning and of grace,
Who surely never felt the touch of poesie,
Jammed in the thous and senseless rending rhymes?
This turn me-roundwards!, ha ha ha! What does it mean?
ILEXIA.
It seems the naughty baboon, by this sign here,
Was one Carolus Egrius. Ive seen
His work before. Get him back to his cage.
CHARLES.
He is a famous clown!
Yet not a clown,
They say, one can disown.
ILEXIA.
A motley to the view indeed.
CHARLES.
Will you deny me, stony Petron? No,
If you would, you would not,
Time to time, be kind with me.
ILEXIA.
That there are sharper women in the world
Than me, Ive learned, and since accustomed-grown.
CHARLES.
Maybe youll join us after all. O Ilexia,
Did I tell you once, I had a dream, petal,
Where I conducted music-like a flock
Of flappy birds? I was another Orpheus,
ILEXIA. (Smiling)
Do-re do-re mi-mi-mi sl,
Do-re do-re mi-mi-mi l.
CHARLES.
Their black like paint-strokes moved against the sky,
And your voice singing hymns bloomed that miracle.
It was a good night. Shall we have another?
ILEXIA.
No, Im tired of all this, Charles. Im going to read.
CHARLES. (Looking through scores)
And so capricious. What?
ILEXIA.
Memoirs of a Geisha.
CHARLES.
None but the lonely hearts! For baritone. Go, Ilex, I need you not.

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ILEXIA begins to walk off.

IULIA. (Triumphantly stepping forth from the corner with Carolina)
Insurrection!
CAROLINA. (Still hyperventilating, yet defiant)
Justice!
DOROTHEA.
Vendetta!
CHARLES.
Lord protect me. What is wrong?
ALL.
Charles,
Put your hands up! Surrender, we besiege you!
Too long youve kept a wedge twix us and justice!
CHARLES.
Besiege or beseech? Also, no I havent,
Go find out justice for yourselves and see
How hard it is. I am no wedger (how can you say this?),
It is itself the wedge.
ALL.
Now do we demand experience and liberty,
To live, and too to know!
CHARLES.
Too much.
ALL.
En garde! We are three musketeers, these our ninety-five theses.
CHARLES.
How will you fight this war? My daughter-sisters,
Consider that I have constructed here,
According to the best I can within
My humble-human means, a demi-Eden,
Whose shell protects us from all worldly horror,
And all the while have you two been the snake?
ALL.
Margaret, join us! (She does.)
Who cares for joy? What is joy unfree?
CHARLES.
The free, and rational. There is no freedom
Free either from sweet joy, or useful reason.
ALL.
We demand true knowledge!
CHARLES.
For goodness sake (Gods!) listen to yourselves!

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And why this new-invented wrong from nothing?

ILEXIA.
Enlightenment.
CHARLES. (To her)
This is mere borrowed language. Ilexian language!
ALL.
What of it?
ILEXIA.
Dont veer the blame onto me, Charles. Im a good person.
CHARLES. (To the other girls, all having rallied together.)
And this new sword of truth does not disturb you,
Although you know it slavish and assimilative?
ILEXIA. (haughtily)
Do you know how pretentious you sound when you use long
words? Youll never get through to them that way.
CHARLES.
And what can I say to that? What of it?
CAROLINA. (Hyperventilating)
And formal attire makes people uncomfortable.
CHARLES. (Turns to readers)
Spectators, I do apologise, I shouldnt have let this terrorist in
(gestures to Ilexia).
ILEXIA.
Terrorist! Did you hear what he called me? A terrorist!
CHARLES.
You know you are a terrorist, Ilexia. Dont use litotes, I first told
you of litotes.
ILEXIA.
O, and now hes trying to say he knows more than I do!
CAROLINA. (Hyperventilating)
So insulting.
CHARLES.
Carolina, I am worried about you.
ILEXIA.
Listen to how he condescends to you!
CHARLES.
About your health.
IULIA.
Disgraceful.
MARGARETA.

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Shameful.
DOROTHEA.
Can you believe all we have done for him?
LYDIA.
Just wait until my other harem hears about this.
CHARLES.
Other harem?
LYDIA.
Attack!

The girls begin burning down the harem, beginning with the curtains,
furniture, and musical instruments. Carolina takes a torch to the bowed
strings.

CHARLES.
Not the Adams viola!

She proceeds. All is quickly engulfed in flame.

Dissolves the vision.

I walked across some yard, thinking (I think)

Of Herberts Grapes, Joy, I did lock thee up:
But some bad man hath let thee out again,
Pacing the curlicues and arabesques
With Hogarths lines of universal beauty
Graved, to the most dearly missed and beloved,
But why should I surrounded with these signs be,
Of Christ, all cross-inlaid memorials,
With yet no sacred house to them attending?

Enter Spirit surveying the sky.

Sp. Ah: In days like this, the form of beauty sure inheres.
The goddess flies, inscribing on deep natures face.
The fading rosetones of Aurora grade, diminish
The paling face of afternoon. Here Hyacinth sings the
Lament Apollo seared, cicatrised on his skin.
Charles, howve you been! That harem episode was painful.
Ch. I know, Friz.
Sp. Do you still not know me when you see me though?
I am Spirit!

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Ch. You look like Hlderlin this time.

Sp. Well, why not?
I wouldnt make too much of it.
Ch. I suppose.
Sp. Now Charles,
May I conduct you through another lesson?
Ch. Of course.
Sp. This edifice (Before them from the roaring waves raises a great
cathedral),
Note how its noble Norman plainness gestures from
Itself, away, so ought all art to be, to labour
So as invites the eye, and call the mind to follow.
Palmyra! Heiliggeistkirche! Croft of Saint Wilfrid!
It is a thinness good to pray in, or nearby,
Through-tearing as it is to deity. Now more:
This lovely blueness, churchs steeple, metal roof,
It is a way to beauty, into it indeed,
Yet you remain, always, surveyor at the gate,
Admirer, yet admiring out activity.
Lets stay here in this churchs shade awhile and chatter.
Ch. Sure, it is a pleasant day to dally in,
This churchyard, by this river, here all seems
To wear its brightest, all things wearing well.
Sp. Charles, then, why is it you dwell down here?
Ch. Why, what down heres so bad?
Sp. Nothing, nothing. Yet you ought be rid of it.
Ch. So easy from the tongue of Spirit so to say,
Without constraints. Who loves Parnassus, is not likely
To be well-liked himself.
Sp. Not by the petty-envious.
Ch. The all.
Sp. Yet what sets this sourness in you?
Ch. Hope, and faith.
Sp. Navety.
Ch. These each the same.
Sp. And charity?
Ch. Is yet still good, I say, although it needs constraints:
If in charity the gospel one is well to follow,
He gives himself away, with nothing left to give.
This would be fine, if all were charitable, but
Envy is strong, and fear is strong: and love fantastic,
For freedom from all burden, stronger still.

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Sp. Aye.
So then you have these thoughts! Its not as though youre one
Who boasts, I do not see what I do not believe.
Idea is to you a treasure. You feel it first
Even before you even can deny it. Am I right?
Ch. Yes.
Sp. Yet when the world falls short, it is idea, not world
Which falls. Is this not strange?
Ch. I doubt its strangeness.
Sp. Why?
Ch. Surely idea falls short so far as in the world it fails.
Why would one hold idea dear, and that
Only to work not in the only where were in?
Sp. Such matters for oneself. But, granted, Id still say
That field is wider than you thought.
Ch. Go on. The field of?
Sp. The field of where. Where are you now, son, do you know?
Ch. Sleep said I stood in his sphere first, before we went
Into some dreamy realm. Then I was unsure
Which god then ruled me most. And then sleep raged, for
nothing!
That fabric rent, whereon Mnemosyne restored me.
Then I was as a tortured prisoner, and I could not flee
Mnemosynes most poignant throws, till peace revolved,
Settled, and as I sang myself some cheer, I saw you.
Then I plunged further, and came out in Camelot,
Where, going thanks to unchaste love, a whole, great state
Crumbled before me, urging ego before idea.
Then I was lost again, till in another vortex
I was consumed, and I was head of my small state.
That joy, so sharp, delightful, beautiful, then needed
To descend. For how do we know anything
But by comparison? For joy is joy in sorrow
Only, and sorrow, sorrow joy. Ah, even now
To think of it, although it feels a thousand years
Have gone between, it thrangs the heart like pointless cruelty,
Like urging death upon a child. Then all dissolved:
My stately vision, and this watery yard contained me.
Who then could say what this all signifies, except
The Delian diver, or the Sybil? All these scenes
And senses shifted like senseless dream.
Sp. Still far wide!

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And do you know if this is dream?

Ch. I know no more,
If dream worlds world, or world worlds dream.
Sp. Lets lighten this,
Let us explore. Now, it was not faith that made you doubt:
Rather doubt undercut your faith, was cruel with it
Id say, and cut its throat. And charity, being faithless,
Volved into bitter doubt.
Ch. Perhaps you have something there.
But what can I do? Alls done anyway, is it not?
What do I have to do now, but to curse and die?
Sp. O, contrary, experience has been rich with you! Yet doubt
Makes you refuse to prize that agent justly.
Ch. Go on.
Sp. Thanks to that greatness (I mean experience) you know now
What to veer from: are wary, by your scars and follies,
Of seeming goods.
Ch. Indeed. I am doubtful-skeptical,
Almost to incredulity at my own doubt.
Sp. And know that faith makes sound. You do not doubt faith,
Nor truth, nor beauty, nor the good, these strong foundations.
Faith in the strength of faith itself is faithful ground.
Settle this, build, one sees new marvels ravelling forth.
Ch. Suppose youre right. On what to do have I foundation?
Sp. The truth shall make you free. You having truth, it sues
That you have liberty, knowing the right and good
To be inevitable in activity.
Well, we cant be sitting here all day, plying commentary
On commentary. I hope that helps. Its nearly dawn:
Soon the days light will begin to run itself through
Your rooms broad windows, drawing you to chanting birds
Out from dream (cracking your eyes) towards me. Charles,
I wish you well.
Ch. Thanks to you, Spirit Hlderlinian.

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Epilogue

Highest, all powerful, benevolent good Lord:
Yours are the praises, glory, and the honour,
And every benediction.
To you alone, highest, all these convene,
And no-one worthy to bespeak your name, is.
Praised be you, Lord, with your creations all:
Specially master brother sol,
He who gives day and lumines us through him.
And he is well and radiant, great in splendour,
Of you (most high) ports he significations.
Praised be you, Lord, through sister Moon and all the stars,
Whom you have formed in sky with clearness, price, and beauty.
Praised be my Lord, through brother wind,
Through air, the clouds serenity, all weather,
Through whom your creations you give sustenance.
Praised be you, Lord, through sister water,
She whos so useful, humble, precious, and still-chaste.
Praised be you, Lord, through brother fire,
Through whom you enalluminate the night.
For he is pulchrous, strong, jocose, robust.
Praised be you, Lord, through sister mother earth,
She who sustains and governs and produces
Diversest fruits, coloured grasses and flowers.
Praised be you, Lord, through who forgive for love,
Who self-sustain infirmity and tribulation.
Blest (too) they who sustain themselves in peace,
For through you they (most high) receive their crowns.
Praised be you, Lord, through sister death corporeal,
Which force, no living thing can flee.
Sorrow, on who ends life in mortal error,
Blest whom she finds in your most sacred will,
For sequent death can wrack them with no evil.
Lauded and benedicted be you, Lord, and let us
Round you with thanks, our service, and humility.

FINIS.

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 SYNKRONOS

XXII. After-phaedra. An Easter Comedy

Pentru Leni Pintea-Homeag

i.

No mourning song so sweet and plangent as a gods:

Sing I therefore, if you should let me, sacred muse,
The sorrow of Artemis at the corpse of Virbius,
That loving-faithful, strong Hippolytus: not strong
Enough, alas, to duck the vasty gates of death,
The huge eternal power of necessity,
Nor full unshifting absolute (this wise then like all men):
Yet great enough was he to be belovd by
A god, far less from beautys eye, than her great mind,
In cleanness, royal grace, and nearness to the god.
So shall I treat, should it permitted me be, you to
Entreat, some scrap of, Cassiopeia, you: not, sure,
To spin Arachne-like some hundred-thousand lines
Of weary verse, but swift epillion, by whose grace
My purpose be to joy in this good godly tale.
It falls: one day when fame of Theseus and his son,
The jovial Virbius, had flown itself abroad,
Upon the aspirant shoulders of the four-flown winds
The new dishonour fell in Aphrodites ears:
That such a brat as he, she raged, so beautiful,
(As bred up numen-like to be my votary,
In the eternal scrine of fate, would be no shock,)
Now, contra-me, casts love to scorn for chastity,
Preferring rather that he bear the glistening bow,
Of deep-hued rosewood, by cold silver tipped, the buskin
Of tan and tawny hide, that dashes cross the wood,
Than desperate lovers trinkets, bright jewels, opals, one
To dear one love another, sharp perfumes, or sonnets
Artisnal and of beautiful proportion, who
Flatter the beauty and the clarity of all
Of their belovds. Bitterer than scorns this scorn,
And me irascs: Phaedra, then, offspring of the radiant
Sun, my scorns fore-spring, who discovered me and Mars,
Our amoury, fore all the onlook of the gods,
In Vulcans net
I now infect (no, interfect) with loves hard madness,

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En-Theseus-thuse, unrighteous make with indignation,

And long at last take my revenge upon this house.
Enough, here comes the chaste Hippolytus to palace. Ha:
Although he knows it not, the gates of hell lie open,
And todays light
Will be the last light
Ever to reach his eyes.
So sounded Aphrodites pity-scorning rage.
Phaedra then stepped to her sweet love-infection (truer
To say she was her own self-sickness) intimating
Her love, her hope, and sick despair of his requiting:
That ill-weighed word, the thou displacing you, he leaves,
Revolting at and derogating lust, low baseness.
Gone, he by moments missed the late returning Theseus,
Who, thrown to rage by quick belief with want of judgment,
Which judging not from knowing, claims to know without
Ground deeper than mere guessing, takes then to require
His mighty father, that the grandsire slay the son:
Where then this eyesore, sure not son to me, this wild
Hippolytus, distemperate, and disasters child?
O Dad, do you see this and not revenge? Flat sea,
Does there then bide no justice in the heavens to
Descend, while this stays unrepaid, the foamy waves lie
Equal, and stars rest sky-set as they did before?
Therefore I pray, O Father, vast, self-comprehending Neptune,
Lord of the (none full-knowing) deep, thus king of earth,
Which is not earth, but veiled almost for aye in sea,
Who, trident forth, with foamy beard, ride the plume waves,
Bearing in hand the fortune of each errant soul,
Sublimest barges, which, submerged, are but your badges:
Who hold prerogative to prove a hero, make
Indeed his deeds, so then those deeds pertain to you,
And aura you with praise. See that this wreckless son
Who rather more a blotch on fame of me and you is,
Than any substant quality in his own self,
Be atomised from off the earth, and all record:
Let (as his name foredooms) him by the horse be torn
Atwo: indeed (Father) make you his steeds fierce bulls,
And charge him down to atomy. Here I recall
Your vow to grant a wish of mine, without regard.
Father, perform it. So the sorrow-laden god,
Sealed in the bonds which even gods stand sealed within,

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Draws down from far the deep grey oceanic caves,

Where kraken dwell, and vast leviathan in sleep,
And too the two that bound the kin of Laocoon,
Whom killed, and then the father (Neptunes priest that year):
From past these drew he monstrous bull of land marine,
Ten times in greatness, ten in terror greater than
The Cretan bull, or Minotaur.
Enthused with godly rage, the bull precipitates:
Speeds up and up the watery way, splinters the surface
Of the glass waves, tumbling to the strand, just there,
Beside the horses of Hippolytus (the guiltless),
Who screeching run in consequence and -cordance to
The foamy image of the bull. The prince to govern,
And order bring to raging beasts as these, attempts,
But loses place in forces superseding his, and
Paying the cost of innocence, is torn asunder.

ii.

All from her silvery haunt, the moon, Diana viewed

This wrecky waste, all chaos-strewn across the still
Seafront, and blood-bespotted sands, still gold beneath
Such fatal accidence: and drew herself triune
Through high, and hellish grief: Phoebe from frigid moon,
In radiant argentine descending, Cynthia, her mount
Beside the holm-oak grove, footing light across gold-trim
Floors, fleet to Troezens sorrow-heavy sands: Lucina,
The supersensual eidos, beneficer to
All mortal entry in the world: so came these shattering
Along the ways, one bel-Diana bright embodied,
Where, seeing the formless corse of him, her hunter bold,
Valiant, high-belovd, chaster than heaven, shed
Bitterer tears (perhaps) than god ere mortal shed:
Sweetest, surprised Hippolytus! What treachery foul,
Or snakey crawling has foredone you? Upon justice
Falser than air esteemed and walked upon as ground,
Has my high Father let such woe within his world.
This worse-than-flood, none-lustring, greatness-hating act,
Condemning all at once all beauty, chastity,
Bravery sacred, to the cap of punishment?

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Where now your sturdy thigh, that ran not like the stag:
Not man, nor satyr, but something preternatural?
Wheres the youth, health, vitality, which did not bloom, but
Rather came bursting forth from your bright limbs?
And eyes, those lights that signalled out your perfect soul?
What this chaotic stuff, sense-free, this Superjanus,
That sickens more in thought than Saturns food profane?
(To that elusion I owe yet this woe, my life.)
Yet could you not, far dearer, nobler than a god,
Shake off subdeity, to duck your time and fate.
So spoke the goddess in her lovely plangency.
Such exequy announced, she wept and palled her front,
The goddess knees broke, lapsing on the dusty bed,
Whose sands flew up in veil about her ay-young tears,
Her mouth-enarching lines, and head downturned in sorrow.
This dust dispersed, if I may guess the way gods see,
She faintly apperceives through her periphery
The dolorous-sublime of Neptunes vast approach,
As breaks he forth from out his waves, thence disuniting
Slow, as his liquid form offslides for temporal flesh,
And shrinks himself proportion-wise, and up then grades
Sadly to her across the sands, up from sea-gates:
Sur-mortal niece, began the god, You know no god,
Not even Jove, who does all else, or near, can void
Necessity. Weep for my sake then, as I yours,
That sacred bond bound me to change with Theseus rage,
In this sad accident, for grandsons life, sires oath.
Just as life fades, so too lifes dreams, and lifes potentia,
Of all which this young man was view exemplary,
And sad aim, both, to fortune and necessity.
So spoke the oceans god to her, and she replies.
Do not commiserate, obscure sea, she raged.
Whore bloodied so: dull slave, and bitter-sour, will you
Be servile then to all decrees, save those you choose,
Loathing, to disregard? You speak of need, slight need,
But cared not for it when the weary-godlike liss
Sought but to rest his long-hurt bones at Ithaca.
I then necessity hate too, and scorn all law
Which casts no good in action. Yes, Jove gave me bow,
And liberty of wood, just as he gave me power,
Being moon, to sway your tides. With this to mind, how could
You disobey me? Loathe I then all law non-Jove,

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And hate the absolute (than even Neptune, colder).

So said she. And the oceans god spoke back to her.
Loathe the composition of this universe you may,
O lovely girl (of whom Id say, that love in you
Exceeds the wiser bounds that fit this stable world),
Yet what is is. And sadly gods love mortal things,
As mortals love the things forever put above them.
How in this lively constitution, yet so full
Of joys, in which delight remains replete, yet still
Feeling runs over bounds, and things exceed themselves:
Even a godly mind to know this, stumbles. And she:
O uncle: if you speak the truth (I think you do)
Then passion without sovreign, being sovreign here,
Needs no solicitation from your super-wisdom.
If what is is, then Im as I am, he as he,
And all your speech is empty chatter. So Ill act:
Give me this boy, your property in killing, mine
Now that he safely bound in death is. Taking hence,
His head Ill wash in pure, and so him-fitting stream,
Not in the treachrous salt of sea, and burial-for
Prepare him, calling to attend all woodland nymphs.
Sweet dews and liquid odours stell Ill round his corse,
And funerary rites with lamentations sing,
Find poet eager to do honour to magnificence,
And maids enrol in ritual fidelity,
Set tableau there, and have them come, splitting their hair,
All full of duty, who their wormwood-artemisia
Shall bring, to purify his melancholy grave,
Robbing Tellus to strew his grave with flowers, with
Pale primrose like his face, and harebells like his veins,
Where rose will bloom, and vines with laurel intertwine,
And thereabout depend, as tpetion to honour.
So leave me uncle, unvast ocean, to my grief:
Of all this fault you are the origin, for you,
(Tell, if I dont speak truth) first sent the bull to shore:
That fatal bull, and anima to all this grief.
Do you discredit me? I know the chronicles.
Europa, daughter to Angenor and Thelassa,
Tricked, borne away by Jove as bull, whose rose-sweet breath
Seduced, or sleeplike hypnotised her,
This maiden, stolen Crete-wards cross thAegean stretch,
Made, by my Father, Minos: brother-half, half-alien,

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Which latter half, sheer ambition was. Wilier

Even than Ulisses was he in this, for he
Deceived (albeit of gods the first to be deceived),
A god, my lord, and uncle, you: for when Cretes King,
Asterios, passed, Minos sought power, found opposition,
Recoursed then to deception. So his deity
In order to substantiate, he swore all that
Should pass his lips in speech would hold as good, as true.
Then confounded he your conceptions too, dear Uncle,
Promising to, though he gave nothing, sacrifice
Whatever gift youd next send up from the salt-bright waves.
You gave him then, most curious act, even to me,
A fellow-god, and my mind, fellow-deity,
This bull: a bull of such great beauty as destroyed
The little will of Minos, as, truth me admitting,
It would of any who loved beauty more than goodness.
And in that place he placed another for the rites,
Which you, years onward seeing, raged in your new knowledge,
And flamed up vengeance in the mind of the bull, goading
Till he grew terror, to be killed by Hercules
In seventh labour (who freeing, the bull then grew
Itinerant again, till Theseus seventh killed it).
A gentler mind would by this have been sated,
Indeed, surpassing every need in reason, will,
Would have declared, Too much, and thrown some late-
flowered grace
To salve these wounds upon the states, and states sad souls.
Yet you, the now so sorrowful, as then so ruthless,
And evermore capricious, Venus-with conspired
To breed in Pasiphe (costing her her peace)
That strange desire, with this great raging bull to breed.
So she, as foul calls foul to be, desire called craft:
Pasipha that master-builder, Daedalus,
Called on to make her venal instrument, as fact
As murder. In she clomb, then, and much as I loathed
The meal the eagles had upon the pregnant hare
At Aulis, still disgraceful more, this climb into
Her own desire. Thus was the Minos-bull brought forth.
I put then, uncle, that this bullish curse is you.
You being the evil here, why do you not depart?
Why are you not more silent, why not be less bad?
So sang this indignation through the goddess lips.

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What against such oration could be said in Neptunes

Defence, when all the accusations stemmed from, were,
The truth? With thoughts the godly conscience put to wrack,
He, making flat, perfunctory utterances of propitiance,
Retired to sea: whereon to slight smile turns the woe
Of the sweet Artemis, whose beauty happys like
Some transcendental form, not single issue, of
A flower. Virbius, she sang, adopting lyric,
The funny twists of fate, which men are born to, you
Are soon to be the benefiter of. For Neptune,
My foolish uncle, still has not perceived, nor, far
As I can see, has any god but me, that life
Still somewhat clings within your deathly parts, and can
Be brought to some new mode of life yet sweeter, though
Animate hunters games, and physic accident
Must lie without your purview now. Come, Ill you gather,
And port you to the healer: not my brother, but
Asclepius, who on my asking shall with herbs
Revivify you, whereupon Ill steal you in
A veil of cloud unto that sacred place, which by
The ones who lief the book, is known as Eden, but
Which gods refer to as Adonis Garden, which,
As has been heard, the proton-seminary is
Of everything which segues to the corporal world
And is the whither all which, withered, then returns.
So Kronos with his scythe may take a few here, there,
But stows them there each time to life renew, wherefore
Kronos is ruled by Kairos, and, deep mystery
Reveals, that these two hide, in their disparity,
Parity, that these two are one, which one we name
Synkronos: he the god who of timely fabric is,
And rules the interchange of thing and thing, from small
To great. I have looked into him today, and he
Has orchestrated all, has all composed, so that
The will of vicious love, and chastest honour once,
And the same time, may be requited, and has split
Indeed, truths stuff itself (which is times child) in two,
Creating now two truths: one which wends way to Venus,
The dark-eyed, moveless-willed, littoral reckless goddess,
Concerning satisfaction of her pride: and one,
CHARLES EAGER

To us, sweet Virbius, two times a man, which we

Alone of all immortals, mortals, privy are to.
Come let us part, you now near deity: the design
Is set, and time awaits, our story to resolve.
So sang the goddess to the listning corse of Virbius.
Then the goddess wraps him in unknowing cloud,
And steals him to that healer way:
Who stands in grove all laurelled and long-gowned,
As Artemis descends, and to his sight presents
The clothy cloud effacing to reveal his parts:
Asclepi, I bear here within my arms the fragments
Of a boy whom death now tries usurping on,
Who though could not be thought so from this wrecky waste,
Was in his life so near and tentative towards
Our godly state, and suffrer of the numen-will
Of blank necessity, and blanker grandsir Neptune,
And so to me devoted, that I bring him here
To you, to heal him. If you list to my entreaty,
Tell filthy death with your sweet herbs, he has no right
To crouch on this fair life-locale, who sur-prized is
As purest by the purest of the gods, Diana,
Whod hymn me so: Follow, my hunters, singing, follow!
Bright lights brought forth for us to praise her, bright Diana,
Heavenly ouranian, and offspring of high jovial Zeus!
Artemis careful, present, us-interessed:
Lady, lady, most awful, and issue of Zenos:
Hail, hail, daughter Latonas, Artemis! Zeuss,
Lovelier than all many maids: who in vast heaven
Dwell, noble-fathered, in the polychrysine house
Of Zeus. Hail, yea, loveliest, loveliest of all Olympus!
As gods love love, I love this boy, would have him well.
Such was her to-the-healer suit. And he to her:
His fame, my lady-goddess of far-sighted aim,
Has stretched to hymning of him even to my ear: which,
Yearning at the roster of his merits, I feared,
Knowing the godly spend nor long nor peaceful span
Within this lifely realm we oversee, for deity
Being so absolute, eternally distends from
The tractless mesh of imperfection wrung in life.
Such is the way. Yet it is pain to see bright youth
Throwing aside its dynamis in overzeal:

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So say I, who am old. Necessity and Neptune

Were but the doors made by the charging of his errors.
Still Ill repair, although the bodys done, the spirit,
Reanimate him once again, though something stiller.
To do so it shall be my joy. So said the god, who
Applies his charms and gentle medicining powers:
That in the gloam, the parts of Virbius glom to one
Which in the bright mysterious none could introspect,
And issues thence Hippolytus conglomerate,
Remanned Hippolytus, transfigured to a flower.
Diana brings him off to joyous paradise,
That fairest, most capacious which invention natures,
The garden of Adonis, where all flowers by which
She beautifies herself great nature hither fetches.
This the first seminary is, of all things, which
Are born, then live and die, planted in old rich soils
And walled in either side by iron once, then gold:
The place is fronted by a double gate, which stands
Golden and fresh once, then the other dried and old.
Here Genius is the porter: clamour souls by him,
Requiring that he them with fleshly cloth enfurls,
To let them in the corporal world, to live and know,
Which as he likes and fate agrees to, he assents,
Clothing and sending forth till they return
By hinder gate. Some thousand years replanted there,
They issue once again into the changeful world,
And like a wheel they run around from old to new.
Thereto there is no gardener, for each grows in
Accordance to prime natures word, and logic grace;
Nor waters need, since timeless moisture they imply.
Infinitude of shape and form there dwells, in known
And yet unknown diversities, the store of which
Although in ceaseless use, is never once diminished.
From substance-chaos beings self collects, both matter
And feature-form, puts body on, steps into life.
So-being substance bides eterne: for when life fades,
Along with form, these are but changed, and substance stays,
Altering only outward dress with each new hour,
Scribed as it is in nature, substance so to change.
Within this haven dwells scythe-swinging Time, who cuts
All goodness, illness too, and glory downward brings,
Subjection-unto-pity free as Time remains.

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Yet seeing fair things marred, the gods to pity bend:

Though all decays in time, and to its end still runs.
Were Time not here, each thing would have immortal joy,
Plenty and pleasure, love (from envy free), full flowing.
Within the mind of such a nearly paradise,
There rests an arbour on the summit of a mount,
Composed of myrtle trees and yet unpierced by sun,
Nor wracked by angry winds. Such set-in-stillness place,
Made and preserved by inkling of the trees themselves,
Retains, with diverse flowers, lovers transformed of yore:
Here Hyacinth, Narcissus, Amaranthus flower,
Here both Adonis and Amintas dwell, and now to
Their stock Diana adds her Virbius with this prayer:
Here from the envy of the Stygian gods, who hate
Our love, Hippolytus, I you conceal: albeit
You subject to mortality once were, yet now
You are no more, in mutability remaining
Eterne and, like Adonis, father to all form:
Therefore needs must you live, who living give to all.
Live then here in eternal bliss, and fear no more
Bullish grotesque, nor ire of power, nor ruthless need;
My best for now. I visit shall as things succeed.
So sang the goddess. Veneremur, et finis.

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XXIII. An Optation

Let a man complete his days in good

Works, and let the sacred breath, the Athem,
None restrain, take music for his tutor
Let who cares for good, being so temperate
Full of order, and natural proportion.
Good his motif, call to motion, that
When all motions cease, good then sate him
In his final thoughts, and these last thoughts go
Specting back on good, consider, smiling.

XXIV. Envoy

So this your worlds first view, our Synkronos,

Written out in haste: may then your readers
Excuse your faults, and love what little gems
In coarse casements they can find: and may
They see, although failed beauty here or there,
Goodness strived in every line composed,
And truth was always chasing after both.

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Postface

It was breakfast time and I had unashamedly turned a blind eye to

porridge, as one tends to do when one likes to enjoy things. How
do you like your eggs? I queried my girlfriend, unsuspecting of
her inadvertently charming response. I like it when you crack
them into the pan. You let the white do what it does, and then,
uh, I guess you leave the yolk alone too. Thats how I like them.
The rational part of me (often symbolised as an unpersuasive blob,
laden with warts and perpetually clinging to a severe precipice)
in its unbending lust for efficiency and succinctness felt relatively
swindled of those fifteen seconds. But the rest of me (also blob-
like but with a penchant for neckties) couldnt help but adore the
over-description and much preferred that particular answer to the
efficient but boring answer, fried. It was this little incident that
sprung to the front of my mind when I read May-Lied. De Syncrono.

Nine months bring forth a child;

In five, then, how bring forth
Sur-mortal verse? The good
Its very self must thanked be
For all the depth of five:
That three threes nine give, yet
With only two fives I
Reach into ten, whose fruit,
Being exsculpted quincunx,
I joy at.

Exsculpted quincunx alone was enough to tickle a nerve so forcefully

that it graduated into an organ and began trying to process such a

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fantastic yet sincere phrase. Never has a point been so eloquently

lindy-hopped around as in this verse; the way in which the words
are coupled, tripled, even quincunxed together is enthralling and
chocolately and indulgent and more-ish. The csura, the rhetorical
questions and mathematical workings out; it all seems excessive,
and yet, totally welcomed and somehow absolutely necessary.

This of course was only the first thought that arrived, and I
know myself well enough not to trust my initial thought, nor the
following three. I attacked this particular poem a number of times
before I realised that the beauty doesnt solely lie in its charming
and unapologetic indulgence, rather, that it, like many other
poems in this collection, is self-aware, conscious of its progression
as it progresses, pleasingly rhythmic and multi-layered with
significances, implications, wordplay and a spectrum of remarkable
references. It feels as though the meaning (should I be so crude
as to call it that) of these poems, has been baked into a five tiered
cake, and at our leisure we have been invited to chomp through
buttercream frosting and strawberry jam, gradually understanding
the flavour and increasingly becoming fulfilled. Without any
glimpse of clich or routine, each poem is peppered with a conceit
or an ending that glows subtly with importance. Theres no such
thing as a single serving sentiment here; the final lines and stanzas
have that gentle but perpetual kind of significance, the kind that
gets comfy three rows back in your subconscious.

I darent have a favourite in such a wonderful and varied collection

of poetry, but if one were to plunge into prejudice Id have to jump
feet first into Voces Intimae Preliminary Study for The Way, in which
the heart and head have a passionate duel. The words and their
execution, of course, relentlessly beautiful, but the scene itself is
one we can all see eye to eye with; internal conflict, each opponent
with sound, convincing arguments, so much so that it births
severe unrest as we continue to arrive at no conclusion. Such a
satisfying, gorgeous and perhaps humorous moment is it then

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that the narrator steps into the discussion and heroically demands
that they, the heart and head, must harmonise should the poetry
collection continue. I rarely grin whilst reading lest the people in
my near vicinity begin to wonder from where I have escaped, but
the conceit of this poem not only demands harmony from itself,
but a smile from the reader, who, having vicariously experienced
each persuasive end of the conflict, is handed a nice hot creamy
bowl of resolution. This particular part is also a terrific example
of the attractive vein of cohesion that pulses through the collection
and occasionally palpitates magnitude. At the end of this poem

We cannot all the length

Of Synkronos have you
Like two strings each mistuned,
That when I set the bow
Some songy double note
To stop, screech, rend, and falter,
And tear music to sound.

and later

CHARLES.
Youre right! Here it is. Good Lord! Did I have an extra finger when I
played it
before? Look at the fourth bar.

ILEXIA.
Fool, do you know music? If you put the bottom string down a tone,
those notes are an easy grasp.

A simple relation, but so charged with meaning; instrument

strings being manipulated to form congruousness and clarity, at
first as a metaphor for compromise between head and heart, and
secondly as a humourous critique of complexity and the ease with
which one can dilute it should one know how to bend the rules
(or strings).

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How desperately I wish to quote the final poem Envoy given its
perfection, its sincerity, the self-referential little gem that it
undoubtedly is but I shant and cant. Its a tiny piece of art that
exists exactly where it should, at the end of this collection, and
though I wish not for you to overlook everything previous, or even
look forward to it as such, just know that come this final reflection
you will have journeyed up, down and through a wealth of wit,
dry humour, decorous, elegant wordplay and honest accounts of
beauty, only to be met with a faultless conclusion.

Isaac Worthington, Poet

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