Lines for my neighbour's wife

So do you love
yet
the one you live with now?

Or do you
let
your less-young heart
hang on the gaze of --- whose eyes?

Who is it then
that
has you now, where
when the last reach of pleasure is past, comes memory?

There, where all arrogance,
all covenants
dissolve --- as though
the flesh was constructed for this very dissolution?

As though the soul only learned to vow
so as to lose itself
more lovingly
in the muteness & the brightness of its ecstasy?

The Pious Origins of Nietzsche's Immoralism

is the title of my new review-article, which can be viewed & downloaded at

http://nietzschecircle.com/AGONIST/2009_07/reviewFraserBensonDusen.html

To see other contributions to this issue of The Agonist, which features an essay by my supervisor, James Luchte, see

http://nietzschecircle.com/agonist.html

Odysseus alone

I have slipped the cords that hold us to life; I have heard the siren-song in full & there was none to lash me to the mast; I dove --- I beat the waves with my fists

I seek that deathly song I heard in life --- that murderesses' aria, that ravishing alleluia

I have heard it! & there was none to cord me, to bind me to the mast --- for this, I dove

Not all men hear the song, & not all are free, or alone --- but the man that is free, & hears, & can shudder at beauty, can be wounded with love --- this man will not last

He will dive & swim to the girls that sung love in his blood

This life cannot keep me chained to the oars. This drink has lost its sweetness & its strength; it has ceased to inebriate, whereas the song ---






8 Calle Melendez, Salamanca
vii.2009

The last dawn of this new day is past

The newest hours uprise & strive, suspend
& last into our hearts, upon our eyes,
within-against our skin & hands

Unmoved as water in a vase,
moved-unmoved as flesh-pale petals
peel into the light

Drastic as the sea, driven as the waves,
sudden as the spume & foam that
pearl a leaden shore













put-down in Somerset,
May 2008

A deacon sinks his weight into the rope,
the clapper swings & a church-bell peals

I pull the sheets back from us, turn into
her as she curls toward a ringing wall

There is light outside & light within --- it
hangs in the curtains & shines on our eyes

With her lips half-closed, breath slow,
I sink toward her neck & below

Which is holding her, which is Sunday,
which is calm --- in the last light of dawn















"In the last light of dawn"
for Ornella Valat
29.i.2009

On the lash : lines for O.

We woke & fucked & kissed
the light that woke us,
we kissed this very day she
woke to in my arms --- but
this is lost, forgot, ---
is gone & come again.

Her lips! --- her lips is
very life, all kissed with light
--- a swung-low, woken light that
shakes us out of sleep to see
the swooning loss
still lives in-with us all.

& yes, she is this all --- this
she that swings so chariot-like,
so low with-in my arms.

This her-woke flesh I very am is
all, still all, & time-like
lit with her is lost-forgot,
is gone --- not gone but
hard-as-hell still loves, still
pain-like wakes & drinks her in
& moans ---

yes, moans! while curse-like
swoons the dawn upon a
light that drives us without-doors
to live the day
that rides us down to dark,
where all is lost-forgot,
new-gone,
into her swooning arms.

& so we sink & come again,
swung-low,
into the lightless chariots of night.













A formless sextina
put-down at the K-head,
night of 14.ii.2009

Londres

C'est la damned vie.

The solitude this hour is sweet, & the madness I suffered in love is not risen or lowered -- is sheer-level with life. Eye, hand, heart, blood, sex --

I am beyond this desire, this hour -- & this beyond is a calm, a coolness, a peace I owe to every girl-child I have seen or held or taken. They have given me this peace -- this last-flower of all their wills & lives & half-given loves.

La gloire -- this new-perishing of desire. I pass on -- while the sky inclines toward dusk.

Stanzas

Light-struck I hung on her
like silver on a mourners neck
my love---dead necklaces
of memory, hard bracelets
of desire


I loved her visage, her mirror image
& the light I salvaged from her
lead-coloured eyes while I
held her, like a chalice
or a child

draft of a draft: The Heathens' Rage

Is reason alone baptiz'd?
are passions then the heathens of the soul? -- Young



Man-born is heathen. Flesh is heathen-flesh,
breath-spoke is heathen breath. Bride is heathen,
breast is heathen—womb & tongue & flank is
heathen. The bed o’ love is heathen-bed. The daughter
& her sobbing cry, the daughter with her new-born
eyes—heathen in her nerves and bones! Her scream-
raised, sensing gasp is godless as the world!

How godless is the eye? how godless is its light?
Is not the nervature clean from the womb? is her eye not
open & pure?

But her hand is born bloodied! arm bloodied! rib-cage
& face all drenched in blood! gleem’d smooth with shrieks’
sweat in a hard-mother’d pain! We must wash her—surely!
—this shuddering daughter! Sure this babe must be
stripped of that ominous stain—the black blood of her coming!

Black blood of the womb & its waters’ releasement!
black blood of a love-bed, red blood of shed seed!

STILL STORM

Such love as I have
& such hate

Such bone shapen hands
& liquid void eyes
suspended in the light

While the city grinds its teeth

Such I have
with this blood beaten heart
& its silence alone

Where comes the Alone

Follow your saint

We descended into hell with locked eyes in dawns light in a glass shattered flat --- to the end of all love

& loves end is real Hell

I cursed & she wept --- but enchained in the sheets of a futureless bed our souls heard release & we rose, flaming, up the stations of the dead toward a watery light

& skin still flaming, toward a watery light, we still rise









'Follow your saint' -- saint is slang for a lover -- is the first phrase of a song in Thomas Campion, A Book of Airs, 1601

Ours

Veiled freedom-- & the veil may hide chains.