VOYNICH CONSEQUENCES II

For text and illustrations, please see VOYNICH CONSEQUENCES I



Oulipo Exquisite Corpse from Psychocartography on Vimeo.

RIP SEAMUS HEANEY

Residual Condition by Boo Saville

BOGLAND

We have no prairies 

To slice a big sun at evening-- 

Everywhere the eye concedes to 

Encrouching horizon, 

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye 

Of a tarn. Our unfenced country 

Is bog that keeps crusting 

Between the sights of the sun. 

They've taken the skeleton 

Of the Great Irish Elk 

Out of the peat, set it up 

An astounding crate full of air. 

Butter sunk under 

More than a hundred years 

Was recovered salty and white. 

The ground itself is kind, black butter 

Melting and opening underfoot, 

Missing its last definition 

By millions of years. 

They'll never dig coal here, 

Only the waterlogged trunks 

Of great firs, soft as pulp. 

Our pioneers keep striking 

Inwards and downwards, 

Every layer they strip 

Seems camped on before. 

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. 

The wet centre is bottomless. 

-Seamus Heaney

This is my favourite poem by Heaney, for the lines Butter sunk under/ More than a hundred years / Was recovered salty and white. I have never seen the bogland he describes, but somehow it stirs a deep ancestral memory, buried like the bodies- butter sunk- that are fished out by our pioneers. My ancestors were peat cutters.

Three years ago wandering east London in a mushroom haze I happened upon an exhibition by the artist Boo Saville at Trolley Gallery on Redchurch Street (sadly no longer there). The title of that exhibition was Butter Sunk, and consisted principally of biro drawings of bog men (see above).

A year or so later and I happened to be at Spitalfields market, no too far from Redchurch Street, traded a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus for P.V Glob's The Bog People, an amazing catalogue of immortal remains.

In ...Sisyphus Camus addresses the principal of absurdity: namely our search for meaning in a Universe that is apparently meaningless. We all desire immortality, yet we all die. After death most of us remain as some kind of shadow, a slip of memory for a time at least, until ultimately we are forgotten. For men and women like Heaney (and there are but few) their work survives them, long after their flesh has withered. The bog people attained a different kind of immortality: their deeds, words and names are long forgotten but their flesh remains.

OPPENHEIMER/HIROSHIMA/THE LAST SONG

68 years ago Hiroshima became the first city to be targeted by an atomic weapon.

The Last Song

I am a shadow on the wall.

My memoir- that you read now-

Is but a product of someone else’s imagining

But my story is true.

It is a love story…

…or, rather, a love song…

           When you opened your mouth

            It was not words that came out

It was music:

A melody, pitched above the baritone drone

Of propellers and engines overhead,

A melody pitched beneath

Shrill klaxons,

The air raid sirens.

I took you in my arms and embraced you.

It was music- not words-

And your smile filled the sky

And all was saturated in white light.

A moment.

A moment passed, imperceptibly.

The white light- a flash-

Frozen

And there was nothing but you

You and I

Bigger than war

Bigger than war and death and God.

But what I saw was not you before me.

Just an image burned on my retina.

                

                I was clutching at a shadow when the shockwave hit

                Turning my bones to dust and ash.

___ 

Agnostic Mystery Cabaret

Back in 2009 I completed a visual studies course as part of my degree. Essentially an art foundation, the course culminated with a final project called Worlds in a Book. Inspired by Book Art the brief was to create a book (either afresh or by modifying an existing text) that could be considered a beautiful artefact.

I think that was the gist of it, anyway... as you can see, I did not quite manage to create something beautiful.

The concept of La Gabia (Catalan for The Cage) was the impenetrability of art, especially when other languages are thrown into the mix. The text of PRePOSICIONS INDECENTS i LOCoCIONS PERVERTIDES by Laia Martinez i Lopez was cut up into its component parts (i.e. the individual poems) and transcribed by hand onto small pieces of paper by non-Catalan speakers before their imprisonment within tiny index cards held inside a cage.

Get it?

Laia and I have been friends for nine years or so, having met in the Old Dairy in 2003 back when I was the licensee. I considered that the content of what was then her most recent work ideal for this project. Of course, since it was all in Catalan no-one would understand it anyway but...well, its as much about what cannot be seen as what can be seen, I think.

Laia had put a great deal of work into  PRePOSICIONS INDECENTS i LOCoCIONS PERVERTIDES;  I felt a little uncomfortable taking it from her and using it in a mere undergraduate project. So we agreed a poetry exchange, and I hastily threw together a selection of the (what I considered to be) best poems I'd written between up until then.

It was called Agnostic Mystery Cabaret, and today i found a copy. A bit of personal archaeology, some of which I'd like to share.

Jobsearch

Give me a list of names

And a simple process

Combining different procedures,

Starting and ending at the screen

In between

Some walking, some thinking…

Occasionally I would like to go into a basement

And fetch something antiquarian from a high shelf.

I will use a set of steps on casters.

Can it be a wooden box?

Might I blow away the dust and smell camphor?

If there were some things in need of cataloguing

That too I would enjoy.

Would it be okay if I worked alone?

My department of one

A mystery to all:

Yet, respected and valued. A few people my acknowledge me

In the cafeteria

But only the security guard knows my name.,

Bidding me goodnight as I leave my place of work.

I would prefer it if he were of African extraction.

Every now and then I will receive messages from the past

Via the vacuum tube…

It would be an interesting hobby

To collect them,

A rare break from the drudgery of my appointment.

Not long before my retirement

A local news crew may wish to make

A feature out of me and my hobby.

In my dotage I will find this quite baffling,

But will endear myself to them and the viewers at home.

God once gave me walls to paint, but not any more.

If you have anything similar to what I have just described,

I am ready for an immediate start.   

I'm keen to post some more but only if I can find/ produce suitable images to go with them. Until then, cheerio.