Monday 8 February 2016

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 66



Seconds of Arc




1. Romance   


In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein,

the shallow breath of weather at the pane

reminds us that the rain

connects the creature to a flawed design.



The lightning marks the castle’s silhouette

chiaroscuro in the distance, Sturm

und Drang, each charging therm

the measure of a sutured etiquette.



In 1822, her husband drowned

near Viareggio— that Regency

buck‘s failed anatomy

a driftwood, fired, the stormy beach aground

with voices waiting for a history,

the last, held breath insistent ghosts surround.




2. At Greenwich


James Thornhill’s frescoes in the Painted Hall,

of William and Mary attended by

the Virtues, deify

the Dutch— as with Wren, Baroque revival;



the sleaze of papal iconography

corrupting English tastes with porticoes,

domes, turreted echoes

of Rome, the Palazzo Barberini.



At Greenwich, the requirement is for space

precisely public, architecture, grand

beyond the contraband

of Catholic styles shipwrecked here. The place

informs our stubborn streak, our ampersand

of Thames, the tide’s familiar typeface.




3. Stone of Heaven


In 1778, Qianlong

the emperor transported stone, a jade

of such dimensions trade

in silicates surpassed pure gold’s frisson.



From Burma to Peking, three years— each day

the hundred horses, fei cui coolies and

the giant wagon’s grand,

mad prize, confirmed the dynasty’s decay.



This currency of needles, whores, and Aids

replaced the necklace green, the image at

odds— powdered, mutton-fat,

imperial… mined villages. The grades

each equal the addiction, consummate,

a frieze of eunuchs fixed in waxy shades.




4. Love and Its Exceptions


From 1900, Yeats said, no one drank

absinthe or went mad, no one committed

suicide; no deathbed

confession, no Second Empire franc.



A mutant spider, spinning capture threads

without the orb web’s gluey trap, invites

extinction. Darwin cites

the phenotype of dud arachnids—



selects against the trait accordingly.

This island life downloads a weathervane

of storm fronts. Chatelaine

winds check love’s languid slide towards entropy,

each species-whisper urgent in the grain,

each growth ring’s sulking singularity.




5. Mission


A thousand miles of swollen rivers, nights

anopheles selected, blood-plump, drained,

the zeal of God contained

within the fever’s pinched, red burst of rights.



The bare, bruised face of Christ recidivist,

the climb to heaven rung by rotten rung

to find instead this gung-

ho, howling dark predates the Eucharist.



In 1932, an Oxford First

in Greats meant Balliol, the Master’s Lodge

and stumps on Sundays— stodge

and tea. This Gold Coast underwrites cloudburst

swarms. Cannibals confess, a priestly dodge

gone native, over unnamed falls headfirst.




6. Near the Tannhauser Gate


Returning here to morning rain, film set

FX of weather on the moons of Mars,

the tease of isobars

colliding sparked an alien regret;



beyond the crust of galaxies, aimless

void: deepspace scratchy fusion, not the dealt

ace the Van Allen belt

obliges, light years from the last address.



The end of suffering is elsewhere. Why

praise rank fluids, fragile anatomy,

the intermezzo key?

My life was made to measure… rogue AI

the image of the brute, my own ennui

a random trait electrons dignify.




7. Transformer


From Lindisfarne in 633 AD, St Cedd

sent monks to our peninsula to build

a chapel— brothers, skilled

with stone they squared to raise the heathen dead.



The bastard mix of Late Germanic, po-

faced Roman kitchen gods fared second-best,

the tribes converting, blessed

before the cleansing Christ ex nihilo.



Along the coast, the Blackwater runs hard

to Pyefleet channel, and the years collapse

into the shore trees. Maps

of heaven lead us here. The blue petard

illuminates the Nazarene, ruined apse,

these salty ghosts beyond our disregard.

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