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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