Saint John

THRU THE VEIL: UNIVERSITY ESSAY REVISITED

The starry heavens above me
The moral law within
So the world appears
So the world appears
- Nick Cave, ‘There is a Kingdom’

In Mimesis, Erich Auerbach explores the incontinent potency of the “image” within its “mould”. To Milton, the apparition of the World, for all his righteous confidence in his Art, is a daunting spectacle, the ore of his theodicy, and one which manifests itself in his poetry in problematic ambivalences which, like the fallen residents of Pandemonium, are not to be housed with – or in – comfort, not by even the most stylistically-Grand or apparently-Godly of jelly moulds. Dante’s image of Hell, the subject of Auerbach’s discussion, is, like Milton’s, a visionary expression of fallen-ness by an earthbound poet, who, reaching for the heavens in the knowledge of suffering, must violate the bounds of the self-imposed artifice intended to frame it.

Fifty years after Auerbach, the work of Nick Cave, contemporary song’s prime mover in post-Blakean erotic theology, offers a modern, lyrical analogue to Milton’s seventeenth-century plight. After years of pursuing the phantom of Milton’s God  from Australia, through the opiated backalleys of post-punk Berlin, to London, Cave’s 1996 album The Boatman’s Call is a culminatory text showing with a new clarity the bare bones unearthed by his personal mission, apparently unsheltered by the opaque ironies of the Blues genre and his previously characteristic Southern Gothic roleplay. If Blake could say of Milton “he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it”, and Dylan of himself “Yippee! I’m a poet, and I know it / Hope I don’t blow it”, then Nick Cave, with the literary confidence of growing up listening to Cohen and Dylan and reading Milton and Dante, knows it all: “I found God and all His Devils inside her”

SHRiNE

CHEMICALIA by Michelle Connolly

03 May 2009 at 15:42

“Mum, can I die please?” Is all she can say; she’s Benedrine-laced
A perfect thought from a hypnotist that ought to save her defaced
With blue misery she prostrates before the porno
‘Want it like that again baby?’ She said she swore no
“Burn me in some see-thru crematorium; you’ll see what will flame faster
After that in memoriam you can erect some altar from alabaster
And use it as an ashtray, decorate it with stubbed Golden Vag and consecrate it please
With empty ‘I love you’s, photos of my faded tattoos
And my shitty drawing of poor Kitty Genovese”

MYTHiCAL BEASTS

CALViN & SUSAN

WATTERSON

THE EASiEST TASK

HENRY

THE DAY WHEN UNCLE WROTE THE DREAM

In my book I wrote a dream
that grew, projected on a screen
I dipped my brush in ink and drew
a little world, in green and blue.

I wrote a song for them to sing
in counterpoint, my men of string
with matchstick oars: they kept the time
in animation, line by line.

I salvaged them a land of gold
near-mint / as-new / as good as sold
(I built their country out of stones
upon a bed of tiny bones).

I taught them life!  I gave them laws!
and in each headpiece – filled with straw –
I moulded minds out of the air
to bear a little thought, and prayer.

Again!  I stabbed my pen and drew
banners of crimson streams and blue.
I flagged the trails.  I ground the rocks
to clad the skyline building blocks
(for nephews, nieces, ever green,
who pledged allegiance to the screen)

The coins that in my pockets rolled
flattened their eyes and arched their souls:
the metal slid through slots of steel
to drive the motors and the wheels
which raised the towering walls of light
(to seize the day and free the night)
with tangled wires
I dammed the flood
of fear which shook my flesh and blood –
my nephews, nieces, ever green,
who lived to polish the machine;
to raise the stakes, insure the gain,
revere the lady with the flame
(that matchbox emblem “LIBERTY”
from antique realms across the sea) –

the lights went down.
I almost laughed
till canvas sank across my path
the colours ran corroding through
the frame that sheared the strings in two
the counterpoint became a shout
as shining cogs exploded out
destroyed the pristine marble floor
laid bare my world’s vibrating core
a howling cistern filled with flies
the blackened lungs the sunken eyes
choked out – at once – a thousand cries.

Yet, still the author of their trust,
on silent blanket plains of dust,
with heavy lids I faced the night
and, with my tears, began to write.

11/9/02

EXERCiSE CREEKSEA

FOR MNH (after SPiRiTUAL SANTAE)

it’s four in the morning

lest it fall, let it
fall to
rest

let it fall
then to
rest

as & when
it falls