Myths of Origin

Oh, but they were there, and I heard the voices like feet crushing clouds into blue wine, I saw their hair brush the snow and their mouths hanging open, vomiting light into the earth

(—I have made you mad;

And even with such-like valour)

No, I will not believe it, I am still whole, I am still myself. They came to the mountain, the mountain accepted, I accept. The Verses came—staccato notes, and they spilled over the peaks like the ecstasy of caribou, they sand and spoke and it is only that you cannot hear

(—Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices)

But where do I achieve these slashing words, slantwise through my mind like a magician’s swords into the magic box, terrible and alien—from what black place could they issue if there is no beforethis to remember and reanimate? I could not say, oh me, but I must be I the central I, the lodestone, the trinity, the tripartite division! I carry the Compass, I know north from northwest (north lies the head, the kingspiece, the red screech of brain; northwest lies the right hand which writes the left hand knows not, amphibious inscription on the bones of a homo erectus with arms full of flint, still etching the cave Wall overandoverandover—

(—Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.)

with a fatal buffalo, dressed in his finest brown and white)

I know this, I see it, the body becomes the lodestone and I, oh, I, have become the Stone itself, turning in a grinding orbit around a flaming sun which is also myself, dying my skin with the blood of that beforetime hunting party, glutted out onto the slick glacier, around and around, faster and faster and something is breaking in me faster than it is being built, something is splintering, offbreaking, the vivisection of confession before their ravening altars, evisceration in the rays of that whistling sun, and, oh, the sky is opening and I am dying because it is growing so within, roots bursting out of my mouth, the thick rootandbranch of the Stone roars out in a beam of white, and I am breaking, breaking, breaking

(—The clouds methought would open and show riches)

Oh, what do you see in the sky, high up high where I cannot go, trapped am I here among the turn styles and empty way stations? Rice-fields planted by centaurs speaking all those scriptures I have heard as the caravan embraced the mountain? Are they there where you can touch their watery crop? The jasmine-blossom of the moon, fat and morose above me, eating the stars like escargot, popping each spinning pearl-shell into her milky mouth? What do you see that I cannot, I Possessed and ground under by those old smoking wheels within wheels bearing in their spear-spokes

(—which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount

Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I,

all wound with adders who with cloven tongues do hiss me

into)

madness.

Oh, I and all under the gallery of twisting night, what is becoming me? I see your outline, the macaque-shape sliver of gold against the grey-lit Road, and you cannot help me, cannot give me the redemption of nothingness, the benediction of emptiness. You suffer near me, I suffer inside this woman-skin, the shade of fire-salamanders, and both of us dread the night when I am not precisely what I am. But here in the dark that brings delirium, I am open and beating, my whole body become seven-chambered heart, aorta like a rope of rubies, like a red, red Road. I can feel him coming, the Monstrum, hinge by jamb. And in terror I approach the Beauty that dances the steps of annihilation, the Maenad-self with the blood of cats dripping off her Rosicrucian lips so that—

(—when I waked,

I cried to dream again.)

18

“Oh, Darlingred, what do you see when you are lost?”

Out of my skull I blearily watch the world detached and departed. I drink from a fountain with a Minotaur pouring water from a maiden’s beheaded corpse, as though the Labyrinth were creating itself to taunt me. No comet-track of the frog-kicks of voices whispering from before, no sprinting ideation, no speck of camel-hair remains. We are moving, expecting to make time against the morphing Path, expecting impossible things and racing against the night which will bring only progress towards mania and fire-vertigo. I brush a long sheaf of burgundy hair from my face, and stare at the Road, in this region fashioned of polished cedar.

“I see wheels in the sky and my own body cracking like a tree’s trunk. And strange whisperings tunnel through me like earthworms.”

The Monkey scrambled up onto my shoulder and stroked my cheek with great concern.

“I am so sorry, beautiful, pitiful girlcreature,” his voice was warm and kind. “It is so hard for you.” Garnet tears sprung to my Grecian eyes, spilling like paint.

“I am afraid that I am not myself any longer. Even in the day I stare out of my body, I do not inhabit it. And I can hear the Door following us, shuffling and sliding.”

“Yes,” the Monkey sighed, “I was hoping you had not noticed. She told the truth: there is a Door, perhaps a few hours behind us. It is very stealthy and patient. But I am more clever. I snuck up on it, to see what sort it was.” I waited, while he hopped from one foot to the other in agitation. “Oh, my dear, it is a great, black Door, oval and light-eating, with a bull’s head knocker. It will not come before your next heartblink, but it will come.” He patted my hair and fussed with his tail, softly murmuring, “We have time, little one, we have time. Hoo.”

“I cannot think, Monkey. Tell me a story, or a riddle, or lecture me. But fill up my head, I am weary, I am growing old.” He paused, seeming to ponder some great puzzle.