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Lyrics for the bride of god
Nathaniel Tarn
Section: the Artemision
I
Forty-four years I dream of front rows
filled with a single light, in the central seat,
forty-four years, the central seat is empty, forty-four years,
I know the day will come, the day will come when I least expect it,
the most difficult thing is to avoid forcing time:
forty-four years to see your face emerge from darkness, to recognize, and
you expect it neither / you expect it not at all / coming from,
coming from the place where you are going.
seeming-Russias of snows about your ankles,
about your elbows gaunt on a day of scarecrows,
cousin perhaps, looking away,
and bringing out your solitude, your look, intent on day to come,
forty-four years in another life you have not seen as yet,
I am to recognize you from a thousand,
I am to pick you out from the unborn,
those: precisely without a face as yet, limbs, voice, a spirit,
without the lineaments of voice, without desire,
the wind tucking your beret into your hair
in those seeming-Russias, that perhaps Europe you say is Greece,
bringing you in some years, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six perhaps,
to that point in the photograph, to my point then, involved in other matters -
radish, soul fragment, shard of spirit, break in the snow thru which you shine
black in a coat of astrakhan.
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Two pictures, three, four pictures - in one series - shot
within moments of each other, reconstituting: the movie of your face, the look
you dart at me as Arrow-Bearer, Diana, Artemis, Virgin,
forty-four years and still counting / time ebbing away
The trees are bare about you, the trees have no leaves about you, there is
no kind of Spring in the air, but perpetual Winter - desire is in the freezer,
your love is in the freezer of the snows, forty-four years and the front row empty.
From Greece you move, seeming- Russias, from Delos to Manhattan,
with many places in between to be mapped out later,
from Aulis you move to our embrace,
the conflagration of our bodies already in the air,
when we are not expecting it yet, when there is no sign of marriage yet in the
Diana, Artemis - and you turn me to hound, you
turn me to hound in the bright courses of your mind and I
lap your secret hairs like a hound,
in the little wind where you stand, like the root of a soul;
from there you move towards Manhattan, and on the nineteenth of May of
at something like seven p.m. in the deserted theater, in the front row,
there being no one else about at the time, no one else having yet arrived,
except J.R. and he is sitting on the steps of the stage,
into Manhattan you move and I walk in with my boots in my hand,
coming from lifetimes in the after-life,
a strange dog coursing after Artemis.
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3
Because there is a man waiting for you,
because there is a man waiting for you back in your loft,
because behind your life there is a shadow -
tho we run in step, tho we walk
exactly in step, and soon arm in arm, and soon
body in body, and we say, almost at the same time,
what is the matter with us is that we are falling in love
in the smooth stream of love, with the perfect unison of a forked twig,
towards the violets I didn't pick for you at dawn and which have grown by
Because there is someone waiting for you behind your life,
because you are not free, I make your bed in my bedroom
and I determine to sleep alone far from you, as far as the night will bear.
We have drunk wine, cold wine out of the seeming-Russias,
we have smoked cool dope, out of Mexico,
and we have looked in each other's eyes to the point of drowning,
I a strange dog coursing after Artemis -
o magic eye-of-god from mexico
your country given away to the weasels,
your country transformed into light
but we are walking in circles around the house, wondering,
if that lunch took place, that lunch out of La Bohème,
during which our shoulders moved closer together
until at night, after all that touching, I put my arms under your breasts
and you leaned against me with your full weight,
and we are wondering whether this is the time for our bodies to come together,
I am lying beside you on the bed, I think you came to fetch me,
there is a dowry of clothes between us, a snowfall of sheets
and you place your hands on your foundations as I attempt to touch them:
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You wonder about the bodies,
you wonder about the fit of our bodies,
and I wonder at my capacity,
you are passive, your hound at your feet,
you will not stroke your hound,
you say you have not touched yourself: it does nothing for you,
you must be woken from the snows.
We are bedded in the South, among the dews and rains of blessings,
and we wonder about the fit of our bodies, we have our male and female fears,
and we spend many hours in this wonder, talking, looking for recognition.
You have a back on you like a racing mare's,
you have a front on you smells of mountain-lion,
you are afraid of your legs,
you fear your legs are too thick as they rise from thick feet,
but I say you begin like a tree rising solidly into this sky,
you rise from the bole of your tree into elegant branches,
your nipples: small berries in the mouth,
and it turns out you have your blood cupped in the moon,
cupped in the moon's month, Artemis,
and you are not sure whether I am a carnivorous hound or no.
It is four in the morning before the clothes are torn,
before the sheets are torn thru and your blood flows on my tongue
as we grapple in a storm of agreement,
and it is four in the morning of May 25th, birth of our covenant,
it is four in the morning before our cry of recognition,
and at five we lie back with unearthly contentment
as the light plays over the branches and the exile is over.
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4
We came out of the city night, out of Manhattan at labor in your belly
and I took you into the countryside where I calmed your suffering down,
we made love under the stars of my forest again -
I found in you requests no other woman had made of my acquaintance
and which you said excited you strangely -
you bit your lips to the blood.
Into the eyes of my friends
I took you into the eyes of my friends
on May 29th I took you, woman of branches,
woman of ramifications, Artemis-Diana,
I took you into the eyes of my friends
and they smiled as if the sun had risen.
We are grossly in bed together: our first animal love,
we touch each other's fingers to each other's senses,
we smell each other like dogs, exalted to dogdom,
you crawl - bitch with soft flanks - soft stomach looming,
spelling the weave, rocking backwards and forwards,
then settle back, baying,
bitch at the heating moon.
Artemis-Gemini, Artemis-Mutable, Diana of the Heavenly Twins,
coursing the Russias of our minds / steppes / towns you have never seen,
I tell you Petersburg, Novgorod, the willows weaving
outside of Novgorod, the air brash with mosquitos
and the bells growl in distant Lithuanias for our bridal
while your Greek wolves are howling at the moon.
Dog-Cancer, Dog-Cardinal, Dog-Water, Sirius, lapper of moons:
I drive my tongue like a plow in the fields of your back
and the adorable names roll out like the Zodiac signs.
You say you love the names we use, speaking with tongues,
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you say you love the fit of our bodies, our reeks and odors,
and I am like cream among your milks and the splash of your blood.
Forty-four years for your long blonde hairs to part among my fingers,
forty-four years and twenty-nine of yours,
old man out of my depth, old dog among your freshets,
but we are the perfect fit selected by this poem,
we are the fit selected by the landscape we roam at will,
talking of children protected in the far home counties.
It is a hundred years today since you walked into that theater,
it is a thousand years since I met you there:
our faces are tangled together
and our lips are touched by a little wind among the branches.
I will wait patiently for you as others have waited for me,
O how I know the pain of those who wait now, who have waited before,
as you disappear into the snow and hail (no forwarding address)
to fetch your freedom and mine
where the shadow has gone for refuge -
and I take you into the eyes of my friends
and they smile tho you are absent,
smiling as if the sun had risen.
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8
This morning, at full tilt, a thrush slams into my window,
falls hurt to concrete and spins upon itself -
long streak of blood leaking from tongue in a drawn bow.
Bird finished says the mind. I've saved before, and will not leave to cat.
Make night in a box and place in dark room.
Pour brandy into beak to disinfect.
That way if he has to go he'll go in peace, in darkness.
But he does not go. Three hours later, I free him to the trees.
And this same day you call me
with your voice of shadows'
and you tell me the past goes out in front of you, the shadow leaves
and the future enters at your back we don't yet know
but with a lovely confidence, as it was in your first courses
thru the forests of youth with your puppies about you.
Bathing at the spring of the year, flesh white as dogwood,
your eyes white with the white of flowers,
shuts all the doors to peace.
This land, agrees J.P., is in the hands of curs,
this is no polity but a cheering squad
for a flag whose stripes bleed off it now, unquenchably.
Make night. Take out the stars.
Make night: where do the bombs go over Hanoi,
over Haiphong, over the countryside:
are they all falling into the same hole,
that the country has failed so far to sink below the sea,
immemorial as Atlantis, a fragment in the imagination of Asia?
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poets of this Republic, while the bombs fall
and we discuss our salving metaphysics.
that we will have to go out and get killed
against the tide of stupidity, worst of all human sins.
We are supposed to teach - take only that for one moment -
we are supposed to teach, say Blake, with the one imagination
and at the same time we are fed crass questionnaires daily
asking us to calculate the percentages of our time, slice our imaginations,
divide them by twelve: apostles and Church,
whatever Church of Love is in our minds for this Republic.
Make night. Deny the mongrels. June 9th. It rains.
The dogwood shines like snow above the Holy Faith in Summer,
over our eyes in sleep and, buried in each other,
we'll dream far dreams of love and wake to nearness, a steady nearness,
the softness of each other's flesh in our arms like a treasure,
we don't know to spend, so rich it is, so fruitful,
like a pillow of feathers for flight - thrush feathers.
The dogs of war are loose, Artemis.
More terrible than the dogs of hunting.
Their mouths slaver with blood, cur feeds on cur.
Mindless, they rush thru the streets of this uncaring township
that could be an h.q. for a Waffen s.s.,
they rush thru the streets of the metropolis
choked in its doomsday ads. and punctured lungs.
One lobotomized mongrel, king of the animals,
has closed the door to peace / and dreams may suffer for the common cause.
What is the worth of a man
if he is downed like a dog by his fate
gunned down to silence in a pool of brains
his thoughts about him no longer usefulness
grey mess for packs of rats and shareholders
stock-grubbers in the world he nearly owned
he has now lost, and all his kindred,
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II
I
Forty-four years and it is inconclusive: forty-four years
once more in the posture of waiting.
to the Lake of the Moon, where the Sun-Eagle settled,
I went to Boston - these States began and I am back,
caught in the middle of the poem, undivining
the moment we must write, woman of smoke and acid,
thrown past communication, speech, unanswered letters:
and I move out again among trees
the hound-rush thru midday, the silent baying,
maws open with great cries of hunting, but silent,
and Old Ben bleached among tree-trunks...
Carried to the island which was once quail and became light,
born a day before your brother Apollo, Artemis,
helping your mother over to Delos out of the light,
easing the sun thru blood channels,
presenting him skyward, with his golden banners drying on the wind,
who was to fuck you in silence on his altar at Delos,
and make you shoot Orion at great length in the sea -
re-entering the womb to be born a day later
and to sit on your father's knee among old-men-of-the-forest:
yn iquac nenemj cenca yxaoca,
with golden bells on your ankles,
yxamaca, xaxamaca, tzitzilica, tzitzitzilica,
wrapped in your skirt of waters on your way to die...
I will have, you said to your father, sixty Okeanides of one age,
and twenty river nymphs to care for hounds and gear.
I will have eternal virginity and as many names as Apollo,
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a bow and arrow like to his: harmony of the bow.
I will have the office of light-bearer with burning torches,
all girl children with the moon's death-number nine.
I will have a saffron tunic with red hem, reaching my knees,
and as I don't expect to live elsewhere than in the woods:
all the peaks in the world, and only one city -
but your father laughed, giving you more than all these:
saying: take thirty cities, and crossroads, and harbors,
and may your bath sometimes become the prelude to love
and may he whom you kiss enjoy his sleep of death...
Caught on the edge of forests, edge of a pond of light,
eyes riveted to beauty, long hairs among your thighs,
among the columns of your legs, this temple built to your name:
I as I guess had gazed on Nature's loveliness,
eyes riveted to breasts scarred with bow-whip and arrow,
nipples like coral among waters,
eyes as you see me, calling the hounds -
eyes turning long like a stag's, sing out of gods your praise
as your hounds leap to mine and mine to my throat:
and I die with your names on my lips, O you of the white arms:
Artemis of the showering arrows,
Aphrodite of the fluttering eyelids,
In the fan of the wind of the Immortals!
saying: take thirty cities, and crossroads, and harbors...
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II
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III
The wind stood still at Aulis, the wind stood still...
Nebeuein. To play the fawn, Larissa, Demetrias.
Arkteuein. To play the bear in saffron dresses. Brauron, in Attica.
Ruzein: ‘to make a snarling noise with the chops’.
Artemis Laphria, Patrae: Iphigenia in her car of stags.
Phocea: human sacrifice alledged, on the model Orestes.
Halae: victim's chest sprinkled with swords and arrows,
But some say this took place at Brauron in Attica.
Sparta: Artemis Orthia, found upright among willows,
the boys collapsed, drenched in their blood and sperm.
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Ephesus: the many-breasted stretching out to me in Manhattan.
Cheese-offerings of Sparta, of Gouda, many-holed,
and the many hands caressed me in Manhattan.
Revengeful one. Very revengeful.
I look at you in the bath. You say: fuck me please.
All day I've been waiting for you to enter me.
I look at you in the bath. You tear my throat of songs.
All day you look at me and say: fuck me in the small of my back.
I look at you in the bath. Your thighs run with milk and blood,
into river-nymph hands: your puberty.
You sit among willows on your golden back and bleed
dark copper among the feet of stags.
I say: Sister Artemis, Sister Artemis of the golden feet and wings,
break custom with me this night and entreat me with your loins
smelling of alchemy and river stones. And you shit blood.
I look at you in the bath. And you say: you must not fuck me, brother:
I am tired of this pretence: I am Virgin, with Athene and Hestia.
Revengeful one. Very revengeful.
I looked at Nature long and hard, her body nude and ready,
Nature at puberty, with golden hairs among her thighs,
and because I look at her preparing to take me back into her bosom,
she pretends not to wish to have me until her dying day.
I am the Sun pursued the Moon unhappily till yesterday. It is now.
I am the Moon pursued the Sun unhappily. And it is now.
O Artemision where my mother bore me among quails
and the wild boar trampled the foundations, and the bear came
thru a prison of tree trunks to the wild fountains among your knees:
they called the goddess of childbirth on the ninth day only,
she went thru the blood to discover my head
after which the Sun burst forth, drying among his banners,
and spread himself on the wind, drowning in his sister's eyes!
Revengeful one. Very revengeful.
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In forest clearings the temple-pillars rise,
it is impossible to see whether they are tree-trunks or marble,
it is impossible to see whether they are milk-colored or blood-colored
or whether of sand and wild moss, of quail bones or concrete.
There is a clearing overhead where my son drives the chariot of fire
and the forests singe at his passing and the earth is discolored
but a new shoot of leaves and trees puts forth another Spring
and the Spring turns into the Summer of my forty-fourth year.
I go, singing out of the gods, Apollo of the Laurels,
with my sister among my thighs on the temple's altar
and I run with dog-swiftness towards her debris
and fall to her with a tongue so full of speech the heart confesses:
Revengeful one. Very revengeful.
and the wind breathes above Aulis...
© Nathaniel Tarn, 1972
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1. Else en H.C. ten Berge (foto: Frans Verhage)
2. De ontwerper
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3. Rein Bloem
4. Gerrit Kouwenaar (r.) en Lucebert (l.) (foto: Pieter Boersma)
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5. Simeon ten Holt (foto: Andrzej Zborski)
6. Edoardo Sanguineti (foto: Renate von Mangoldt)
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7. André P. Brink
8. Breyten en Yolande Breytenbach (foto: Klaas Gubbels)
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9. F.C. Terborgh, op weg naar de ‘Western Hills’, Peking, voorjaar 1939
10. Hans Faverey (foto: Lucy Schouten)
11. F.C. Terborgh (Dr. R. Flaes), Peking I939
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12. Twee firmanten van Joyce & Co.: Geerten Meijsing (l.) en Frans Verpoorten (r.), (foto: Frans Verpoorten jr.)
13. Kenneth White
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14. Nathaniel Tarn
15. Jules Deelder, staande 3e van links
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16. Jacq Firmin Vogelaar
17. Lidy van Marissing (foto: Eddy de Jongh)
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