A Note on Thel's Motto

                     
                   Thel's Motto

      Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
      Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
      Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
      Or Love in a golden Bowl?

I propose that Blake deliberately inverted his symbols to complete what Kathleen Raine called the Divine Analogy. (The fourth chapter of her book “Blake and Tradition” is my favorite explication of the poem.) Note his use of the colon after the second line and the 4 capitalized words:

Eagle/Mole:

Wisdom/Love

I challenge you to consider the context Blake uses. In what sense can Wisdom be put into a silver rod, or love into a golden bowl? Here the literary critic may be at a loss, but the student of magic quickly recognizes his two favorite tools–the silver bowl, representing the feminine whose emotion is love (love can be put into a silver bowl by magic)– and the Golden Rod (magic wand)–representing the masculine (Wisdom can be put into a golden rod by magic). Only in the magical sense can metals be endowed with spiritual properties.

So, the answer: Can wisdom be put into a silver rod? Of course not–only a golden one will suffice. Can love be put into a Golden Bowl?–No only a silver bowl will work.

Blake has deliberately inverted the spiritual attributes of the alchemists’ metals. To the Alchemist, silver has the spiritual property of love and gold has the spiritual property of wisdom. Notice also that the naming conventions Blake uses in Thel derive from H. C. Agrippa–noted occultist (while not my favorite).

Blake did not intend an audience of literary critics only. Perfectly good romantic scholars, like Harold Bloom, are quickly in over their heads–the water is deep and swift: 

          “The Silver rod is a phallic variant of the silver cord in Ecclesiastes 12:6, and the golden bowl is an emblem of the virgin womb. But silver and gold, opaque and dedicated to Mammon, are ambiguous substances in Blake…”

No, friend. Blake’s use of alchemical symbolism is not ambiguous in the least.

A Brief History of the Giant Albion

Tradition has it that the giant Albion

And his brother journeyed from Briton

Across Europe to meet the legendary Hercules in battle

In northern Italy after the hero had acquired the cows of Geryon.

Albion's brother Bergion was in fact

Killed in the spiritual battle during which

Hercules exercised the full power of his eloquence

While kneeling in prayer to his father Zeus.

Because of the power of his eloquence

The two sons of Poseidon were vanquished.

I contend that Albion was not killed in the battle

But was laid low; or rendered unconscious

For centuries moldering in his grave

A vessel of disturbed and troubled dreams.

Some giants have extremely strong dreams

Such that other people are compelled 

To live inside them. This is the type of dream 

That Albion had been dreaming.

Imagine his surprise at being rudely awakened

In the middle of the last century 

His first fresh breath of anger 

Stomping and pounding the face of Europe

In his wrath.

And also understand his distemper and trouble

Going back to sleep. Perhaps some hot milk

Or narcotic herb could help put the giant down gently.

A Brief History of Romance

Because history is a circle
It's incumbent upon the storyteller
To select a point of origin
Which would otherwise be arbitrary.

The ghosts of the French nobility released by the guillotine
Blew first across the English Channel to cheery old England.

In those days George 3 had mad itching syphilis
He heard directly the whispers of the ghosts who reported
All of England in a dreary mood
Revolution on everyone's lips
Red berets apparent upon the heads of the populace
Blake tried for sedition.

The ghosts eventually lost their individual voices
Congealing into a more generalized romantic spirit
Inspiring for a time, an aesthetic revolution in English poetry.
The philosophical keys of romance remain forever hidden
In a library of books clapped shut, or they have fallen down
Between the cushions of Wordsworth's eternal couch.

By 1830 the romantic spirit had grown tired of England
Blowing back then to Germany
To witness the hysteria of German nationalism
And to listen to wonderful music
Perhaps voyaging south to Italy
An operatic echo heard along the Alpine range
A green tune by Verdi you can't get out of your head.

This is where it gets complicated. My theory is
That in 1845 the spirit of romance was in a cafe in Paris
Drinking absinthe when he overheard some fellows discussing
Traveling to America and because he had always found
Himself to have a metropolitan appetite being never satisfied
With his present place or time he decided to travel. Yes to America
But also to Russia where in 1865 he witnessed not only
The end of the American Civil war but he also
Caught the premiere of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
A book he had always loved.

The work moved him so much that he decided
To retire to Saint Petersburg and spent his remaining years
Listening to Russian music and becoming embroiled in
In its vibrant and decadent culture until he finally
Was trampled to death
At the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

Cult of Mammon

There used to be Christians in England who made a sincere effort to follow the example of Christ in word and deed. These Dissenters could not be buried in the same graveyards as the good Anglicans. They were poor as Christ himself.  Pilgrims, Puritans, Ranters, Muggletonians: dissenting against the Anglican church because they thought the King of England was trying to buy his salvation, and they hated the idea that a person's goodness could be reduced to his wealth. For centuries they had taken Christ's ideal of poverty seriously. They didn't believe in amassing worldly wealth, did not lend money at interest. They stored their treasures in heaven.

And today we have come to the place where we so misunderstand the central message of Christianity that we believe God wants us to be wealthy in the worldly sense, and the way to affect God's wish of worldly wealth for us is to give money to mega churches or to commercial evangelism. (Do you think God wants to listen to Christian rock? God has been listening to cathedral choir and pipe organ music for a thousand years, and although he does not like Christian rock generally, he does have kind of a soft spot for Petra).

God wanted us to be poor and happy. Instead we've become opaque to his vision, and enslaved ourselves to Mammon. Those who don't worship Mammon directly are still made to serve in his factories--to drive his cars across his bridges, buy his gasoline, drink in his bars, gamble in his establishments, and borrow from his banks. 

In the Cult of Mammon, if you are in want of wealth, then what you should do is discern which aspect of your personality is not wholly dedicated to the pursuit of money and KILL it. Perhaps its your love of music, or poetry that is standing in the way of financial success. Once you have proven that you are completely dedicated to the stewardship of wealth, wealth will be stowed upon you..

Apology for the Alcoholic Tangerines

Its the reader’s job to select the ones that are still good.

Poems calcify to a point where they cannot be altered 

Sometimes they rot 

It's not as if there is no risk in eating an alcoholic tangerine

Many a monkey has fallen down

Whose reach went beyond his grasp

Disappearing below into a stupor 

Of careless intellectual indulgence

That said they are good

Desirable with an edge of danger

Tangible with an unexpected dash of beauty
A bright citrus juice burst in the mouth
And not devoid of nutrition 
Those who go without poetry too long
Develop a scurvy of the mind.

There is not enough thirst in this culture. Too much Satiety not enough thirst.

Where are the Pantagrulists of the 1530s?

There’s an interesting lot. They were always thirsty 

For knowledge. A reader of Rabelais is often prompted 

To drink and promised a happy hard on 

For his dime.

Why should we not be as they were?

While the tangerines may or may not cause a shifting of the codpiece

Who here has not felt an enlargement 

Before the great works of man in the arts?

I Dream of Jeff Nuttall

This dream is interesting because I am a woman

I am not usually a woman

Usually I am just an eyeball with feelings

I have come to realize that the people I meet in my dreams

Are myself I am trying to tell me something important

The crowded dance floor includes me

A middle aged woman lanky in a white party dress

My dancing partner is Jeff Nuttall with lamb chops 

And the aspect of the Cheshire cat.

The pearls are important because I can feel their authenticity

No one doubts her sense of touch

The weight of them as the band plays 

Caledonia Caledonia what makes her thick head so hard

A film of perspiration completes a tactile sensation

As the large important beautiful pearls glow cool

Under soft stage lights.

And Jeff Nuttall is leaning on me with all the weight of misogyny itself

Of course he’s quite intoxicated he whispers

But I can’t understand he leans in and slips

In his own piss falling on the dance floor pulling

And breaking my necklace spilling the pearls

Next I am on my knees struggling to collect them

And Jeff Nuttall is down there with me as I realize I have no

Place to put these pearls hot pocket he says pointing

Pink purse indicating my vagina

File them in the fleshy folder

Seal them behind the sweet lips

That are the doors of the temple

I Like to Eat Things

Squirrels 

Frogs 

Turtles

Pigeons and Doves

Blue Gill

Rabbit liver sausage

I don’t think of a wild turkey as cute

I want to eat him

Believe me when I tell you I could

Cook a Raccoon so that you would forget

How smart he was

Caviche

Fish Tacos

Snails and grass shrimp kicking

with lime juice

Abelone 

Crabs

Rock fish on the beach

Blackened on coals and wrapped

In a banana’s leaf

I once went on a diet where I could eat

Only as many ants as I could catch

I once ate nothing but wild black raspberries

For four days and I remembered 

What pooping is supposed to be

I am sometimes transported to that scene 

In every Steinbeck novel where the old man

With his weathered face and leathery hands

Prepares a meal on the rocky coast of the pacific

Fishing in tidal pools for his meat

Making a salad of kelp greens and citrus

But he can get no sugar from the sea

So he is compelled to filch candy from the corner store

He can’t help himself

He needs it..

Las Vegas Ice Tea

One shot each:

Tequila, Gin, Vodka, Whiskey

The Juice from one crushed human soul

Splash of sour
Splash of coke

Shake and pour over rocks..

Irving Layton: Reprobate

Why do I look for your face in every crowd

Though I know you most likely 

Have not yet been born?

I believe you will one day wield 

The jawbone of an ass.

If Sampson were to pull down the stone façade

Would he not also crush the marbled prophets of Israel

Who still adorn its walls

And yourself along with them?

For you there was something erotic 

in the pursuit of prophecy

A heat of knowledge

An intellectual energy

The verbal hopscotch of mindfeet alighting

On stones in the still water at sundown

Again the poem is a field that must be plowed

Aligned in rows the words become nutrients in new soil

Like great clay clods that must be broken.

The poet has the roll of prophecy thrust upon him

When no one else will speak the truth. Only the kernel

Of every object nourishes. Where is he who 

Undoes the envelopes and removes the husks?

The elect hear the awful voice of the reprobate.

Its annoying and loud.  It grates against their eardrums. 

They whisper to each other, “I wonder what small amount 

Of money could be paid to stop this noise?”

It is as though the Hebrew tradition of killing God’s prophets 

Is continued from ancient days. The voice of Prophecy 

Is still the voice of honest indignation.

There is a reason that those who came after Wordsworth

Considered him to be a turncoat

And remembered him with the bitterest enmity:

He became a poet laureate

An adjunct of the state

A Sampson shorn of his locks 

And paraded before them in chains.

But the real vital force of poetry

Will always confront the elect.

This is why I mistrust poetry produced

Within the academy itself;

It has no awareness of its purpose.

Where has the power of poetry gone?

Where are Neruda or Ginsberg?

In the ancient times referred to by anthropologists

As the 1960’s poets packed political clout 

Capable of antagonizing the force of evil 

In the world. What happened to change that?

* Notes:

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship, and love's first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.

Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:

Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battling multitude:

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

(Shelley on Wordsworth)

When Wordsworth abandoned poverty he became a sell out.

The Dead Baby

The young doctor who know one knows

Wraps the dead baby in swaddling clothes

The leathery baby placed

Inside the leathery suitcase

The young doctor walks out the door

Leaves the hospital with its septic air

Carries the dead baby down

The subway stairs

The dead baby is a kernel of truth

Encased in a husk of insidious lies

The young doctor who know one knows

Carries the dead baby in its repose

To the morg

Note: I harvested this from an old notebook from 2004. It is inspired by an episode in William Carlos Williams autobiography. Williams does not tell the story in detail, but he makes reference to a time at a NYC hospital when he smuggled a dead baby to the Mortuary to protect one of the overworked nurses, (I believe that is the inference--again the tale is not clearly told) Being a doctor in NYC after the first world war was rough, by Williams account.

The Sperm Whale

There is something to being on the surface of it

Lashing about in the sun and waves

Forever buoyed like a porpoise among forests of kelp.

Many dolphins have orange dots on their foreheads

But flippers that cannot reach up and remove them.

I am not like them

I am a sperm whale and I rarely visit the surface

Forever compelled to dive yet further down

Into the dark cold recesses of the past

For in the depths of the past

Space opens anew and the stars which are below

Shine again in another light.