take down the sun: take down the sun

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Drepana arcuata, oreta erminea, alsophila pometaria, oenochroma vinaria, clorocoma dichloraria, aporandria specularia, geometra papilionaria, omphax plantaria, crypsiphona ocultaria, rhodometra sacraria, operophtera brumata, venusia cambrica, xanthorhoe fluctuata, biston betularia, ennomos subsignaria, epimecis hortaria, erannis defoliaria, lycia hirtaria, ourapteryx sambucaria, plagodis dolabraria, prochoerodes transversata, semiothisa bisignata, xanthisthisa niveifrons, dendrolimus pini, eucraera genmata, bombycopsis indecora, grammodora negrolineata, malacosoma americanum, pinaria fervens, trabala viridana, tolype velleda, porela vetusta, tagora pallida, panacela lewinae, anthela ocellata, nataxa flavescens, bombyx mori, ocinara ficicola, gunda ochracea, dactylocerus swanzii, eacles imperialis, callosamia promethea, automeris io, attacus atlas, actias luna, aglia tau, argema mimosae, eupackardia calleta, hyalophora cecropia, graellsia isabellae, loepa katinka, opodiphthera eucalypti, saturnia pyri, agrius cingulata, sphinx ligustri, manduca sexta, xanthopan morgani, cocytius antaeus, laothoe populi, mimas tiliae, smerinthus jamaicensis, protambulyx strigilis, hemaris thysbe, cizara ardeniae, pseudosphinx tetrio, macroglossum stellatarum, daphnis nerii, hippotion celerio, hyles lineata, deilephila elpenor, cerura vinula, chliara cresus, danima banksiae, desmeocraera latex, nerice bidentata, notodonta dromedarius, oenosandra boisduvalii, schizura ipomoeae, clostera albosigma, datana ministra, phalera bucephala, epicoma melanosticta, thaumetopoea pityocampa, agrotis infusa, agrotis ipsilon, heliothis armigera, noctua pronuba, peridroma saucia, mythimna unipunctua, xanthopastis timais, acronicta psi, amphipyra pyramidoides, phlogophora iris, spodoptera litura, spodoptera exigua, earias biplaga, achaea janata, catocala fraxini, catocala ilia, grammodes stolida, chrysodeixis subsidens, autographa gamma, trichoplusia ni, aedia leucomelas, calyptra eustrigata, scoliopteryx libatrix, othreis fullonia, thysania agrippina, agarista agricola, alypia octomaculata, lymantria dispar, calliteara pudibunda, euproctis chrysorrhoea, dasychira pyrosoma, euproctis hemicyclia, orygia leucostigma, leptoneria reducta, aroa discalis, lymantria monacha, teia anartoides, palasea albimacula, perina nuda, gnammia virgo, amsacta marginata, arctia caja, estigmene acrea, ecpantheria scribonia, eupseudosoma involutum, hyphantria cunea, lophocampacaryae, paracles laboulbeni, premolis semirufa, phragmatobia fuliginosa, rhodogastria crokeri, spilosoma lubricipeda, teracotona euprepia, utethesia pulchella, utethesia ornatrix, eilema complana, lithosia quadra, nyctemera amica, callimorpha dominula, tyria jacobeae, antichloris viridis, euplagia quadripunctaria, ctenucha virginica, euchromia lethe, syntomis phegea, castnia licus, divana diva, synemon parthenoides, sesia apiformis, albuna oberthuri, sibine stimulea, apoda limacodes, zygaena ephialtes, arniocera erythrophyga, zygaena occitanica, zygaena filipendulae, adscita statices, campylotes desgodinsi, himantopterus dohertyi, xyleutes strix, cossus cossus, prionoxystus robiniae, zuezer pyrina, xyleutes eucalypti, xyleutes cinereus, zelotypia stacyi, aenetus eximius, leto venus, hepialus fusconebulosa, hepialus humuli, sthenopis argenteomaculatus.

I woke and stuffed some leaves into my mouth. I choked on the marvelously astringent pulp and looked around: trees, bushes, more trees. I had lost him. Where was he? He could be a bird, i could be the sky. I looked down. My body was coated in moth dust.

Today i finally gazed on the Procession. A voiceless tinkling, a clanging and clattering of mismatched metals drifted down the hills. Many dozens of heavily ornamented figures moved through the trees, their bodies glimmering and flowing so as to give the impression of slow-moving water, most painted all over with a white powder, hefting huge glinting shards of mirrored glass and single-skinned drums far larger than their bodies, perfumed torches flaming mutely in the daylight, and other unidentifiable bricabrac. Several hauled huge hammered brass horns, bruised with tarnish and curled like mismatched tusks and requiring two or even three porters to manage through the trees. What bleachwhite skin—white almost to the point of transluscency—was not revealed was swathed in torn silks and spider’s webs and ripped carpeting, lustrous furs and shredded captain’s coats. Some wore red, or magmic orange, with massive emblems slung round their necks, while others were draped in gowns and capes of icy blue, vivid violet and filth-hemmed white. Barefooted courtesans in chain alternated dragging and being dragged by grinning jesters, sometimes their figures blurring and overlapping to the point of double exposure. Some dressed with the appearance of abject povery yet wore the pompous sneers of royalty, while others sported poorly concealed jeweled scabbards swinging from enormous polished leather belts and precarious armatures extending from shoulders and heads like bizarre martian crowns. Some scowled and lunged forward in chaotic gesticulations while others, upright and rigid, drifted as though on minute wheels and wore visages sere and unreadable. One long-haired man costumed like a king in royal purple brought up the rear, crawling sodden with a tearstreaked and perhaps beaten face, dragging his scepter and finery through the leaflitter.

A murmur rose in the woods, the oratories of the birds and smaller mammals heralding the presence of the bejeweled carnival in syrinx sonations and gravelly chitters. The immortal neutrons swirled throughout rock and animal alike; even the unbreathed air heaved. Sunlight breaking through the canopy and glinting off the mirrors for an instant blinded me.

Then i caught sight of Algernon.

He was covered in bells and singing.

I howled and ran for him, i ran did i run for my dear dead friend, and he appeared to be moving very slowly, if at all, but no matter how hard i ran he and that motley brigade remained out of reach. I screamed for Non but he did not turn to me, he kept gliding like a slow-motion krishna through the trees, jangling and chanting, laughter and tears. A woman with a basket of pomegranates lifted one after another of Kore’s burgundy fruits and let them fall behind her; i could find none of them. My head swooned vertiginously. The trees moved past me; i moved through the woods. The procession halted in a clearing and unburdened their haul, arranging huge mirror shards beneath the sky and unwrapping delicate packages to reveal dozens of humanoid masks of mud which they laid out in the clearing to gaze at the sun. Disoriented and nightmaring i ran after the stationary group.

I thought i glimpsed among them Snake, a brilliant shock of hair rising like a golden rose from the mass of anonymous figures. I stopped short there in the middle of my life and a roar ripped its claws through my lungs: my once, my almost, woman. But neither she nor any of those people seemed to hear me and i wondered myself mute. I stood and i seemed far closer than i had been before. Snake stood among the masks and mirrors and craned her neck sunward, the throat a blinding tower of light— or was it the woman in the photograph? No— her hair— Vivian? no!— i swung my head and there, mother— the Red girls— schoolteachers— dreamwomen of the nightworld, a parade of demented creatures flashing over faces i’d once known and subsumed into unfamiliar features. The men too, becoming beasts, golden beards rippling like winded manes, noses morphing into beaks, fur erupting over oblonging heads. I recoiled and stood gaping, Non nowhere in the churning sea of fur and scales and acidic faces. I resisted the sensation that i was turning into dust. The roiling procession completed their obscure arrangement and there ensued a cacophanous eruption of trumpeting and gongs and chaotic drumming on the huge skinned drums, the loudest thing by far to which my ears had been exposed in weeks. Then as quickly as it had begun the freakshow gathered themselves to depart, leaving behind to face the sun the silvered glass and gaping mud faces, perhaps tearing, and as i began impotently to chase after them again, a tale mother had once told me came to mind, a tale about a boy who fell in love with the daughter of the magician-king, and it was of this that i thought as i chased the receeding procession through the latening woods.

The figures drifted into each other, merged and divided, mistlike, elongated, shrank, became as children dancing in the forest, children illumined from within their transluscent heads, laughing highly and clasping hands, children whose gaze escaped their heads as though looking for something very far off, catching my eyes coyly in the distance. Those self-lit gazes their first contact with me; if they’re demons, i thought, maybe they’ll prove like the monstrous maiden in mother’s story, inflicting wounds whose splits closed soon after they were inflicted, a disguised love.

So be it if it be so. The cackles of the aves tore through the canopy. My legs burned and the children shifted in stranger transformations still, into termite steeples of flickering light, translucent flames of jade and silverblue, shapes wavering on the edge of shapelessness. Though i could not see familiar faces anymore i ran, the trees with their wooden organs clattering together in the wind. Twigs and briars pulled at me with their bony fingers and i was lost, so lost, loster, lostest. I chased the whitening blurs which once were Non and Snake and half a hundred others but now were only moths, tens and hundreds and thousands of moths swarming all around me, moths, moths landing in my hair, on my body; i waved my arms through a sea of moths but i was buried.

Sankta Lucia

We are as moths toward the divine flame

Sankta Lucia
bright illusion, The night walks with heavy steps
Sankta Lucia
your light overcomes this abyssic darkness
Sankta Lucia
we call to you: thee Unconquered Sun
Sankta Lucia
When the light then arrives with the morning may we be safe once again.

Sankta Lucia
to bring light in this time of darkness
Sankta Lucia
this swallowing void / our blindness
Sankta Lucia
we hail to you thee primordial fire
Sankta Lucia
such solace it brings to see you not expired

Sankta Lucia
we enter into the darkness / under the ground / at the end of the sea
Sankta Lucia
to battle thee maleficent spirits we leave our bodies in ecstasy
Sankta Lucia
to stop those that have carried away the seeds ov our grains
Sankta Lucia
When the light then arrives with the morning may we be safe once again.

Sankta Lucia
divine fire who illumines our skies
Sankta Lucia
gaze not at her delivering ov gifts, or she will throw ashes into our eyes

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Weltende (End of the World)

Dem Bürger fliegt vom spitzen Kopf der Hut,
In allen Lüften hallt es wie Geschrei.
Dachdecker stürzen ab und gehn entzwei
Und an den Küsten – liest man – steigt die Flut.

Der Sturm ist da, die wilden Meere hupfen
An Land, um dicke Dämme zu zerdrücken.
Die meisten Menschen haben einen Schnupfen.
Die Eisenbahnen fallen von den Brücken.

The hat flies off the bourgeois’ pointed head.
There is a sound that shrieks through all the air.
Tiles tumble from rooftops and shatter in two.
And on the coasts, we read, the tide is rising.

The storm has come, the wild seas lurch ashore
to crush the bloated dams.
Most people have colds, their noses running.
The trains plunge off the bridges.

Jakob van Hoddis

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take down the sun