THE WHEEL

This is for Johnny Wizard! - G

Acknowledgements,
- Geoffrey Hill - From Mercian Hymns
- St John's Revelations (OEB)
- Yeats W.B. - Byzantium and Easter 1916
- Allen Ginsberg - Howl
Yeats W.B. The Second Coming
- Mathew Arnold - Dover Beach
- ST-Coleridge Kubla Khan

THE WHEEL


The Truthsayer:

The standard-lifeform cycle is ugliest of all.
Always the killing.

***



Entered eerie-strange-revolting and unsettlingly bizarre; of
horrifying madness folly dredged.

Exposed at last!

Morbid, brain-sick fantasy wanton heretic denier of accustomed
and acknowleged Truth; dangerous-dark renegade beyond control.
Insolent blasphemer! persisting careless, unrepentant fabricator
of forbidden secular "Truth". Actual Affirmation of mythic
Actual History and all the shameful, sorry, heretic madnesses of
that blasphemously alleged "reality". A so-called "realist"?!

[giggle delightedly. A tambourine is lightly
rattled.]

The SUPER-HUMAN:

The mad are predators! Too often lately they harbour against us.
A novel heresy exculpates all maiméd souls. Forewarned have I
thwarted their imminent devices.

ABJURE IT!

Today I name them; tomorrow I shall express the new law. I
dedicate my awakening to this matter.

I Hail the Super-Human! I call it Death-in-Life and Life-in-
Death!

1st Human:

Clash of salutation!

Ambassadors, pilgrims. The Frankish gift, two-edged, regaled
with slaughter. Mystic-made white metal effusing its own
fragrance; a variety of balm.

And other miracles, other exchanges.

***

Swagger shaggy-blonde brass arrogance; a baring of white teeth.
Massed-expectance martial trumpet flurry.
Ritual, Regal red-stallion-neck-rippling nervous-whinnying up-
foot strutting of horse.
Studiedformal measuremasking mutual muted musky gingerprickle
caution.
Wary toasting-horn inverted, spinning inward inner distance

Disturbed.

Bright! new riverwater spliced, and swallowed; dirty-yellow
camel-****-white-wine; New-speared pig skew-sputtering over sulk-
sulking eyeburn-swirl grey crimson; swaying helmet-crests invoke
the breeze.

The ancient drum of horses on the plain.


2nd Human:

Why the starry-eyed buffoon clumsy-buttbutt-buttressing folly
ignorant apostasy!
Variously dubious slogan suspicious novel moral maxim -
subversive destructuralism! Boat-rocker.
Forever bumbling vacuously into new horizons, rigid private
organ in right hand, drooling wetly. Too stupid to sleep. (giggle
lightly)

The Truthsayer -(thoughtfully)

Pain purifies.
But not for kong
Soon the rot sets in
Purity, like paint
Requires Renewal.

1 st Human:

.. Attributes assumed, retribution entertained. Indulgences of
bartered acclaim; an expenditure, a hissing. Wine, urine, and
ashes.

Invocation: [ intone monotonously]

White-fat-cold-but-yet-so-sweet-and-fresh-and-wetly-succulent-crisp-and-
juicy-pig, [pause] and-butter-dripping-bright-gold-sweetcorn-
background-smell-of-spicy-warm-and-wine-stained-ancient-leather.

Remembrance.


3rd Human [dreamily, prettily, yet with sophistication]

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; On the far coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

[An appreciative murmer.]

Come to the window; sweet is the night air!
Only, - from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land

Listen!

You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand.

Begin, and cease, and then again begin.
With tremulous cadence slow and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

[general murners of approval, light rustling of tambourines, a
few seconds of silence.]

1st Human - - seriously and urgently:

- Tracks of ancient occupation. Hearthstones, charred lullabies.
Weighty secrets shallow-buried..
... Longstill antique enigma of thorn-thicket; - silverdark the
ridgéd gleam. Groves of legendary holly; a solitary ax-blow...

Our children and our children's children, o
my masters!


The SUPER-HUMAN

I AM THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA; THE BEGINNING AND THE
ENDING............
the first and the last. Which is, which was, and which is to be......

The Truthsayer

The order is insensibly subverted
As the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

....

But so it is so so it must be so.

The ultimate delusion
Is the search for simple union
of the thing that's sweet
and the thing that's meet and the thing
that necessarily and unilaterally must of course
Be done.

Doom, gloom, and destruction
The ultimate aloneness of all Man
The will to stand alone and testify.

They will to dare the one who will be one
Is come.

The mechanism of confusion
In the quest for ultimate union
Is the plausible expectation
Of the intederminable equation
and the honourable understanding
Of the reasonable toleration
Of the mock-orientation
And the ongoing limp evasion of
The thing that is and the thing that is to be ..
Is done.


Is come.


(but not so nevertheless but yes
just too too sorrowful parting gift ...
Though the following standard hap (o yes) infer ..

HOYD!

Gulled, lulled and made vulnernable
By a few preliminary stabs
the hapless, hopless victim prone
Lies waiting.

Shelob looms from Zoltran's tombs
The thick and deep enveloping glooms
The serried ranks of warriors stand staight and righteous
Ready!
Yes.

Of Course.

And all the world is waiting.

History stirs, the tide demurs
The crashing-gate of heaven's doors
The bell is rung
The charm is hung
The far and misty distant seas await.
The imminent hum ; Tsunami comes!
The moments hang like trickly treacle drops ...
Of course.

Just but not so there quite not yet there just yet so not quite
there
yeh... huh .. but . no no no yeh

ETC ETC ETC

Unfolding.

Evolving.

A thickening in the air; a sense of coming thunder ..

WAIT!

Like Rome in the year Five hundred and four
When the crashing Huns were at the door
And the buzzards circling o'er the moor
And the banshee wailed in shadow-shriek of Fall -

DESPONDENT!

Yes.


And all the world is waiting.



***

4th Human (languidly)
Pastel reverie of ages; beads, bangles and trinkets...


The Truthsayer:

Driftwood in an eddy needs be rocked. -
The splendid falls await.

4th Human

A muffled laugh; a stirring. Ennui and enervation overcome. Too
late!

(She bursts into pitiful weeping)

The Truthsayer - [implacable voice]

Crack of doom from the hydrogen jukebox; the lost battalion,
reeling. Wayward child run down by the maddened taxi-cabs of
Absolute Reality. All changed; changed utterly. A terrible
beauty is born.

[ rumble of kettle-drums]

The SUPER-HUMAN

I AM MARS THE DESTROYER!! The red dragon; the purveyor; the
Breaker, and the Maker. He that giveth, and He that taketh away.

The Truthsayer - (fervently)

I Hail the Super-Human! I call it Life-in-Death and Death-in-
Life.

***


1st human

Always-duty grinding years hard-heavy just-woke matted beard and
grim, cold, sour and mucus-early-morning mouth; and slimy,
clumsy creaking-cold grey fishscale ruststreak mail.

Remembrance.

2nd Human, very sadly/seriously -

A tendentious time, lamented. Expostulation of refutation;
denials. The myriad murmer of locusts. A search for innocence.

[long pause]

And other miracles, other exchanges.

[background lighting changes to gold]

Ist Human (Voice/face alive with wonder, looking up religiously]

Evening assumes the incandescent forests.
A shaft of lumen sun, a rising.

A solitary shadow sweeps the flickering evergreen fissured with
light.


The SUPER-HUMAN [fervently]

And all who heard should see them there
And all should cry "Beware!" "Beware!"

[voices onlyl
2H, 3H & 4H together - "His flashing eyes, his floating hair.."

[All together]

Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes in holy dread.
For he on honydew hath fed
And drunk the milk of paradise.


AAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

....


1st Human:

The megalith of destiny
Has ordered it this way
I cannot take the easy path
And shirk the duty called..
The road is steep, the hill is high
And thunder glooms the low'ring sky
I must go on though mountains break -
And oceans boil away.

How many times the wheel of time
has spun the lives of man..
The death of Christ, the fall of Rome
The wax and wane of empire;
And now the wheel has come around - !
The call is near, the cause is just

To brave the good, defend the free
The holy grail of liberty
I must go on though mountains break
And oceans boil away.

Grantland