A new project based on Images from Exeter Cathedral. Ambient interiors.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Veiled and Rippled Light (Exeter Cathedral)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Exeter Carhedral, interiors, light, photography, space, time on July 17, 2014| 6 Comments »
Ascent of the Soul Through the Spheres ( part 6)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, ascent of the soul, constellations, cosmologies, medieval iconography, photography, Poetry, star names, stars on July 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Spera octava – spera stellata
The circle of stars, a silvered scum, a foam, a detritus,
A flotsam of teleologies, nub-ends of endless parties,
A whispered recital from dust-gnawed cities.
Shall we savour their strangeness, the fruit of centuries?
A wish
The tomb
The roof
The old man.
The tent
Al Tard, the end.
The apes
The south gate
A pillar
The old folks.
The raven’s neck
The falling cross
The long sandbank
The wolf.
Al Kaid, the eggshells
The embracer
The green hill
The changer.
Kakkab Mulu-izi, the star-man of fire.
The magician
The golden well
The spectre’s head
The first frog.
Al baluh, the city.
The azure dragon
Crown of the forehead
The southern sea
Announcer of invasion on the border.
Narrow cloudy train of female stars
Golden cluck hen and her five sisters.
Temennu, the foundation stone
Al wasat, the central one
Saptar shayar, the seven anchorites
The white of the poplar tree.
San Tsze, three instructors
Antasurra, the upper sphere
Drag-blod, the fire tail.
Pivot of the planets
The nail
The bright one
Ishtar
Bethulah
The defenceless
The virgin’s girdle
The lady of heaven
Taygeta
Atrami
Segin
Aludra.
And so we fly past the whispering lights,
souls and stories,
wished-for and longings,
The indicators of time and movement,
a slightest of lost taste,
A melting of bright ice.
Silence returns.
Fast Smoke (Guru Purnima)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cloud, early morning, full moon, Guru Purnima, July, landscape, light, moon, Poetry, wind on July 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
Too many references to ‘super moon’, only one I saw to Guru Purnima, which is this full moon in July dedicated to all our teachers.
FAST SMOKE (Guru Purnima)
Through a fast smoke of cloud
This golden moon, full as it can be,
Wrapped with light and golden,
Arcs out of sight,
Golden in a golden morning.
From its vastness it has seen the sun,
Seen the day, breathed in light,
Exhaled in fullness.
Absorbed, we are absolved of necessity,
Filled up with ample goodness.
No need to know. Nothing obscured.
Nothing beyond reach.
Enfolded radiant, as this moon.
—
Ascent of the Soul through the Spheres (part 5)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, ascent of the soul, celestial mythology, death, deities, dissolution, medieval cosmology, old age, old father time, Poetry, rest, Saturn on July 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Spera saturni, saturn
The old grumbler has seen it all.
Knowledge no one wants.
Stiff bones and stubborn in his ways,
For soft bread and warm tea
He will tell such tales, names strange,
and names ancient, as eyes unfocus
To stir the past.
Old time, stuttered, halted,
Father of years, creaking progenitor.
His scythe notched, blunted
Only his tongue a grating whetstone,
Licking lips and air, his hooded, heavy lids.
Things will become dust
And he shall watch
The narrow glass, the sifting moment,
Until all falls silent.
A slow rasping exhalation,
A rest of sorts.
—
Ascent of the Soul through the Spheres ( part 4 )
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, ascent through the spheres, celestial spheres, distance, heavens, invisible gods, Jupiter, landscape, medieval cosmology, planets, Poetry, transcendence on July 12, 2014| 2 Comments »
Spera iovis, Jupiter
An ineffable thunder.
A benevolent sky untouchable,
Bewashed with holy white.
His eye, from that smoky height,
Benevolent, or careless.
Sucking up breath, bellows,
A bull in heat, a vast progenitor
Bestowing fast waters, furious light.
A plunger, a pummeller, a fondler
Of breasted mountains, a piercer
Of earth’s deep, warm valleys.
The biology of deity: what is fecund
Evolves to the remote ineffable.
The lusty roarer, to righteous, wrathful judgment.
Template to transcendence, he dabbles yet
And dribbles his pleasures in little lives
Spread-legged, surprised by glory.
Panting and flattered by the fierce blast
Of his rumbled, lascivious breath,
His weight borne down and admitted.
So it is a face of infinity,
A voice vague with distance,
A beam breaking clouds,
A covenant, a breaking into and out of,
Grandiose lusts and transfiguring flesh,
A feast of flesh for formless air, a cold, clear possession.
No other face but a storm of thunder and a sudden cloud,
An animal roar, a shower of gold.
All encompassing as air, as mountain squall, a rush of cold water,
As clay turned incense, as sacrificial fire on beacon top.
The placation and violence of an unseen height. From there is sought
Return of revolutions, approving victories, an evolution
Of sorts and measures.
An eagle’s wing, a single feather, a sharp beak, a clutching claw.
A rosary of names heroic, a prayer of appeasement and summoning.
Above all, and through it all,
A mystery of heaving curtains,
A spotlit stage with screaming plot,
A certain, definitive gravity, the thunderer.
A strange evolution it is from dark cloud and downpour
To remote, inviolable vastness.
But they all do shuffle and elbow eternally,
These interferers, these hungry, unconcerned
Bickering departmental managers,
Jealous and lusty,
Breeding prophets and demigods in casual catastrophe.
They run off with themselves, whooping and roaring,
Eternal adolescents, hormonally sparkling, unrestrained
In all their sudden, bright passions.
Free from opprobrium, earthy,celestial gardens of delight.
Ascent of the Soul through the Spheres ( part 3)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, celestial spheres, mars, medieval cosmology, metaphysics, photography, Poetry, souls, sun on July 7, 2014| 2 Comments »
Spera solis, sol
The ghost that circles our borders,
The glory rolling on our horizons.
The lord of brilliance
To whom we dance and bow.
We follow and weave
Amongst his messengers of shadow,
His pillars of light.
Day is woven thereby
And life is shaped,
Ordered in waves of delight,
The wake from his wheels.
The red bull of morning
Roaring with the dawn.
Boat of heaven, chariot of fire,
Wagon of deliverance.
To him we turn our heads,
To him we bow.
Sustained and warmed
We are pulled up,
Flower, fruit and wither
Under his round sight.
A map of heaven,
An intimation of beyond,
Unfathomable, a cipher,
A sign, a blaze.
Spera martis, mars
Here he is –
Certain gaze,
Certain smile.
All the girls (despite themselves)
Twist their hair, bite their lip.
Bright eyed amongst themselves
With giggled whisper,
(But they will never, ever tell
Of those desires that are so deep hid).
They will all, we will all,
Trail after him
Blaming ourselves for every scar,
Every wound, every bruise.
Who cannot match up to such as he,
So sure he is
Of justice and victory,
So fierce and radiant.
We have become the red planet,
Enslaved by bold and noble action,
Unwilling to reflect,
But act, react.
Ascent of the Soul through the Spheres (part 2)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cosmology, medieval iconography, photography, planets.gods and goddesses, Poetry, souls, spirits on July 5, 2014| 4 Comments »
Here are the next few sections of what has been written so far…..
Spera mercurii, mercurius
Quick as murder,
Bursting breeches, this lad
Gobby, too smart
Full of street tricks,
Alley cat, sly and sleek.
He will flicker in the shadows,
Stealing pennies, stealing favours,
Stealing wisdom from the faded.
An eye for the back door, pimp of lawyers
And all knot makers. A shiny solution,
A quicksilver poison.
Spera veneris, venus
Mother of all beauty
(Some will say all sin)
Herself herself washed ashore.
What can we say?
She is the summit of air,
The hills of love,
The valleys of lust,
The sign before day
And the star before darkness.
Her form is whatever you desire.
Her desire is to be encompassed.
All fruit she offers, never ceasing.
As the sea’s waves
She laps and drowns,
Roars and lulls.
We are swept sway
On honey breath,
A five-fold star,
A pulse.
From the Greying Void
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, darkness, demons, habits of perception, inspiration, mind, muse-medusa-medulla, persona of poets, photography, Poetry, stance on July 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »
POETS OF THE GREYING VOID ( BOOK OF VOICES)
Only by these words
Only by those your demons allow
By those airs and sorrows,
Those scars,
That keep them so contentedly anaesthetised.
A mirrored spirit in mirrored halls.
Teeth and lips, tongue and breath
A landscape dreaming life
Into itself.
A moon, a lost planet,
A drift of photons.
Sparked, struck flint,
A blink or such
In darkness
Illuminating nothing
Momentarily searing
Momentarily serene.
We cannot question the beauty
Of these voices, beautiful as they are,
So like our own, so like oceans,
So like sighs.
The meaning comes and goes,
A flock fierce and pierced.
The quivering salt
That falls, drying hard,
A new skin.
Maintenance of edges
Honed, traced upon, mapped,
The armies of the Lord,
A sway jut-chinned, belligerence.
The same countries, the same roads
Renamed, mispronounced.
Recidivists redacted,
All is sweetly perfumed,
Sweetly ended.
This my demons demand:
A better, bitter truth.
—
The Ascent of the Soul through the Spheres (1)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, ascent, cosmology, medieval iconography, moon, planets, Soul, transformation on July 3, 2014| 4 Comments »
I have been looking at this work now and then for a while. Like the soul, (should it exist), this is a work in progress. It takes its ideas from medieval cosmography, where there is a concentric hierarchy of planes and beings extending down from, and up to, the Godhead. A mythic universe, populated with the history of thought and dreaming
Or do we descend,
Pulled by the centre?
Or split, (not knowing)
Each way seeming the
One, right way,
Disorientated
Or reorientated, lost
Or on the road home,
(Something, something here
Is familiar..)
Centrum mundi
The centre of horizon’s cross,
Hung saviour seeing
All things,
Constrained, speared
By:
Terra
Acqua
Aer
Ignis
Corpus corruptibilis quod est
Quatuor elementa,
This corruptible body
Consisting of four elements.
Corruptible, corrupt, corrupting,
Spinning away ( or towards)
Perfection. Untrustworthy,
Fickle mud rising
Yearning for perfect emptiness.
Then, in their spheres of crystal motion
Each in their turning, each lord of spirits,
Masters of music, ordainers of action,
Gatekeepers, judge and jailors.
Spera lunae, luna
Chimes she does and roars,
Moon scything time.
Each mother’s mirror,
Queen of slow oceans
Queen of indigo night.
Ever thirsting, drawing moisture,
A mist of dream, a catalogue
Of sorrows whispered in midnight,
A chariot of ice tears, her starry train.
Buxton in the High Peak
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambience, Buxton, coolness, crows, Derbyshire, England, fresh airs, landscape, limestone country, nature, Peak District, Poetry, rain, spa town, summer, the north on June 30, 2014| 6 Comments »
BUXTON IN THE HIGH PEAK
Away into the high hills shrouded.
Away to the high, scoured lands laid with lines of stone.
Where the wind crows cedilla the sky
Giving their own reasons for silence and for speech,
And the unknown calls across fields in trills and ghosts of rain.
We are smudged and drawn thin through tangles of time,
Halting to grasp slim volumes, locate a name or place.
A footfall, a scumble of gravel, a whisp of evening moth,
A rag, a window outlooking, a scurry of moments.
But always, cloud-hugged and green,
The valley air pricked with cool distance,
Fluent with miles of silence and the sky.
The depths below and the depths above,
A certain thinness, a certain wild lateness to the season,
A short uncertain summer, clouded, piled up fragrant.
A near forgotten tune, a debris of careless architecture,
A mapping of overgrown scars, a huddling of sorts.
Under the dark maples, under the covens of elder,
Under the long light, the distant shining land crowned with evening sun.
The long roads, the long roads from hill to hill,
A nonchalent scattering of sheep, stone kept.
This long breath, a cool drink, a meeting of streams
Down by the rose, purple rose-dropped park
Where jackdaws bob in and out those stately walks
Where the walnut tree and the yews kneel and pray.
And always the happy, straining dogs, the flurry of ducks
And the slow, heavy drops fall bending the grasses,
Blue geranium and honeysuckle, and a drift of elm seed,
A patient confetti, swirled away down drain and culvert.
The high town and the low town
A history of names, a relaxed concentric dream,
Gathered, pooled, walled by silent woods,
By silent caves and the sound of running waters,
A scribbled note from heaven.
—
simonhlilly 