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MAGATAMA SAYS

Magatama says this is what you are, a wriggle in time, a wriggle in space. An eye that is hollow, a mind that is hollow, a space where, a vessel where, sentience pools and flows through. Embryo spinning round sun yolk. A distinction, a seam, a pebble, an accumulation of used data, a debris, a morraine, a momentum of moments lost, not quite forgotten.
A tube, sealed at either end with only hope. It will not suffer to remain. It too will distort amd become formed, reformed. The spin of horizons never long denied. A new in and a new out. A new edge, a new world, given names from somewhere else. The hollow eye, for the hollow eye does not see except what it has seen before. Somewhere there was a beginning, but it was not here, not here. Each key becomes a door, each door a wall, each wall a cell, each cell a wondering of me and mine, a selfish small delight, a harbouring of dream. Now the tide slips, the shattered, polished brilliance fades. We are left high, drying, the long keening of gulls, sandflies and bladderwrack. No more words. Day becomes day.
Scatter, scatter,
Ye stars!
Scatter,
Ye manifold living beings!
However so far
This home
Shall never become lost,
(though misremembered,
Though mistook),
So wrapped, so folded,
So entangled it is
Within your sheer fibre,
Your fluid, your feeling.
Flee as far as
Beyond the named,
Further than edge,
Farther than form.
Digging foundations for what walls exist, reconstructing our noble and grave histories, mirrors and clouds, equations, flocks of reasons seeking a roost, a reputation. The sun has hidden herself in a cave. Where is the sly shaman will entice her out with curiosity? Shiny things, laughter of others. Wrapped up in, wrapped around and upon ourselves. In becoming out, out in, the curve of edge, empty but for its own density.

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The scratching, sketching reveals magatama is also an ear, an orifice that listens, that absorbs…..and so too, turns doodling into that ubiquitous Celtic mysterious icon, the ‘trumpet spiral’, or for the more botanically minded, the mushroom divided, or for those who watch the way waters weave, the rippled surface vortex……but the doodle as doodle, as gesture, as delight of wrist, it is an outward sweep, a slow arc, an inward sweep, conch consciousness, two shapes from one line, an ineffability, a mystery, a going out and a return, the shape of a soul. Spirit language. It is always tricky, always says more than it says. Clouds conversing with hills………

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MAGATAMA RETURNS

Tight arc
Hard as stone
Open eye.

Rigid curl
Weighed tight
Pulsing.

Foetal curl
Settled
Pulsing.

What is it?
What is it not?
Magatama.

Worn smooth
Rubbed
Inward.

Container
Contained
Key.

One skin
Rubbed smooth
Inner, outer.

Stretching
Taking form
Throbbing.

Rising head
Looking
Seeing.

Eagle beak
Bear claw
Worn smooth.

Incontrovertible proof
A previous universe
Magatama.

Worn away
All that remains:
First universe.

Hooked,
Held,
Harvested.

Hollow seed
Throwing curved edges,
Expansion.

Hollow centre
Regarding flow
Back to nothing.

Becoming precious
Passed down:
What remains.

Accumulating
One surface:
Time-space.

Oldest unknown
First limit
Convolution.

—-


Every now and then, the magatama awakes, whispers into half-sleep. It is a strange being, a shape so simple, so involuted. A seed, a genetic meme. Casting around, I wondered if there were other antediluvian icons that would stir that ancestral well so surely. So far, the closest approach is by the Celtic torc. Like the magatama to the first Japanese peoples, the torc epitomised what to be a Celt meant. A real, tangible object, an object of trade, of status, of power. I shall have to listen to their whispers also……

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MAGATAMA BLINKS

night rain.
slow breath, flared nostrils
of meditating samurai.

drunken skeletons,
clattering arm in arm,
splashing puddles.
rain passes right through them.

five-tailed white fox
rolls over, kisses lover
and creeps out to hunt chickens.

moon lies back,
shivers,
thinking of ocean beds.

calligrapher practicing
with invisible inks,
worlds destroyed and created.

yamaboushi
splashes down mountain path,
breathing rock and root.

five miles high,
dragons and phoenixes
look down on city lights.

crows shift and grumble
nests full of the stolen dreams
of small children.

magatama blinks
turning into a jade bird,
once then twice.

slightly fuddled,
thinking up names
for new brands of sake:
night rain,
samurai nostrils,
calligrapher’s surprise,
moonlit window,
animal seance,
dancing foxes,
shadow river.

poet weaves clouds,
farts, scratches,
remembers, forgets.

cloud scroll, cherry dark trunks.
hooves of the kirin
echoing in the valleys.

there is no magic outside
the mind.
there is no mind outside
of magic.

—-

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