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Posts Tagged ‘medieval cosmology’

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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