Daughters of Babylon (42 page)

Volte-face
: This being a labyrinthine fragment of a convoluted map, while true to form, lies, by necessity, three removes from the title’s premise and cannot, therefore, guarantee reprieve or escape from situations that exist or may have existed prior to the reader approaching this work. Re-reading may or may not be of further assistance.

My task began, as many do, with meaning well;

some learn by sight, others by repetition of sound,

I, of latter bent, having been for so long blanketed

had not heard the Titan who stole fire has a twin,

dull-witted thunk, Epimetheus, who goes about

unsetting fires, never quite managing but bad enough

that a magus named Pythagoras saw fit enough

to ask for volunteers none too bright who might, well,

consent to go to hell, and since I’d had about

enough of people’s whines & mockery, the sound

of someplace deeper held appeal. Have you a twin?

Pyth asked, before I signed. Nope, just me! Blanketed

thus with solitude and ignorance of how wet-blanketed

our species had agreed to be, I brought enough

of twinéd rope and kit to wend my way along twin

spirals that descend to nether studios so well

entrained in resonance—this is hell?—that no sound

can be heard and no thing can be talked about.

You’d think in such a place—Xibalba, Hades—about

which we are warned from infancy, still blanketed,

there’d be no sights, no complementary sound

apart from souls on fire, crying out, “Enough!”

This home to deviants where not quite perfect d…well

were monochord in their deploring of the hindsight twin,

brother of Prometheus. What comes before twin

thinking, Foresight, matters most, yet you fuss about

the done and did, as if the world had darned well

better know how miffed you are! Now you’re blanketed

in afterthought, fires erupting everywhere, enough

to make you think there is, or that you’re in, hell! Sound

familiar? They were looking straight at me, their sound

of perfect fifth, just major third, while a trepidatious twin

inside my head was twanging. I do not know enough

of theory musical, although I paused when talk about

harmonic ratios to Mayan myth conjoined. Fire blanketed

creates the Smoking Mirror, Pythagoras knows this well.

Their harmonies were sounding off, as if cacophony that lay about

Prometheus’s twin multi-hatched with them. Already over-blanketed

with enough—no, too much data, I could not see things faring well.

“For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”

The tone read, you have reached the end

of conversation. Greater Diesis now says

you may proceed. With what, wha, wh…? Even

echo was giving up in my spiraling effort

to return fire to the Customer Service

nether gods with no hind end in sight

to guide me, I could only grope and hope.

Welcome to twenty-three degrees. We hope

you have enjoyed the fright. The effort

to speak without speech, to view sans sight,

I don’t care what anybody says—

the jar of fire surged—here resides the end

of lies! Don’t try that again, mortal. Disservice

the gods, what, you think you can get even?

The place was neither hot nor cold. Effort

to think sucked away out the bitter/sweet end

of where I used to have fingers and toes. Hope,

Pandora, last thing in the box, in dreary service

to hubby, Epimethius, fun-killer, myth says,

but do we listen? If none of us can even

fathom truth, what’s the diff, hind or foresight?

Sightless, imagination had come to my service.

Three surrounded me, only numbers uneven

seemed to rule in these chambers. No effort

conjured a macaw with man’s face; the sight

of Diotima, Socrates’s teacher, gave me hope;

the third, unsmiling old man, set of keys, says,

Call me Rock. How’s it feel to reach the end?

Pyth had warned me of the trap. Whoever says

the stupid earthly things, keep in your sight.

I nudged the urn forward. We’ve come to the end

of uses for this fire. We cook with microwave, hope

that eating raw will slow down time, even

though we must know better. Can you service

my request? Three pinwheels spun, a sight

that made my ears pop. Too few carry hope

for mankind; this once mighty fire can’t service

like it used to. Fire power, huh! You can’t even

imagine—I shut my no-mouth in an effort

to remember, this is a place of forgetting, End

of all ends, who cares what a paltry human says?

The guy named Rock jangles his keys. Even

Macaw Man rattles at that noise. Service,

by custom, requires exchange, calmly says

the priestess Diotima. To meet your end

you must give up the means. This no-sight

of humans creates and sustains no hope,

though to your credit, you are surrendering effort.

To hope or pray I can convey the sight

of fire’s service vanishing is beyond my effort

though goddess says, firmly, there is no end.

“It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things…If in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature; the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”

So you think you know the secrets of desire,

mastered all the words & moves designed to capture;

or perhaps you’ve given up, made way for rapture

of a lesser kind: I’ll eat and buy, no new fire

awaits, so what’s the point? From passion I retire,

yet even so you check the horoscopes, in case

the Universe has spared a crumb or two, inquire

through proper channels, might you find for me a place?

Expand your range! Each day, toss out the rhyme schemes of

yesterday, and spring anew. The funds to fire all

you dream and hope, they come by seeing first. Recall

what’s yours, not others’. Be the object of great love

by sweet Creation. Disregard below. Above

is where the fun of life begins, begins again.

Three things I’ve learned: that push does not rely on shove;

there’s no such thing as wrong & goodness never ends.

Renewing fire from the fund that never dries

like drug-free magic carpet rides will help you soar,

will guide you through Prometheus’s door.

From both ends of the telescope you may apprise

by feeling thoughts of joy, you’ll entertain surprise.

But surely none of this excessive pep is new!

You brought it with you on the day you came, bright eyes,

and through these octaves, you’ll remember what to do.

Begin by disaccommodating thoughts of lack,

replace them in this moment with the possible—

a teeny crack, to gods is fully plausible.

Tend every tiny evidence that you’re on track

as if the Universe now had (it does!) your back.

A forethought of the good is mightier than gold;

give favour to abundancy and watch it stack.

You ARE the star, the greatest story ever told!