from Aeneid, book III

Virgil, To few great Jupiter imparts this grace

From the “Aeneid, book III”, tr. by Dryden

(…) Then thus replied the prophetess divine:
“O goddess-born of great Anchises’ line,
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,
And those of shining worth and heav’nly race.
Betwixt those regions and our upper light,
Deep forests and impenetrable night
Possess the middle space: th’ infernal bounds
Cocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds.
But if so dire a love your soul invades,
As twice below to view the trembling shades;
If you so hard a toil will undertake,
As twice to pass th’ innavigable lake;
Receive my counsel. In the neighb’ring grove
There stands a tree; the queen of Stygian Jove
Claims it her own; thick woods and gloomy night
Conceal the happy plant from human sight.
One bough it bears; but (wondrous to behold!)
The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:
This from the vulgar branches must be torn,
And to fair Proserpine the present borne,
Ere leave be giv’n to tempt the nether skies.
The first thus rent a second will arise,
And the same metal the same room supplies.
Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to see
The lurking gold upon the fatal tree:
Then rend it off, as holy rites command;
The willing metal will obey thy hand,
Following with ease, if favor’d by thy fate,
Thou art foredoom’d to view the Stygian state:
If not, no labor can the tree constrain;
And strength of stubborn arms and steel are vain.
Besides, you know not, while you here attend,
Th’ unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:
Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost,
Depriv’d of fun’ral rites, pollutes your host.
Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,
Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;
Then, living turfs upon his body lay:
This done, securely take the destin’d way,
To find the regions destitute of day.”
(…)
These rites perform’d, the prince, without delay,
Hastes to the nether world his destin’d way.
Deep was the cave; and, downward as it went
From the wide mouth, a rocky rough descent;
And here th’ access a gloomy grove defends,
And there th’ unnavigable lake extends,
O’er whose unhappy waters, void of light,
No bird presumes to steer his airy flight;
Such deadly stenches from the depths arise,
And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies.
From hence the Grecian bards their legends make,
And give the name Avernus to the lake.
Four sable bullocks, in the yoke untaught,
For sacrifice the pious hero brought.
The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns;
Then cuts the curling hair; that first oblation burns,
Invoking Hecate hither to repair:
A pow’rful name in hell and upper air.
The sacred priests with ready knives bereave
The beasts of life, and in full bowls receive
The streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night
(The sable wool without a streak of white)
Aeneas offers; and, by fate’s decree,
A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee,
With holocausts he Pluto’s altar fills;
Sev’n brawny bulls with his own hand he kills;
Then on the broiling entrails oil he pours;
Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours.
Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun,
Nor ended till the next returning sun.
Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance,
And howling dogs in glimm’ring light advance,
Ere Hecate came. “Far hence be souls profane!”
The Sibyl cried, “and from the grove abstain!
Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford;
Assume thy courage, and unsheathe thy sword.”
She said, and pass’d along the gloomy space;
The prince pursued her steps with equal pace.

Ye realms, yet unreveal’d to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night,
Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state!

Obscure they went thro’ dreary shades, that led
Along the waste dominions of the dead.
Thus wander travelers in woods by night,
By the moon’s doubtful and malignant light,
When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies,
And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.

Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,
And pale Diseases, and repining Age,
Want, Fear, and Famine’s unresisted rage;
Here Toils, and Death, and Death’s half-brother, Sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep;
With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;
The Furies’ iron beds; and Strife, that shakes
Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes.
Full in the midst of this infernal road,
An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:
The God of Sleep there hides his heavy head,
And empty dreams on ev’ry leaf are spread.
Of various forms unnumber’d specters more,
Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.
Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,
And Briareus with all his hundred hands;
Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;
And vain Chimaera vomits empty flame.
The chief unsheath’d his shining steel, prepar’d,
Tho’ seiz’d with sudden fear, to force the guard,
Off’ring his brandish’d weapon at their face;
Had not the Sibyl stopp’d his eager pace,
And told him what those empty phantoms were:
Forms without bodies, and impassive air.
Hence to deep Acheron they take their way,
Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay,
Are whirl’d aloft, and in Cocytus lost.
There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast-
A sordid god: down from his hoary chin
A length of beard descends, uncomb’d, unclean;
His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.
He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;
The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.
He look’d in years; yet in his years were seen
A youthful vigor and autumnal green.
An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,
Which fill’d the margin of the fatal flood:
Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,
And mighty heroes’ more majestic shades,
And youths, intomb’d before their fathers’ eyes,
With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.
Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,
Or fowls, by winter forc’d, forsake the floods,
And wing their hasty flight to happier lands;
Such, and so thick, the shiv’ring army stands,
And press for passage with extended hands.
Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:
The rest he drove to distance from the shore. (…)

The hero, looking on the left, espied
A lofty tow’r, and strong on ev’ry side
With treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds,
Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds;
And, press’d betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds
Wide is the fronting gate, and, rais’d on high
With adamantine columns, threats the sky.
Vain is the force of man, and Heav’n’s as vain,
To crush the pillars which the pile sustain.
Sublime on these a tow’r of steel is rear’d;
And dire Tisiphone there keeps the ward,
Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day,
Observant of the souls that pass the downward way.
From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the pains
Of sounding lashes and of dragging chains.
(…)
Now, in a secret vale, the Trojan sees
A sep’rate grove, thro’ which a gentle breeze
Plays with a passing breath, and whispers thro’ the trees;
And, just before the confines of the wood,
The gliding Lethe leads her silent flood.
About the boughs an airy nation flew,
Thick as the humming bees, that hunt the golden dew;
In summer’s heat on tops of lilies feed,
And creep within their bells, to suck the balmy seed:
The winged army roams the fields around;
The rivers and the rocks remurmur to the sound.
Aeneas wond’ring stood, then ask’d the cause
Which to the stream the crowding people draws.
Then thus the sire: “The souls that throng the flood
Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow’d:
In Lethe’s lake they long oblivion taste,
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.
Long has my soul desir’d this time and place,
To set before your sight your glorious race,
That this presaging joy may fire your mind
To seek the shores by destiny design’d.”-
“O father, can it be, that souls sublime
Return to visit our terrestrial clime,
And that the gen’rous mind, releas’d by death,
Can covet lazy limbs and mortal breath?”

Anchises then, in order, thus begun
To clear those wonders to his godlike son:
“Know, first, that heav’n, and earth’s compacted frame,
And flowing waters, and the starry flame,
And both the radiant lights, one common soul
Inspires and feeds, and animates the whole.
This active mind, infus’d thro’ all the space,
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.
Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain,
And birds of air, and monsters of the main.
Th’ ethereal vigor is in all the same,
And every soul is fill’d with equal flame;
As much as earthy limbs, and gross allay
Of mortal members, subject to decay,
Blunt not the beams of heav’n and edge of day.
From this coarse mixture of terrestrial parts,
Desire and fear by turns possess their hearts,
And grief, and joy; nor can the groveling mind,
In the dark dungeon of the limbs confin’d,
Assert the native skies, or own its heav’nly kind:
Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains;
But long-contracted filth ev’n in the soul remains.
The relics of inveterate vice they wear,
And spots of sin obscene in ev’ry face appear.
For this are various penances enjoin’d;
And some are hung to bleach upon the wind,
Some plung’d in waters, others purg’d in fires,
Till all the dregs are drain’d, and all the rust expires.
All have their manes, and those manes bear:
The few, so cleans’d, to these abodes repair,
And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air.
Then are they happy, when by length of time
The scurf is worn away of each committed crime;
No speck is left of their habitual stains,
But the pure ether of the soul remains.
But, when a thousand rolling years are past,
(So long their punishments and penance last,)
Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god,
Compell’d to drink the deep Lethaean flood,
In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares
Of their past labors, and their irksome years,
That, unrememb’ring of its former pain,
The soul may suffer mortal flesh again.” 

Eroticon

OUR BOAT RIDE that summer across this little island, beneath which, legends say, lay an ancient city buried by the the great seismic wave that drowned Atlantis. I was reading your favorite lines for eternal youth, you were lying naked on the stern. We were dreamers then and our pathos eternal. Our sweating bodies and minds upon the burning sand, tasting our welcomed saltiness. Your smell I adored. Eros and behind us the forest, you are the forest.

It was late but we both loved late, still do. You knew I loved my solitude. My dancing brushes will win me from you, my constant absence was present, even during this beautiful carnal scene in ?Hiroshima. Mon Amour? we watched together, even then, my absence could not be shared, you tried, penetrating my mind, telling more about this strange monologue, you recall the sound of your teardrops everytime I would mention: Johannesburg my city?

That specific night after the train station scene, we tasted ambrosia and you wore the moon, while I whispered excerpts from Marguerite Duras? monologue. You understood why , after death I would slip though the mirror of my paternal home. We could not, did not, avoid the dusk with the impetuous intimacy, Eliana?s song of barmy railway stations, and I, nowhere to find refuge, falling asleep in the hands of the blind. The end came unforeseen, the smoke was calling me above the station?Times were sombre, dramas were silently played on scattered bridges. The sorrow of old rebellions and oh! Johannesburg , my city. At times like these, how could I be reading ?In Search of Lost Time??

May I carry on?are you still there?

Often at nights I would arrive in this other city, an empty city. An old man, the sole presence lived there dreaming of being a musician, an imaginary violin on his knees, covered by his coat. ?You listening?? he asked. ?Yes? I answered, ?I have always listened to it.? While this statue was telling the birds the whole story. I will, my love, one day, tell you the whole story too. For now, let us gaze at the Aegean. Let us observe these centuries in a happy retrospective.

I stood in the center of the room gazing the Unachievable.

This mysterious silence, as though bringing down the curtain for an unmentionable deed. At nights we would capture the infinite, with sloppy words of prayer, as many forgetful enigmatic friendships. These tiny riddles will never be our past. Corfu, in bed, our mutual whisper, you asked why. Why? In my sleep I attend these odd meetings to join people and blurry faces I lost at some night ambush.
©stratos

from the book “Facets of Friendship”
you may order it at Amazon.com or bn.comÂ

volo non valeo (suite)

52ndJanuary: Now that i thought myself in stagnant waters, it is now that this important Date in November came – and spring is feeding my energy, though May is always exhausting – have to leave these envelopes today – am i obliged to launch myself or being launched, is there a choice? i prefer getting focused.

57thJanuary: when mind thinks about Theatre, the Act, the Plot and the Murder in interwoven well balanced words, meanings…every word gains in the play, chosen after long thoughts through lonely nights…how can you not shy away when Words and Meanings are used in a casual way. Empty paragraph’s of meaningless terms…remind me of second-hand all used-out chewing gum…and that’s not all yet, “pseudosciences” are gaining ground, obviously, when there’s nothing in…better fill your mind… ’twas empty anyway.

Volo non valeo

25thJanuary: Paper, pens, pencils, a virgin canvas, a box of dreams, a paper pad.

26thJanuary: Thinking my place of birth, the studio I worked before, inhaling the acrylic. The phone’s ringing. Have to wake the kids, can’t answer right now, first the… another e-mail? The paint is running dry, oh hell.

27thJanuary: Go back to the place of birth, names of locations enter my mind, those crushing waves at Port Elisabeth…This piece needs a little ochre + black, and oh a tiny bit of white…The phone again, it’s Annemie from the Gallery, not my big pieces. Not now. Have to notify the exterior lift for Paris tomorrow. No, not now, yes…yes…. I know ah…end of this year 2 exhibits? A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, alors?

29thJanuary: Is this mature work ?

perfume*

Sweet rose perfume each suceeding summer morning would fill me Still feel it after 10 odd years Aunt Alexia to my horror was my permanent escort Could not put this horror to words I was only 8 then I only knew there was something wrong something to be feared My mother?s sister she was I spent with her some of my summer holidays The garden at the back was not much to talk about Lawn surrounded by flower beds and high walls and three gravel paths At the end of one of those paths a small brick building for tools and stuff now housed my aunts paint studio Ah yes and lots and lots of roses perfumed the morning breeze

I could only visit this studio accompanying her A forbidden territory at her absence This little house was the focus of my feelings of fear and revulsion of aunt Alexia She would artistically talk to me as if I was sophisticated audience and not a 8 year old girl She would quote certain famous poets and I somehow felt grateful she never wanted to paint my portrait My ugly features were if so to say ugly to preserve immortality Pity she would say looking at me I drew away my skin prickling with goose-pimples Thrilled with joy I was not to pose Now that I know a few things I think she was a good painter

Then I noticed this unfinished portrait Was painted larger than usual Oh just a boy no-one special Only a personification of beauty she sighed My aunt was a spinster The maid shouted for tea and I burst with relief into the fresh air and tored up the path as if pursued by demons We drank in the warm summer scent of the roses

At the end of those brief summer holidays aunt saw me across my town as usual We had sometime to spare and we went to the Motor Museum It is there that I saw the boy of my aunt?s canvas I tugged her arm and pointed him out She pretended not to see him He turned away when he saw me I saw this flicker of recognition in his dark eyes as they rested on my aunt

Time passed Three years I think actually I met aunt?s maid down-town She invited me for lunch at the house The garden The familiar rose perfume Peaceful and remote My aunt was to be away for a couple of days I entered the studio Cobwebs and a funny smell Musty and rank All beautiful pictures were in their place Many new ones equally interesting I saw them all except the one of the boy I went for the shelves and began searching the neat piles of paper and canvas At the very bottom of the shelf bent in half so that the beautiful face was distorted Was the portrait of the boy Someone had put an enormous red brushstroke through it and printed a four letter word I would not dare pronounce I quickly put everything back as I had found it I rose and saw the storage door half-open Curiosity aroused Threw open the door to its full extend The boy lay on his back on the floor Crawling mass of buzzing flies covered his neck and eyes

Later Aunt was put in a mental home She died soon after I cannot live in a house with roses in the garden

——————————————

*idea taken from July Chard 1967Â

torn page

GRANDPA THREW THE young maid on her back. I heard the wooden chest moan a bit. ?You Pig!? she screamed. The young vicar sleeps every single night with a naked woman on his mind, he decided her face would be ugly ( his way of reducing sin. ).
—————————————————————————————-
Calling. Calling. We are called. Corridor and door to the left. Please turn be careful. Okay thank you careful now. Five ? five ? eighty two ? twenty four. Voice ( steadier now ). Face structure. Fingures, your hands, profile and en face. Your real identity. Residence, number of persons. Comply and avoid senselessness. Who are you? TownX, TownY? Actual identity and metaphysical identity. En route from zero to one. Now.
—————————————————————————————–
I left a coin on the dish, Lolita drew the first card: queen of spades, ?she?s the spicy one?, she tells me. The second was the ace of hearts: ? there will be three of you in the game ?do you like les partouges??, she tells me, then she draws a third card, which I am not supposed to tell. Then, those great sandy roads I walked. There were thousands with me. Then, again alone, with a beautiful window at hand I found in a dream, and there?s grandpa again, thrusting the young maid upon the moaning chest.

When grandpa broke his back on the stairs, she devoted herself to him, we do have to live, even more so, when we?re about to vanish.

A satanic conspiracy indeed. But I have the answer. A proposition is necessary toward all serious publishers. From now on, in every book published, a torn page must be included, to honour all rebels, with or without a cause. They would then be obliged to send me a copy. A glass of whiskey, together with de Falla?s music, would be enough to sustain my criterion. Yes. I am not objective. Objects are.

There are, really, a thousand ways for one to live his life but only one to lose it. And the tenants kept on protesting about my long greasy hair covering half the roof, you see, they had no idea how many neglected souls were out there ? but I have to be fair, they never shot at me. They knew very well, that the real dead are among the survivors. After a comfortable dinner, they felt the chill and the trap of Certainty under the rug.

Finally, all was done in the most natural way: they went up the house, demolished the staircase, bricked the windows and took off their clothes. They wrestled a few years in the locked room. Rumours say that they were found a few centuries after, embraced in bed. Wrong. These two and their story was the whistle of the insane, merely trying his best sewing a button on the wall.

stories etc.,

THEN ONE MORNING you wake convinced that in your dream you finally found your destination.

While dressing in haste and bidding farewell to family, playing a heavenly tune on the bed rails. Oh, do not laugh, things have two aspects, and I prefer the most exciting – and this ceaseless feeling…we could not live our real life, t’was there in the dark. ( at nights we hushed eavesdropping darkness ).

This insignificant scene comes to mind: dead flies stuck on the window in autumn, like big book pages ( we could not yet read ). Someone please explain! Dead kids are not afraid getting older as avenues of the blind are parading in our sleep, you see my homestead has always been there, yes there, where I was stopped by a word.

Ever since, I accept life without any antilogies, as in dreams.

Now drink to the health of compassion, as we will never get to know one another, you know, mother the same night father died, took out of the drawer, a girlish pin to tie her hair back, showing that all was not yet lost, we still have time.

I remained young, my admiration for Dorian Gray has nothing to do with it, no. It is because of this forgotten woman that passes by every night, I see her from afar erasing my Past with her long wavy dress.

Nevetheless now, let us leave our hopes for tomorrow and peep behind the sofa, big events are taking place there, like our first tears – later I had to suffer hiding my destination till, at the end, I fell in love with the georgeous tree in the garden….Ever since, I have never forgotten that, surely, there must be a serious reason for my being here, whereas in the far corner in each of my nights, there is a secret that I do not dare reveal. Exaggerations, you might say…but this is how we will be supplied with stories through winter.Â

The Craft

UNKNOWN SLEEPLESS NIGHTS preserving a life, attending every instant to this infernal power of uneventful order. I, as a weakling, find these efforts tiresome.

We hear a valuable whisper.

Usually I prefer lying down starring at the hidden secret we wear-out by living and how will we return with empty hands?

In your hands, we all respect water.

Often wondered, how many, really, are in the house, at times I would count their gloves to verify, but I knew there were the others, with pain on their naked fingers.

To forget you? I have forgotten.

In bygone days, strangers would walk in, never leaving. I did not see them, but saw their coachmen falling and dying out on the street, waiting.

An Aeolus bag of emptied Time.

At dinner, I would hear their racontes concealing with terror the Dark, the faraway Out. This touch I felt, since there was no-one ?Are you there??

Sophocles enters the scene.

Nightfall dressed by the melodies of the harp. It may not be a harp, but this immortal sorrow that comes with creative craft.Â

Federico

To Federico Garcia Lorca

Mute midnight and no danger signal

You, swinged off the wheels
leaving your shadow shattered

Then, time was strangled leaning
to the chloroformic dawn

Into the street eclypse, invisible
thief turned nailing

The moonshine nickel on shoulder straps

Leaving Space to write the “Sonetto de la dulce queja”

to you

Precious stone the night, chronic
Sentiment of adolescent condition
Wild joy for us living reality’s unprediction

A Word.
Dream of a complete downfall, remember
Dark omens come in soft velvet night steps

A long lonely walk in the desert, the unsecure
Goal of passion, the sea’s partition in full moon.
Aye! the sinful adventure of the Word.

Who will invoice me on her redeemed virtues?
Who will sense delight and
Who will offer her, treason?

Thus, in those days of the sun, I saw her.
Her form vertically cut. Declaring her freedom
Inside a drop of blood and black ink.

Some pale afternoon off she
Would go, leaving me certain of
Her plotting scheme

This night, I again dreamed of the Word.
The “W” as two open legs longing for…
Ad Libitum.Â