From The Apocrypha of William O’Shaunessy

Book VI, XIX

Changing house

They need a small bus to carry the bones of all the fish

that have been eaten in this house.

When a house moves

it must bring all its detritus with it –

the ash of all the wood burnt in every fireplace,

the grease of the five thousand chickens

broiled in the memory of the dynasty.

Chains to hold the boat by the river must come

along with the light garland of leaves

that greeted a homecoming,

the marriage sheets, slippers woven

for the infant feet of the princess who now

wonders where her grandchildren have vanished.

In the slow train

of carts, covered wagons, winding files of bundles

strapped to the backs of mules and servants,

small objects must be placed.

So many presences must feel at home in this journey:

the boy who gathered the names of all the insects,

the father presiding from the wicker chair

floating still in his dream of ownership and giving,

an old lady wrapped in a whispering shawl of fire.

And there are doors that have fallen into long-collapsed rooms,

doors that must be found now, their frames restored

and brought back to form a passage for the sun.

For a house flows out into the trees that surround it

and the fragrance of pollens caught by a Spring day

becomes a part of the invisible cornerstone –

like the dust settled in the space between ill-fitting bricks,

like the open hands that found other hands

in the rooms that are now

all sunlight.

(from Dionysius the Forgotten, The Book of Odes)

Book VI, XXIII

A true Emperor has no need for extensive domains. When the Hung Nu invaded, the Emperor Sartorius redefined his boundaries so they corresponded exactly to his shadow. All night his kingdom remained a mere possibility. By day it crossed the landscape of a devastated realm, bringing to all those it fell on the blessings of good governance. Even today among the Armeniani there are those who by chance have stepped into the late afternoon shadow of Sartorius, their lives forever transfigured and made straight. Well known are the numerous Emperors who, following betrayal and defeat, re-established their Empires within the sacred space marked out by stones on a mountain top. In the annals of Enobius it also states that true Emperors do not require their rule to last for prolonged epochs. The Emperor Wu Li’s Kingdom covered the entire earth but lasted only the time it takes for a leaf to fall from an oak tree to the soil beneath. In those few moments his decree on the irreversibility of truth was recognised somewhere in the deep recesses of all stones and water.

When a windmill wishes to travel (to visit her cousins in Egypt for example) she must first ensure several weeks of stillness across her chosen corridor of sky. Pitching in high seas on moonless nights of polar blizzards will never do. The sails of a windmill were not made to slice through oceans of madness or to maintain balance when the earth has lost its centre. A thin maiden of salt feels understandably squeamish travelling five miles on horseback. How much more conspicuous a squat windmill must feel having always a blank-faced infinity before it and only its love of repetition to sustain itself. If it could be lowered into the ocean at the right angle then perhaps it might discover the art of swimming, its muscular arms propelling it into the calm that exists when objects find their own current.

On days when the Rituals cease to have efficacy what words will you use when you meet a ghost on the white road?

A true Emperor doesn’t need a large country.

Millions of battle-cautious dots will never make a solid stream.

How does water connect us to stars? How does darkness belong?

In the fabled city of Eternal Order the light from interminable waste zones belied the arched bridges of its maps.

All the Iconographies tell us that the mountain is there for climbing. What to do when instead it inverts itself, offering only a laborious descent to the place of origins?

Still, and in stillness, a broken staircase unites.

Is the sky happiest with long fingers of water or does it prefer the circularity of ponds?

If you search for medicines when you have pain, what will you do with the terror that comes when you have joy?

(Fragments found among papyri in the Nestorian Monastery of Tabriz, author(s) unknown)

Note: For the phrase “A true Emperor does not need a large country” compare Mencius Book One, section 5, “To be a true emperor, even a hundred square miles can be land enough”. (Mencius, translated by David Hinton, p 8) (W O’S)

Book II, XXV

Death of the unicorn

The unicorn has found his way into a clearing between terrified stars. Fissures of a sudden unique calamity run in all directions. Darkness and a stiff icy wind have thinned down whatever language is left to the world. Beyond the singing of the river is the gathering bass note of leaves falling. If only he could bury his ivory horn deep in the flesh of the tree called Wandering. If only somewhere still held the strength to welcome an outdated Immortality. The unicorn, fading into the air’s white breath, maintains the balance of his singularity, a tremulous attention to all he will never see, that strange inexplicable tenderness being born the other side of the dark.

(Gregorius of Limousin, from Poems written in summer of the year 1000)

STRIKING AND CLAIMING

I am getting tired of watching over you as you sleep. Every night you get up, cook breakfast, go out to shop. Eyes closed, you drive slowly, wearing your flannel pyjamas. We go from shop to shop as you hunt the always elusive ingredients for the dinners your grandmothers made years ago asleep in other countries. I walk beside you, seeking to avoid arguments for the law is not kindly to couples engaged in violent public altercations as they sleep. Soon he arrives – your brother, your boyfriend, I’m never sure which. It’s hard shopping with the dead always wanting to put in their commentary, still it’s something that must be done. You insist on a jog through the park. The moon continues its trajectory from east to west yet you travel steadily north in your sleep, towards lakes in sub-Arctic forests, wind-grazed tundras. Soon we come to the always open airport and read off the destinations we plan to go one day when everything will change.

With you at dawn I climb back into bed. I watch as one by one the pages I have written go blank, taking back the life I have lived for twenty years. I will never clean up the trashed streets that lie in our wake. Love goes on striking us down and claiming us.