The poem is written in alternating trochaic pentameters and tetrameters, except for two lines where iambics crept in. Mounts Bay is the large bay between Gwennap Head and The Lizard on which my beloved Penzance sits; Cudden Point is a headland to the east of Marazion which itself is to the east of Penzance.
For a very different treatment of deep matters, here's a link to my December 1980 poem "Plotinus and the Snake" (posted on this blog on 19 December 2012). I wrote it in the first flush of discovering Plotinus whom I still regard as one of the very greatest of the ancient philosophers and the greatest Neo-Platonist. It has often been pointed out how close his work is to Christian philosophical theology; indeed, in the seventeenth century there was an entire school of Christian Platonists for whom he was central. The various incidents mentioned in the poem are taken from his biography.
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Venus glowing on the Western Sea
Shines on sinners, shines on me –
Lovers, lusters, pursemen swelled and sleek,
Victors having stormed their peak:
Lit by midnight’s star-and-Venus glow
(Mounts Bay shillies to and fro),
All must quaver at the sea wind’s cry,
“MANE, THECEL, PHARES: die!
“O Baltázar, know thy soul is claimed,
“Countless are your sins and named,
“Swept to Sheol by the Lord’s fierce hand,
“Reft your world-hopes, foam on sand.”
Friends, know this, you too Baltázar are,
And I, the meanest sinner far.
Six great sins like bales a’squat our backs
Frenzy us as flies in wax.
First’s Presumption: lo, the Pharisee
Draped in rubric, scalp to knee,
Harsh in faulting lessers’ ill-drilled ways,
Rank impresses through his gaze;
But assurance cranks to hauteur’s puff,
Soles him in his own enough,
Momently, he’s pillared like Lot’s wife,
Living, yes, but not a life.
Then’s Despair, philosophy’s own gift:
Tenured, cuckold, last hairs quiffed,
Jürgen Krudsmann munches like a snail
Nietzsche’s orphic sense-spatched Braille;
Decades questing self’s sufficient “is,”
Cross-eyed with his helpless “viz,”
Chasm-dancing leave him, for in man
Essence is not found nor plan;
Self’s existence rests on what’s Without,
Raising it above things’ rout;
Krudsmann, though, his lecture notes in stone,
Pumps his texts like bodies prone;
Nothing’s found, nothing to salve his gloom;
Slowly shadow darks the room.
Next’s Impugning Truth That’s Known. Behold,
Zadie Zed (once Adam Auld)
Swirls “her” stubble with a rouge-charged brush,
Bothered by “her” tub-sized tush;
Penis-bulged, “her” cami-draws enclose
Not girls’ poesy but male prose;
Bustless, hands like hairy Mowbray pies,
“Truth” for “her” is baked of lies.
Notice: “gender,” “sex,” are words which case
Fact’s one fact: there’s sex, its base
Chromosomes, which cannot jump as wish
Wishes; “gender” claims, like fish
Landed writhing, are but tantrumed screams
Contra datum, blemished memes
Imitating Satan’s “Non,” for he,
First, refused reality.
--------------------
Venus glowing on the Western Sea
Shines on sinners, shines on me –
Lovers, lusters, pursemen swelled and sleek,
Victors having stormed their peak:
Lit by midnight’s star-and-Venus glow
(Mounts Bay shillies to and fro),
All must quaver at the sea wind’s cry,
“MANE, THECEL, PHARES: die!
“O Baltázar, know thy soul is claimed,
“Countless are your sins and named,
“Swept to Sheol by the Lord’s fierce hand,
“Reft your world-hopes, foam on sand.”
Friends, know this, you too Baltázar are,
And I, the meanest sinner far.
Six great sins like bales a’squat our backs
Frenzy us as flies in wax.
First’s Presumption: lo, the Pharisee
Draped in rubric, scalp to knee,
Harsh in faulting lessers’ ill-drilled ways,
Rank impresses through his gaze;
But assurance cranks to hauteur’s puff,
Soles him in his own enough,
Momently, he’s pillared like Lot’s wife,
Living, yes, but not a life.
Then’s Despair, philosophy’s own gift:
Tenured, cuckold, last hairs quiffed,
Jürgen Krudsmann munches like a snail
Nietzsche’s orphic sense-spatched Braille;
Decades questing self’s sufficient “is,”
Cross-eyed with his helpless “viz,”
Chasm-dancing leave him, for in man
Essence is not found nor plan;
Self’s existence rests on what’s Without,
Raising it above things’ rout;
Krudsmann, though, his lecture notes in stone,
Pumps his texts like bodies prone;
Nothing’s found, nothing to salve his gloom;
Slowly shadow darks the room.
Next’s Impugning Truth That’s Known. Behold,
Zadie Zed (once Adam Auld)
Swirls “her” stubble with a rouge-charged brush,
Bothered by “her” tub-sized tush;
Penis-bulged, “her” cami-draws enclose
Not girls’ poesy but male prose;
Bustless, hands like hairy Mowbray pies,
“Truth” for “her” is baked of lies.
Notice: “gender,” “sex,” are words which case
Fact’s one fact: there’s sex, its base
Chromosomes, which cannot jump as wish
Wishes; “gender” claims, like fish
Landed writhing, are but tantrumed screams
Contra datum, blemished memes
Imitating Satan’s “Non,” for he,
First, refused reality.
