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.
--------------------
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.
Onwards! Now comes Envy of a Soul’s
Good. Unpacking, that’s the shoals
Atheists inhabit. What, all said’s
Godlessness but unclean beds?
Only cultures with what’s God at core
Egg true art, fine actions, lore,
Chronicles that sober and resound,
Law that husbands fruitful ground.
Blanking God fractures the builded foot
Morals need, else pitch and putt
Vices polities, mere robber clans,
Barren, leaching others’ Banns,
Public shows, not meanings. Medalled Heads
Glower at the march-by’s treads,
Open shrines to What Is Not, salute
Pilgrimage with drums and flute
Tearfully to thank the Founder’s Corpse,
Mummied for the narod’s gawps.
Thank for what? A massived, empty-shelled
Shadow, bellicosely belled;
Towered, yes, but monochrome and flat,
Lacking the transcendent That.
Fifthly’s self-willed Stubbornness in Sin,
Sterile as a scowling grin.
Arti Flowerman, surfer, weedhead, broke,
Sixties throwback in his cloak,
Limps with metal hips, and ponytail,
Booze-grey skinned and ancient-frail;
Earthchild-Vetch, his squaw these many years,
Hennaed, pierced, and dupe of seers,
Lumbers fatly after in a shift
Hessian-wove when she was squiffed.
Childless these long decades but “fulfilled”
(Contraception, sheathed or pilled,
Trashed their young; abortion then, condign,
Crushed the stragglers on her vine),
Now, Me, Fun, and Preferably Cheap,
Sum the “faith” and “truth” they keep,
Goalless, “fault-free,” shirking every claim –
Onanism without shame.
(Larged, that names all cultures where the young
Shunned, feared, to their deaths are flung;
Age, self-firsting, lets the tribe go smash,
Youth’s new life shrugged off like ash.)
Sixth is Last Impenitence. Alas!
Gab-mouthed fools whose minds go crass
Lifetimed in their ego’s preen, at death
Big-eyed glare as each gulped breath
Frazzles to a void in which the strut,
Brag, thrust chest, of Voltaire’s “But”
Shapeshifts grimly – limb-tall, faced and leered,
Satan, free thought’s ace, comes cleared,
Deigning with an arm-twist hand to guide
“Guests” to where their guts are fried.
Think though: Lucifer in grist and gist
Bliss’s fatal egoist,
Rampart-thrown, despite his fairground flaunts
Clutches only silence, haunts
Gloomed by famishing and frustrate rage
That autonomy’s assuage,
Ever reachless, like impenitence,
Merely names soul’s failure, sense
Prisoned by itself come death, for deeps,
Dives found, which no one leaps,
Separate from Himmel hölle’s groans
Rasped like coffins over stones.
Such is Judgement, all are closely weighed,
Some are sainted, many flayed.
Moments, moments! might be all that’s left
You or I; and Venus’ weft
Silvering the sea to Cudden Point,
Whiteing waves with its anoint,
Warns that Pure Contrition’s time is now,
Rock-smashed is our cutter’s bow:
Wind unsteadies Mounts Bay’s brimming seas,
Whistling in a grunt unease;
Harbour, friend, make safewards through the jar,
Praying, lashed to oar or spar.
===============
© May-June 2022
--------------------
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.
Onwards! Now comes Envy of a Soul’s
Good. Unpacking, that’s the shoals
Atheists inhabit. What, all said’s
Godlessness but unclean beds?
Only cultures with what’s God at core
Egg true art, fine actions, lore,
Chronicles that sober and resound,
Law that husbands fruitful ground.
Blanking God fractures the builded foot
Morals need, else pitch and putt
Vices polities, mere robber clans,
Barren, leaching others’ Banns,
Public shows, not meanings. Medalled Heads
Glower at the march-by’s treads,
Open shrines to What Is Not, salute
Pilgrimage with drums and flute
Tearfully to thank the Founder’s Corpse,
Mummied for the narod’s gawps.
Thank for what? A massived, empty-shelled
Shadow, bellicosely belled;
Towered, yes, but monochrome and flat,
Lacking the transcendent That.
Fifthly’s self-willed Stubbornness in Sin,
Sterile as a scowling grin.
Arti Flowerman, surfer, weedhead, broke,
Sixties throwback in his cloak,
Limps with metal hips, and ponytail,
Booze-grey skinned and ancient-frail;
Earthchild-Vetch, his squaw these many years,
Hennaed, pierced, and dupe of seers,
Lumbers fatly after in a shift
Hessian-wove when she was squiffed.
Childless these long decades but “fulfilled”
(Contraception, sheathed or pilled,
Trashed their young; abortion then, condign,
Crushed the stragglers on her vine),
Now, Me, Fun, and Preferably Cheap,
Sum the “faith” and “truth” they keep,
Goalless, “fault-free,” shirking every claim –
Onanism without shame.
(Larged, that names all cultures where the young
Shunned, feared, to their deaths are flung;
Age, self-firsting, lets the tribe go smash,
Youth’s new life shrugged off like ash.)
Sixth is Last Impenitence. Alas!
Gab-mouthed fools whose minds go crass
Lifetimed in their ego’s preen, at death
Big-eyed glare as each gulped breath
Frazzles to a void in which the strut,
Brag, thrust chest, of Voltaire’s “But”
Shapeshifts grimly – limb-tall, faced and leered,
Satan, free thought’s ace, comes cleared,
Deigning with an arm-twist hand to guide
“Guests” to where their guts are fried.
Think though: Lucifer in grist and gist
Bliss’s fatal egoist,
Rampart-thrown, despite his fairground flaunts
Clutches only silence, haunts
Gloomed by famishing and frustrate rage
That autonomy’s assuage,
Ever reachless, like impenitence,
Merely names soul’s failure, sense
Prisoned by itself come death, for deeps,
Dives found, which no one leaps,
Separate from Himmel hölle’s groans
Rasped like coffins over stones.
Such is Judgement, all are closely weighed,
Some are sainted, many flayed.
Moments, moments! might be all that’s left
You or I; and Venus’ weft
Silvering the sea to Cudden Point,
Whiteing waves with its anoint,
Warns that Pure Contrition’s time is now,
Rock-smashed is our cutter’s bow:
Wind unsteadies Mounts Bay’s brimming seas,
Whistling in a grunt unease;
Harbour, friend, make safewards through the jar,
Praying, lashed to oar or spar.
===============
© May-June 2022
