(Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky & Eduard Artemyev)
“It is so quiet out here, it is the quietest place in the world.”
– ‘Stalker’ (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
1.
And I will bring you to
the Zone at the propitious
hour; draw you to the lintel
of a tryst by sublimating
its magnetic nodes. Indeed,
I will ensure your passage
through the radioactive fane,
in order to bless you in
its post-nuclear arcanum;
to ratify your quest with
the requisite ‘natural object’
as your wafer. See:
a wasp levitating
astride the bitten apple
in baptismal rain –
whereas now: parched
Earth’s rippling her
elephantine skin
GEA TERRA’s
raiment-texture
materialises into
dancing-threshold:
tran – sub – stan –
ti – a – tion:
an all-consuming
integument . . .
Your far-too-timely
mosaic-of-time:
sculpted, fluid, not
pieced together:
contemplation’s
bas-relief
cir – cum – scribes
the auteur’s
inner-eye
whose chisel
lumen-projects:
And I will mesmerise you
with rhythm of ballast-tracks,
captivate your respiratory
choreograph. So you will know
the anaphora of locomotion.
Breathe. Your breath measures
itself to the divinely-ratified
sequence. Allegorical quests
overlay your kinesis; where
we’ll only cease voyaging
when, around us, eddying
fast, infiltrating us, only
the Zone catalyses . . .
2.
Levitate with me
in the library
hovering
above Solaris.
Be my pneumatic
paramour
upon these
amorous thermals.
Deep in that
plutonium-fallout,
let’s consecrate
our mystic marriage
attended by only
a tiny child
or a dwarf
wearing a surplice.
We’ve sublimated
time through the
duration of one
Bach Prelude-Chorale
played adroitly
on a stoic organ.
This library is
the planetarium
which emanates
Atlantean
rather than
Alexandrian rays.
And wisdom’s
always in motion,
hardly a fixed
temple to enshrine
systematic theology in;
where you move:
a brighter woman
in this glade,
joint-cradled in our
orbiting.
Our cult was
founded at Emmaus-
cum-Eleusis,
where consciousness
creates these
hypostases,
eidolons fleshed-out,
& aerating the room.
Rublev depicted
this type-scene
which blood-stirred,
galvanised community.
Levitate with me
holding Don Quixote,
conscious of this
candelabrum
as it floats by
&, if it should
collide, let this
chandelier
tin – tin – nab – u – late
just as you reclaim
your regal contrapposto
at rarefied,
atmospheric altitude:
light which serrates clean
through this corpus-
of-light
3.
So: you cast the Bell
with blind intuition,
adrenalin, chutzpah. So it
emerges, it juts bulbous:
exquisite in its voluminous
presence; & you must en-
vision the inner, the outer,
synchronic – like God . . .
Yet painting The Last Judgement
requires divine assistance;
& your innate-presiding genius
may have to be a monstrance;
as you wear your thorn-
strangulated snood, as you
rub excrement’s pigment
into whitewashed fresco.
Champion now the fallen-mute
woman, make her your
own messianic spouse. Silence:
your atonal gesture in
this carnal, post-digital
dynast. See: our sacred tome’s
immolated, flakes its wafers
into phosphorescent manna.
Snow falls in the temple,
on the homestead where
you were conceived; where
silence is not the absence
of noise, but the hypostasis
of Contemplation: this lit
candle in the cradle-cupped
palms; a pilgrim who flickers
across a dehydrated spa –
Winter light be your icon:
eucharistic,
grace-fallen
Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson has published four poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Epignosis Quarterly, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Rasputin and Le Zaporogue.