This
is the second section of a seven-part poem
Solutions for the End of the World.
Some play on the word solutions. Solute, solvent. Insoluble. An alchemist in her basement, mixing and boiling…
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| Maria Prophetissa and her communicating vessels |
The
first section can be found
Solutions
for the End of the World
“Not everything that is faced can be
changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
The certitude that there is no salvation is
a form of salvation, in fact is salvation.
Starting from here, one might organize our
own life as well as construct a philosophy of history: the insoluble as
solution, as the only way out.
E.M. Cioran
2. The Appearance of Maria
Prophetissa, The First Alchemist,
& Goya’s Rebuttal to This Poem
Maria grinds
cinnabar with vinegar in a copper mortar with a copper pestle,
produces living particles
of Mercury,
quicksilver
thoughts active within inert matter.
Alexandria,
3rd century before Christ,
before the library fire,
before the last mammoth ghost
disappeared,
before the ocean’s shadow emerged from the ocean…
She makes the solution:
Lunar Mantis mixed with Green Dragon mixed with Raven Eyes
mixed with Quicksilver,
who moves between worlds, unites them
(by thought, by imagination, by stealth).
The solution boils in a glass vessel over flame. She places
salt in the fire, and the quicksilver turns, spins,
insoluble.
She sees forms, ink-like clouds, merge,
green through blue, the
incandescent green of Mercury’s eyes
(witness to how everything is dead before it’s even appeared),
consciousness and matter one…
The city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu runs dry.
The shape in the solution spirals around the vessel’s edge:
bone-grey of cremation, blood-tinged;
orange daylily sunset speckled with black drops;
flash of mushroom light, mycelium
radiating
out, beneath all thought;
and an Eel, sprouting crystal lattice feathers, takes shape inside the vessel,
begins its spin,
prophet and prophesy enfolded in one form,
on the
edge of satisfying its hunger,
insoluble.
Europe heatwave:
record high of 45C expected in France.
Goya still flaps near the ceiling:
“You want narrative? Something easily marketable?
A pithy ending about what we
can control and what we can’t,
that ties all images and emotions together? A reality show
of Omega eating Alpha’s
tail?”
An underworld flower erupts, yellow lava sifts down a red-black petal,
a house shakes into flame, grind of predator stone
against predator stone;
velvet-black blind-eyes dusted with mica
watch the sky fall, glass shards in slow-motion.
Tectonic plates
beneath the Eel’s feathers shift, churn the newly dead
back to life
for a second, two seconds…
Wildfires ravage the Arctic…Entertainment value of the end,
insoluble.
Goya again:
“I
forgot to mock hope!
What
is this hope we all demand from the end,
whenever
we sneak a thought toward the future?
Do
you think hope is the solution bubbling in the alchemist’s cellar;
green,
blue, iridescent violet…
hope
is the nuclear countdown clock that no longer works.”
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| Will no one untie us? From Goya's "Caprichos" |
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| Might not the pupil know more? |
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