Hyperborea
(For John S.)
Mary Mooney sits bemused, her desk removing from
the line, the slant and coil of shoulders, and that shallow
clerks’ chat. Soaps their tea-time subject. Poor matter for a
one-time queen, unseated in Atlantis by a quick
coup, the age of cruelty launched by her elder brother,
brutal with a scalpel, who made of her a lab rat,
sailed her insides and extracted eggs. The hypnotist
told her what he said: ‘Traitor to the cause of progress,
wanting families small and cosy, you hug like a child
tired old ways, ignorant, slow, ox-encumbered methods.
You would never bring the island to its destined power.’
Luke Foxe sailed north and saw Ne Ultra,
Hudson Bay, sixty-four degrees,
‘where the passage I hope doth lie.’
Eighty-eight years on, James Knight,
in search of the same Strait of Anian,
‘fifteen hundred miles cross from sea to sea’,
wintered at Marble Island.
Her death was slow. That sullen brood, spawned of comfort,
weaned
on greed, had instruments of torture, means of pressing so
designed that bones would stretch and scream before they broke.
Her self-
control was very fine. She made Atlantis’ glory shine
before her eyes, praised it until breath had drained and pain
shut down her nerves. Knives she used for hunting made soft shards
of her body for the dogs. It gives reason to her
panics, night’s obsidian heavy on her chest, her
throat drying out, the heart a riot. And those monthly
spears in the side, those blood tides, are tears for slaves who knew
no flesh mother. She draws that saving map, Cleito’s heir.
Graves near the hut were Inuit.
The crew had disappeared, the ships run aground.
Winter, as always, had been harsh,
and it seems that Knight had trusted Foxe,
who said the cove was safe in all weathers,
two fathoms deep at low tide.
Henry has his own cartography, the earth a disk
flat as a pancake, the poles a rim that tips you off
to endless unmapped space. No satellite has probed that
ether, TV coverage or none. At NASA’s base
he’s watched those pencil clusters fume, magicians’ wands to
bend the mind and conjure up illusions. Such trouble
leaders take to show us Planet Earth’s a ball. Soccer,
no wonder, is the game of millions. Suckers, netting
native brain power in a lie. Three hundred flat-earthers
face the hard truth. Could be Lemurians inhabit
more than Mount Shasta’s sacred hull. Enlightenment hurts.
In 1725, Senex’s map showed no land in the
Northwest territories, only sea.
Middleton sailed as far as the Bay would let,
where he climbed a hill and viewed the frozen strait.
Little hope there.
‘There was no such Thing as a Passage into
the Western Ocean, as was expected.’
John, your Dame Street leaves our time by the power of
your eye. The Central Bank’s a ziggurat and, druid,
you move in leaps. Another life they knew your worth. Now
you’ll get no job fitting for your gifts. Like Captain Cook,
you’re working with a faulty map. You weave your way through
bourgeois pubs, you’re with a queen. The kinder clubs know your
name at the door. Your trappings, after all, are mostly
smiles. Sundays at sacred sites with Seán, Pat and
their like, you track spirals and walk the hidden leylines.
You love their eyes, never damning, and their westing hands.
We are all bruised hearts, searching for an eastern route, this
New Age of exploration.
Mary Mooney sits bemused, her desk removing from
the line, the slant and coil of shoulders, and that shallow
clerks’ chat. Soaps their tea-time subject. Poor matter for a
one-time queen, unseated in Atlantis by a quick
coup, the age of cruelty launched by her elder brother,
brutal with a scalpel, who made of her a lab rat,
sailed her insides and extracted eggs. The hypnotist
told her what he said: ‘Traitor to the cause of progress,
wanting families small and cosy, you hug like a child
tired old ways, ignorant, slow, ox-encumbered methods.
You would never bring the island to its destined power.’
Luke Foxe sailed north and saw Ne Ultra,
Hudson Bay, sixty-four degrees,
‘where the passage I hope doth lie.’
Eighty-eight years on, James Knight,
in search of the same Strait of Anian,
‘fifteen hundred miles cross from sea to sea’,
wintered at Marble Island.
Her death was slow. That sullen brood, spawned of comfort,
weaned
on greed, had instruments of torture, means of pressing so
designed that bones would stretch and scream before they broke.
Her self-
control was very fine. She made Atlantis’ glory shine
before her eyes, praised it until breath had drained and pain
shut down her nerves. Knives she used for hunting made soft shards
of her body for the dogs. It gives reason to her
panics, night’s obsidian heavy on her chest, her
throat drying out, the heart a riot. And those monthly
spears in the side, those blood tides, are tears for slaves who knew
no flesh mother. She draws that saving map, Cleito’s heir.
Graves near the hut were Inuit.
The crew had disappeared, the ships run aground.
Winter, as always, had been harsh,
and it seems that Knight had trusted Foxe,
who said the cove was safe in all weathers,
two fathoms deep at low tide.
Henry has his own cartography, the earth a disk
flat as a pancake, the poles a rim that tips you off
to endless unmapped space. No satellite has probed that
ether, TV coverage or none. At NASA’s base
he’s watched those pencil clusters fume, magicians’ wands to
bend the mind and conjure up illusions. Such trouble
leaders take to show us Planet Earth’s a ball. Soccer,
no wonder, is the game of millions. Suckers, netting
native brain power in a lie. Three hundred flat-earthers
face the hard truth. Could be Lemurians inhabit
more than Mount Shasta’s sacred hull. Enlightenment hurts.
In 1725, Senex’s map showed no land in the
Northwest territories, only sea.
Middleton sailed as far as the Bay would let,
where he climbed a hill and viewed the frozen strait.
Little hope there.
‘There was no such Thing as a Passage into
the Western Ocean, as was expected.’
John, your Dame Street leaves our time by the power of
your eye. The Central Bank’s a ziggurat and, druid,
you move in leaps. Another life they knew your worth. Now
you’ll get no job fitting for your gifts. Like Captain Cook,
you’re working with a faulty map. You weave your way through
bourgeois pubs, you’re with a queen. The kinder clubs know your
name at the door. Your trappings, after all, are mostly
smiles. Sundays at sacred sites with Seán, Pat and
their like, you track spirals and walk the hidden leylines.
You love their eyes, never damning, and their westing hands.
We are all bruised hearts, searching for an eastern route, this
New Age of exploration.
Page(s) 28-29
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