Matthew Caley
Ammonius Saccas
As we speak, he is inhaling Olbas-oil
in boiling vapours from a flayed Nescafe jar
reading about Plotinius or Origen in Alexandria
in the exceptionally thorough
The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tar
-nas. He’s in its thrall.
He’s sleepy and prone to pressure in the sinuses - little
inverted commas
inside the eye-cavity, vein-blue
and also prone
to the night-buses running, the No 3 or the No 2
and urban foxes emerging out of man-holes
- their bright baby-cries shaking the dew.
Peacock-screams from the city farm;
the curlew of a car alarm.
Ammonius Saccas, so Tarnas tells us,
about whom little is known
taught students of both the Christian and Pagan
persuasion
and helped forge Rome to save such sinners as us.
Peacock-screams from the city farm;
the curlew of a car alarm.
Later, he comes upon a particular
passage from a lesser known novel by Paul Theroux
as the No 3 or the No 2 nightbus painfully ascends the hill.
The stained coverlet, the stained towel,
the improvised samovar of Olbas-oil,
by all that is holy or profane
he sleeps dreaming of unblocked sinuses
and Ammonius Saccas.
Page(s) 35-36
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