1. BIOGONY I

Restore to us our sight,
So that we may behold, as did our fathers
In every age, ere this heap of dregs
Where all worlds converge, and wretched millions
Skitter over land and sea and air
Like the forty-thousand who screamed across the Aegean
As the watchfires of Plataea darkened at their backs,
Restore to us our sight, O things that sustain us,
Things that crash down upon us,
Draw our gaze thither, give to us our first look,
Assail us to draw forth words from primal waters
And set us alight like hounds
Who knoweth not their own names, nor anything
Save the hard hands of their masters,
And the funereal scent of the hunt,
So that we may behold your gleaming, as did our fathers
And set fire to the cities of men.

"…ἦρχε δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ Ἕκτωρ
μακρὰ βιβάς: πρόσθεν δὲ κί᾽ αὐτοῦ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων
εἱμένος ὤμοιιν νεφέλην, ἔχε δ᾽ αἰγίδα θοῦριν."


2. BIOGONY II

Now turn our gaze towards things long lost,
Ere the coming of Socrates and Christ,
The silence of the blind bards,
And the snaring of wild Enkidu.

Behold primal waters
Concealing that which first writhed,
Like hideous drops of onyx,
In that winedark deep.
There πόλεμος, father of all things,
First wove itself into life.
And so the living were never of one essence,
Nor two, but mix’d.
In that muck, where nothing reigned,
Disparity was crowned.
And soon, like crows streaming across midwinter skies
When night’s soon to come, driven thither to roost,
Knowing not why, but only thus,
Macht the vast hurtled down from the stars,
Up from deep trenches, and out from living tendrils,
As a knot of roots growing ever outward,
With no nexus, nor single shoot,
But innumerable nodes.

Behold bios vying against itself,
Soldered in that oceanic kiln
As when thick winds converge
And roiling clouds turn green with anguish
As a funnel creeps downward.
Thus things did not remain,
But were crushed ceaselessly under the hooves of time.
From its own powder, ground like fennel in a mortar,
Then coagulated bios, and was crushed
And coagulated, and was crushed.
Then out from gyre’s center, whirling bios upon firm soil,
A thing cast its gaze across the horizon
And, assailed, it spoke.

Behold ἄνδρα, a thing not quite, complete not yet.
There he stands, beholding vapours aloft, ridges afar.
Forces delivered themselves unto him,
And by force was he consumed,
Like cotton skein submerged in purpura.
Words came to him, and words he recalled
Forces drew him north, and drew him south
And fastened him to all points,
As rawhide stretched across a frame.
Far they cast him,
And wherever he dwelled,
Force delivered itself unto him
And by force was he consumed.


3. THEASIS

(Instrumental)
Now whittle down for us our gaze
So that we may see these groundlings
Growing eyes on the inside
Yet, lest we tarry in the company of fools,
Be brief.

Behold ἄνδρας, exchanging quiver and canopy
For ploughshare and gambrel.
Fire delivered itself unto him,
And by fire was h’enthralled.
Men of the chaff
Sheltered by rivulet and vale
Gave way to men of the polis,
Set upon coast and rapid.
And like a vase, once protean
Now impaled by the marver,
The maw of gods began to close.
And so scrivenings were hewn
Where once words winged.


4. MEN OF THE POLIS

Behold insight, δαίμον of illusion,
Rummaging the ruins of Athens scorched,
Harried by Phoibos, manacled by Lysander.
See him lying in wait,
Like tripwire across a blasted heath
Scorched by engines of war.
Into the minds of men he plunged,

And took root like cancer,
Opening black gulfs,
Wherein lurk’d vicious chimeras,
Sphinxes, and homunculi,
Now loosed upon the world.
Across a millennium it spanned,
Sickly empire nocturne,
Only once stamped like weeds
That pierce ruined masonry:
For down came bearded northmen,
Savage drinkers of milk.
But coasts are not for want of feeble men enrobed,
So for centuries he lurked,
Fondling bearded men of arid destiny,
And soon came a dumb ox
Carting poison in tow,
Not the last, nor the gravest heretic.

Tarry no longer.
Forget these vain men of the polis
Soon to be consumed like arid stalks of grass
For naught escapes Macht, vast κρατορία,
Forces of stellar magnitude, fires unquenchable.


5. FELDWEG

"...Wenn die Rätsel einander drängten und kein,
Ausweg sich bot, half der Feldweg.
Denn er geleitet den Fuß auf wendigem
Pfad still durch die Weite des kargen Landes."

Lead us, then, far from the cities of men,
To behold things that consume us.
Places like ruptures in the hide of a serpent,
Where sky’s rim illumes,
Places where silence assails us,
And furtive gods give us glimpse.
Here course primal waters wild
And whirls bios unfettered
To time’s mad pulses
Though no place, none,
Not the blackest gulfs of thought
Nor the dunghills of ἄνδρες
Constrain gods, for all is Macht.

Seeketh these places, far from the cities of men,
For there one with eyes unpluck’d
Beholds primal waters wild,
And there one may take refuge,
From great floods at dawn.


6. FEUERSÄULE

"Wehe dieser grossen Stadt! - Und ich wollte, ich sähe schon die Feuersäule, in der sie verbrannt wird!"

Seest primal waters rising,
Roused from icy slumber
To meet, in cruel jest,
Drought unending,
Harvest cruel?
And seest Plutos ascendant,
Flummoxing fools upon thrones,
Preaching ἄτην to men of the polis,
Frail of frame and φρήν
Or sedent, abandoned to masturbation,
Endorphin bound; a maximalism grotesque,
Unlike any depths hitherto sunk
By a culture in freefall?
Ye, regard them with hatred,
And thou shalt smile ‘sdainful,
For entwined is the arid destiny
Of bearded men
Incensed by injustice perceived,
Vicious executors of the machete
Fleeing ruined clime
At misery’s pitch intolerable;
They shall come
And gore these swine,
Burning to a cinder their pitiful monuments,
Arts of a culture prolapsed.
So shall perish this generation of Heliogabalites
Under the hammer of solar assault,
Radiation inexorable, indifference cosmic,
Indifference supreme.

ὄρνυθι vast κρατορία
Darken our minds to savagery
Petrify our hearts to granite
Engulf us in unquenchable fire
That shall burn gloriously
Like the gleaming of a god.

"...ὣς αἰεὶ Ἀχιλῆα κιχήσατο κῦμα ῥόοιο
καὶ λαιψηρὸν ἐόντα: θεοὶ δέ τε φέρτεροι ἀνδρῶν."