Within this dark shell All emptiness is substantial The sky and the earth reach me In all elastic opacity. Severely sensuous is this mystic opacity A self-indulging hermaphrodite god The earthworm told me; the leech confided.
Self-indulgence begets nightmares Bonny civilizations end in paederasty Even in the salty water of the dead sea They do not surface, the corpses of dead dreams.
The earthworm told me; the leech confided.
The coital simultaneity of the earth and sky Half male and half female I have seen the male sky Reach for the depth of the furrows The female sky in a cloudy grace Receive the hills of the earth Through the eyes of the leech, with the Blind vision of the earthworm.
When the shell sheds its dark prison My nerves will string the stars of the milky way Emptiness will spread in the vacuitous pores of mass, Like sweaty vapours of coital exertion, Corn, the male sky will bestow on earth, The male earth will give god to the sky, Corn, too, will be truth like god, and God will be food, like corn. Flesh will follow the chemistry of dead corn Corn will germinate in the warmth of dead flesh.
Below, in the bowels of the earth Earth’s primal womanhood is shaken cruelly For a strange construct Uninseminated by god.
Hephaestus rose from lonian myths And a voice arose of gleeful unconcern: I am he, not born of a father’s lust I am born of my mother’s insatiety and deprivation Your creation is but the fruition Of the orgy called sex. I announce a new creation: “Construct! ” The one that is not born is mere matter And all wealth is incapable of growth You’ll snatch in lumps The unfertilized jewels from the earth’s bowels Non-growing, never-waning, bright. I shall reveal to you The secrets of power that lies within matter Capable, conscious, efficient— Whose growth is but change alone Which is valued but in exchange Where to create is to construct.
=No,sonny, you can’t hatch them table eggs Not if you brood over them till the end of you! =
In this dark hollow of mine In the core of corn and god I can feel the animate vibration of matter
It seems My voice is matter metamorphosed. Will it not be impregnated by god?
The totality towards which I am moving at this motionless speed –that desire rebirth— Is it my growth or my change?
What shall I chose— The unfading gleam of minerals? The eternal transcendence of corn? Who shall I vote for— Creation or construction?
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Ratnakara
Navakanta Barua 1926-2002
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Graphic - Pavel Tchelitchew 1898-1957
