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A.
Greetings, O body!
Ye melody that pleasure hath modulated as tones
With which it is delighted,
Tones it adores, tones that have elated it,
Tones it hath arranged in immediate correspondence
The highest string <------> Yellow bale
The second string <------> Blood
The third string <------> Phlegm
The lowest string <------> Black bale
And it hath run rhythm in innumerable rivers.
Greeting, O Body!
B.
Come closer, O olive tree!
Let this wanderer embrace thee
Let him sleep in thy shade
Allow him to pour forth his life on thy kind trunk
And allow him to call thee:
O woman!
C.
At night,
We, women, get out of our beds
And walk naked till we reach the fringe of the village
We carry rods having the colour of clay,
Rods over which we sprinkle water.
We sit on the dry soil
and the rain ensues.
D.
Lie down, o beauty, on thy back
On this lovely grass
Place an exquisite flower between thy thighs
And tell thy charming lover
To displace it with his most gorgeous organ.
E.
Get naked, O blossoming tree, wrap thyself in moonlight
Descend, O Master Moon,
Wrap thyself in the blossoming tree
We have provided a ladder for thee,
Making the flower's foot the last of its steps;
We have bedecked it with other blossoms,
We have engraved on it drawings
Of cock species on land
Of catfish species at sea
So that we may witness the wedding of heaven and earth
The wedding of the body and the non-body.
F.
O you who wert pursued by a woman
That covered her body with school leaves
And banded her head with corollas
Her name was the Princess of Grass and Feast
And the Princess of Speech ?
O ye who hast departed!
Here we are, gathering around
Thy name,
We break thee branch by branch
We create of thee a doll we cover with straw.
We cast it to the froth
And we say:
Froth
Is
Also
One
Of the keys
Of the sea.
G.
Take a plait of thy hair
Tie it to this branch
Leave them windward in embrace
Where heaven descends
Earth ascends
In the image of two lovers
Where harlotry weds prophecy
turning into ingots of joy
On every high hill
And under every green tree
Where heaven bears witness against us
And the stones bear witness against heaven.
H.
Ye, who hast departed, (when we had come together)!
We now marvel at our unity
We mock it
Now the very significance reveals itself to us
Ye, who hast departed
As a line that returns to itself,
Bends in one direction
And infinitely extends in other directions ?
Here we are gathering around
Thy name
We confine thee between night and day
And we build up the orient as evidence.
And in thy name we identify:
The night is the black colour of attachment
The day is the white colour of detachment
The night is the illusion of addition
The night is unity: nothing is with them
The day is the existence of patterns in reasoned dust
The night is perplexity/ complexity of factors
The day is rectitude/ presence
The night is contemporaneity
The day is extension
And the orient is a relation
The orient is recurrent voices
And states of revelation.
1.
Why, O why, do I fail
To awake thee, O forest
That lies dormant within me?
2.
- Your thoughts, like clouds,
Are ships without harbour.
- Can you direct me to one single shore?
3.
The clouds are the most articulate speech
On the obscurity of life.
4.
The clouds leaned over the forest
And they were torn by the winds.
5.
I have started to believe
That it is possible to criticise the skyline,
Departing from the clouds,
Or conversely:
To criticise the clouds,
Departing from the skyline.
Could such criticism be of any use
To the clouds of poetry or to its skyline?
6.
He's described himself thus:
Silent in company,
Silent in seclusion,
Talkative
In conditions other than these.
7.
She's asked me:
Does the night dream?
And if it did, would it really dream of the day?
8.
Yesterday,
The sun awoke me,
And I was dreaming of it.
9.
When he lost his lady friend, he wrote lamenting her:
A splendid body that would adorn a love nest
We now lower into a fosse!
It is not, oh, a matter of death,
It's a matter of decency.
“Before its Creation, Aleph City used to be a green jewel. The moment the Creator glanced at it with awe, it dissolved into water. He glanced at the water the water boiled and emitted smoke and foam The foam became the city’s land and the smoke its sky The creator propped it with mountains so that it would not collapse or shake, and He made it a homestead for the winds and the water and the trees and the sulfur stones and sometimes for human beings. He decorated it with seasons and promised to transform it to a different land, White and beautiful like bread In its sky He placed a sun Emanating from His Light. A wheel with three hundred and sixty loops is suspended from the sun, three hundred and sixty angels keep swinging from the loops, Each angel having two faces one called the day and the other the night The Creator walled the sky with a sea grounded on the air, a sea wherein stars dwell, A sea that revolves around itself as swift as an arrow and upon everything on it he bestowed the gift of speech, - The eagle would come to the whale in the sea and brief it on what transpired on the mainland, and the whale would come to the eagle and brief it on what transpired in the sea”.
“The sun in Aleph City would at times fall from its wheel and grow dark to frighten the folks. It, together with the moon, would often be detained and punished – They would prostrate themselves and pray and beg permission to rise; They would only be given permission to rise after three nights had elapsed, three nights during which they would be confined to the navel of heaven, An angel would then come, take them by the horns, and force them to rise from the east, from the Gate of Repentance.”
“Its founder erected timber beams he fastened them with lengthy ropes from which were suspended tiny bells; he linked the timber beams to a marble pillar from the pillar he suspended a huge bell. He ordered the builders to lay its foundations from all quarters in one go the moment the ropes shake and the bells start tolling.
He then fell to sleep And as he was in slumber a raven arrived, black and white it was it perched on the rope it shook the rope The huge bell tolled and the ropes were shaken the small bells tolled At that moment the builders laid the foundations in one go All this was performed with philosophical ruses and maneuvers.
The city was built in strata with lofty bridges under which a knight would march brandishing his spear. These strata and bridges had openings to let in the light and vents to let in the air. The city, it was said, was modeled on another city resting on a throne of glass that had the shape of a crab in the seabed – the city was full of statues: One statue would, with its right forefinger, point to the sun and, wherever the sun happened to be, it would rise or set to the statue’s bidding.
Another statue would warn of the enemy – as It approached the city, The statue would respond in resounding whistling alarm.
Another statue would measure time, marking every hour with a different chime.
ABC once walked by chance through that part of Aleph City known as “the Tree of Zaqqum”. This zone extends between two areas – the explanation given to this was that the inhabitants of the zone had no idea of the rectangle, the square, the parallelogram, or any such figures. The zone extended as a straight line, a curve, a winding or a spiral line: a line with a determinate beginning and a determinate end.
Man in this zone is white or black, tall or short, poor or rich. The universe is likewise dual: Weeq & Waaq. Therefore, people hardly referred to anything as sea or mainland, they referred to the sea as hell and referred to the land as the evanescent one.
Mountains in this zone move like clouds, they then turn into illusionary visions; the trees shake and sound like ships rocking on the sea surge or lamps suspended in the wind On the trees there is an air horn Blown first to reveal horror, And then to reveal astonishment, And blown a third time to call for prayer to god, Terrified, people would take to flight, and the angles would intercept them and strike them on the face.