angelic life dialogue wonder
1 a gymnopédie a petrichor angelic life down among the blades of grass towering over little feet little wings mandibles cracking open the sky a flock of white swans flies into a flock of black swans hypostatic collapse wonder dialogue in ruins so much geography coming slowly along the shoreline every bump is a good bump every pole is a good pole festooning the skirts of the forest she said where is my straight what is this shoreline moving surely under slow feet festooning the way with white birds flying into black birds the wonder ruins the hypostatic dialogue learn again walk again find the way again earth perfume stone blood unmistakable step to the door autumn frangipani a dance 2 Angelic life of moss this is my house the little space of sky that sleeps beside the moon and you answer little moon victory over death the mezzaluna rocking above the city green intoxicant half moon over the ocean house of moss wingbeat featherfall she is beside me again and walking White finger pointing the way angelic life dialogue down among the leaves victory over death a sail spread in the sun to dry plants from three oceans on the long grass at Botany Bay travellers of the straight line travellers of the path dipping behind the little space of sky that sleeps beside the moon kōwhai ngutu-kākā from the house at Anaura Bay angelic life resurgent and trying to forget the stain of blood that writes an island story 3 we went ashore we came ashore at daybreak truffle hunters with our nosey dogs our baskets our hunger open season on plants birds fish we shot some most beautiful birds we collected we collected we were collected and we shot what we needed also a most beautiful plant in flower beside the houses not wanting to lose time we asked our friends to launch a canoe and take us to the ship which they did we were eight but such clumsy fellows and overset in the surf all our baskets but they good-humoured took us again through the surf four of us such clumsy fellows myself the doctor Tupia and Tayeto regained the ship and that night was spent with our descriptions and preserving specimens among them the flower we found growing around the house perhaps for ornament perhaps not filled with nectar and attractive to birds we named it with our Linnaean eyes blood red glory flower 4 I take my pencil and try the lineaments keel wing and standard petals a thousand drawings this one as quick as the rest capsulae a bright yellow green no name but the heave of surf in our ears tonight water in the jar levelling to the dip and lift of the ship anchored in the bay no name but the falling scarlet weltering in their blood God send that we may not have the same tragedy to act over again as we so lately perpetrated his words scratch the dim light of the great cabin I take my brush and look for carmine the blood of the little dog slaughtered for the birthday feast of an officer hind quarters roasted fore quarters made into a pie into the crust of which they put the fat and of the viscera they made a haggis the pup bred on board and eaten up among the gentlemen I dip 5 the slender fingers hesitate I watch him across the table in the great cabin industrious with paints and brushes a dead man walking for so it seems to my backward glancing eye just now visiting solemn nomenclature upon the day’s takings I too dead not long hence my mother’s letters unopened in my pockets what I write tonight is not Clianthus or puniceus but Clitoriodes conspicua that bumpy excrescence parrot lips yes I heard that near the house where they laughed and let us cut the flowering plant red and fecund an itch our science comprehends for which we have these words another century will rub out as easily as he removes all traces of the living breath of those whose shore we stood upon today who knew the slaughter our guns performed not long since in the blossom time of this most suggestive flower 6 we are the botanicals Solander and myself opens his Paradise Lost with an infernal Council plotting the Fall of Man young Parkinson makes colour notes for later but I insist and as for those Great Actions, the Battle of the Angels, and the Creation of the World on checking the chromatics of the flowers to ensure Episodes which may be looked upon as Excrescencies rather than as Parts of the Action we have them as closely as his paintbox allows Double Discovery, where the two different Plots look like Counterparts and Copies of one another and before they go into the books to dry susurrant we see it contrived in Hell, executed upon Earth, and punished by Heaven between the unbound pages that join the conversation every Thing that is great in the whole Circle of Being, whether within the Verge of Nature, or out of it now beginning between worlds an island Motu Aro the bay Tagdu the Machinery of Gods, with the like poetical Ornaments Tegadu Tegadoo Tigadu catching sounds out of the air transacted in Regions that lie out of the Reach of the Sun and the Sphere of Day 7 red silk mantel drape the words arrive as sleep leaves clematis borders quires of paper printed but unbound and therefore ideal for listening to the conversation between worlds she paints she stitches the petrichor the gymnopédie the little space that sleeps beside the moon the drape has wreaths of Kōwhai flowers she says worked in silks from my paintings gymnopédie petrichor he sees a mantel drape with scarlet kōwhai flowers most artistically designed and worked in silk in an exhibition case on the other side of the world Kōwhai ngutu-kākā scarlet flowers now generally cultivated in gardens a genus of most beautiful plants grown around the houses a rare white form still used for gifting still close to the hand reaching for stem or brush still watching the kick of keel ringing red silk or saturate scarlet into the rough pores that soak up earth blood and do not forget the wing