Extracts from Issue IV


Starbright   Maelstrom   Solar Harlequin

Starbright

We will never know the names
Of all the constellations:
Geometry conspires against us
In complicity with the Gods.
The universe is to remain
As it always has been:
Essentially mysterious.

Only Eve was ever given
The gift of naming things;
And she fell from Eden
In a comet blaze of fire,
Scattering knowledge
Into the blank recesses
Of the universe,
Leaving a myriad mysteries
Unnamed and untamed.
“So be it” said the Gods:
For this is how
It was always meant to be.

When you stare at the stars with me
Let them be as mysterious
As only mysteries can be
Let us revel in our ignorance,
Delight and dance
In frosted breaths of wintry clarity:
For who can afford
To expend themselves
In the knowing of things
But the dull and weary?

If I say I love you
Do not ask what I mean,
Let my love be a dazzle
That hides its depths
In a thousand surprises:
For even in the most mundane moment
I aspire to rise above familiarity

If we shake off the shackles of knowing,
We might be allowed
To bite into the sweet citrus skin of wisdom.
If we please the Gods,
If we be as little children,
If we astound them with our love of living,
Then will they drop their manna
From heaven.

Orion can have his belt and braces,
His arrows and his spears.
He can hunt down forgotten meanings
And set his dreadful snares,
But he is condemned to stillness
And slowly burning out
In a universe too cold to care.

You and I, with our trousers round our ankles,
Are free from gravity’s predilections:
Free as any bird of paradise or falling star.

We need nothing
And we need know nothing,
But the precious and imprecise beauty of being.

We are here and now;
And there is no other place or time
I would want to be.

Dee Rimbaud


Maelstrom
[The Making of the New Mighty]

Since Titans ripped from golden yarn
The finest thread of truth to bind
Man’s deepest loathing, dragons, beasts,
There came at once a quest to find
The strength to slay all Grendal fears
In twisted minds, uncounted years
From darkened waters of the soul
To floods of human tears.

For, Dante’s jump to bowels of hate
And life which slips through tunnels dark
To view some light, then re-emerge
On conscious thought inscribed its mark
And taught that in some place of dread
Betwixt the living and the dead
There lay some secret trial for men
To walk where demons tread.

In legend’s heart and myth’s great seas
Some alchemy to merge each phial
Of elements that maketh man,
From saintliness to most reviled,
To crush within some pressured strait
Between the poles and thickly plate
With Godlike gold, our mortal coil
And seize the reins of fate.

Through suction and a circled rage
That splits the atoms of our breed
To sink the futile, raise the great
Within the storm-eye still decreed,
By lust for heaven, dreams of power
Eternal search for sacred hours
To bridge this gulf, that mighty men
May once again build towers.

Serena Shores


Solar Harlequin

With every facet of his composed attire
Now Harlequin conveys
He is waiting to lead the troupe
On to a higher stage.

There we will appear
In finer dress and give a finer performance,
For the script is written
By a higher hand.

It will be our last enactment,
And then we shall indeed
Vanish into thin air.

Pamela Constantine