mercredi, mai 11, 2016

The MIDGE (4)

The MIDGE (4)
by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh
Gàidhlig AN SEO

A sower went forth to sow,
and the seed was the Word of God, 
and the name of the seed was 
Adam.

Behold, the virgin earth was with child, 
and she brought forth a son,
and as a name she gave him
Adam.

Adam –
the seed-syllable
conceived in the larynx of the earth.

The Earth opened her mouth,
and her voice cried in the wilderness,
and there shot forth a tendril of pure green sound, 
a root out of the dry ground
like a sweet song in the dead of night;
a shoot sprouting through the rock of silence
like an earthquake.

"Aún la atmósfera tiembla 
con la primera palabra 
elaborada
con pánico y gemido. 
Salió
de las tinieblas
y hasta ahora no hay trueno
que truene aún con su ferretería
como aquella palabra,
la primera
palabra pronunciada:
tal vez sólo un susurro fue, una gota
y cae y cae aún su catarata." (Pablo Neruda: 'La Palabra').

Adam was the sound-molecule; 
the amoebic lisp
life-charged with the divine breath.

He was the original cell,
dividing and propagating words of flesh 
conjoined in love,
till mankind spurts from the earth
like a prolific fountain
like a luscious vine
like a meaning-charged tongue 
overflowing and multiplying shapes,
like the sound of water flowing through stream and river
like the sound of the wind blowing through grass and tree
like the sound of breath playing through an array of instruments 
like the sound of words pouring through flesh.

Organic words leaping towards the sun,
capturing the light in linguistic photo-synthesis, 
diffusing oxygen like a Handel oratorio,
raising a stairway to heaven like a beanstalk of sound.

Words like leaves caressing the light; 
words like blossoms imitating the rainbow; 
words like grapes of succulent knowledge, 
words teeming and procreating
sentences like flowers,
languages like trees,
forming a Garden of Eden of speech
and overflowing yet,
garlanding the Earth,
and clinging to the planets
like honey-suckle to an apple-tree.

Word and light and flesh. 
Trumpet and torch and clay.

The Sword of God and Gideon!

Adamkind in a benign ji-had 
bounding from planet to planet 
bearing words like flaming swords, 
destroying the infidel night,
till every dismal cranny in the universe 
becomes a radiant Aladdin's cave.

Adam –
the nuclear syllable,
the atomic word
zinging neutrons like verbs
among the frozen nouns of silence;
neutrons buzzing like bees
carrying pollen from flower to flower; 
atom-words
fusing into fluorescent language;
swallowing the universe in radioactive poetry.

There is only sound;
there is only vibrant energy.
The universe is full of melodious colours
like a garden full of humming-birds. 
The universe is a congregation
and Adam the precentor.
The galaxy is an orchestra
and Adam the conductor.
Adam is a harpist,
and the electro-magnetic spectrum responds 
like strings to his fingers.
Adam hearing the whispering quasars; 
receiver and transmitter,
ear and mouth.
Interpreter,
Prophet and Poet,
opening the windows of the universe, 
word-windows,
words like stars pricking the darkness, 
gathering into languages like constellations, 
for every star has a name,
and every blade of grass has a name,
and every atom has a name,
and Adam is the Shenachee.

Adam named every living thing,
taming each creature and capturing it with a word
like a fly in a bottle;
but he refused his own name,
smashing the spiritual bottle in which he was safe,
splintering the glass that was to him as telescope and microscope, 
shattering the mirror of God.
And where the fragments fell briers grew up,
smothering the flowers of the garden, choking the foliage of his heart, 
encircling him like barbed wire
till he was caught in a personal Auschwitz;
till his ego was like a pathological Minotaur
squatting in the labyrinth of his mind;
till his brain was like a crabbed spider in the midst
of the quivering mesh of his nervous system;
till his heart was like a repulsive undersea reptile
lurking in the reef of his rib-cage.

Horns,
fangs,
tentacles
skulking in the abyss.
Adam snarling like Cerberus at the entrance of Hades; 
like an obscene word in the darkness of the throat.

(I grew up near Toronto,
returning to Scotland at the age of ten.
In my young mind I thought
there would be no bad language among the Scots: 
they would have no dirty stories
on the other side of the ocean.
I didn't know at that time
about Cerberus and his various heads.)

Adam
the cancerous word
the fascist word
the carnivorous word
the pornographic word
rotting the thrapple of the world 
like a worm in an apple.

Adam
the embryonic lie
squeezed like flatulence
through the skittery gut of the earth 
to be new-born
like a cosmic fart
rising in a vapour
like the belch of a dragon,
like the stench of a volcano,
like a thermo-nuclear cloud; 
hurling filth at the heavens, 
darkening the sun,
polluting the atmosphere, 
showering the black rains of death 
like curses on the emerald earth.

Adam as Cronos 
devouring his children.

Adam as Führer,
a blitzkrieg of lies.

Adam as Sphinx,
the strangler of words.

Adam as Rocabarra,
the doom-stone of the Gael.

Adam as Baal,
the god-stone of fornication.

Adam as Pantheon,
the quarry-womb of idols.

Adam as Tower of Babel, 
the Alcatraz of languages.

Adam as Atlas, 
worshipping Medusa.

Adam as Sinai
of the stone words.

Adam as Calvary
of the crucified Word.

And somewhere
as if on a distant planet
a cock-crow was heard
and darkness fell over the world.

I listened.
There was but one language on the earth 
and a dearth of words.

From Government shops 
words were bought 
wrapped in cellophane.

The masses ate them 
without salt
and in silence.
___________
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