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You brew in me lava
Your breasts, a balaclava
Your breastmilk, my soma
Rosa Sempiterna
Your breastmilk, my soma
Rosa Sempiterna
Thunder roars: lions
Lightning cracks: Zions
Sparks at Night gamble
The inner crust's visible
The white river flows
Lotus, Lily, Rose...
Lightning cracks: Zions
Sparks at Night gamble
The inner crust's visible
The white river flows
Lotus, Lily, Rose...
Stars made of waterfalls
Ice covers the I, and lies
Snow and Fires, wait, to rise
Let me kiss, touch & taste your aging, crinkled eyes
Ice covers the I, and lies
Snow and Fires, wait, to rise
Let me kiss, touch & taste your aging, crinkled eyes
Music only I can hear
Could never leave
Made me never fear
Each layer of the land and the mountains accrete
Himalaya, Ganga's waters, Vesuvius
Could never leave
Made me never fear
Each layer of the land and the mountains accrete
Himalaya, Ganga's waters, Vesuvius
The wine that intoxicates
I hold it dear
The white-dust mountains towering
The volcano - erect, hovering
Drugs, let the rain glisten on your skin
Wet you, 'wilden' you, shake you in spasms within
I hold it dear
The white-dust mountains towering
The volcano - erect, hovering
Drugs, let the rain glisten on your skin
Wet you, 'wilden' you, shake you in spasms within
Wooden crosses burning on seven hills
God in a chariot. My saffron spills
Your breasts, a balaclava
My mouth longs to kiss, touch & taste your soma
I christen you Zoya
Rosa Sempiterna
God in a chariot. My saffron spills
Your breasts, a balaclava
My mouth longs to kiss, touch & taste your soma
I christen you Zoya
Rosa Sempiterna
Vesuvius, to all its layers
Accretes - will now erupt in fireworks
Emerge from the furnace of the forge
Burn up the dross in its fiery way
Yet no layer of it shall pass away
Each of my addictions makes me the Play
Accretes - will now erupt in fireworks
Emerge from the furnace of the forge
Burn up the dross in its fiery way
Yet no layer of it shall pass away
Each of my addictions makes me the Play
The cross, God, the wine of
red-beaded song
Nature in its grandiloquent throng
You with your breasts and women with their gong
Music that never dies shows love lives long.
Nature in its grandiloquent throng
You with your breasts and women with their gong
Music that never dies shows love lives long.
-- Amy Judd
In the "Comedia Divina," when Beatrice led Dante into the 10th Heaven, the Empyrean, they encountered the “Rosa Sempiternal.”
ReplyDeleteNel giallo della rosa sempiternal,
Che si dilate, rigrada, e ridole
Odor di lode al Sol, che sempre verna,
Qual’ è colui che tace e dicer vole
Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal
That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour
Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,
As one who silent is and fain would speak,
-tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paradiso” Canto XXX lines 124-27
Beatrice told Dante that they had reached the highest heaven, one of pure light, intellect, and love, where he will find "both ranks of Paradise," the angels and the blessed souls, which he perceived as flowers and gems. Above, a huge dome of light illuminated everything below, and at the top of the dome he saw the entire Celestial Rose of the blessed, which bloomed under the endless light of the sun. At the beginning of Canto XXXI , Beatrice would be replaced as Dante's guide by St. Bernard of Clairvaux who would accompany him to the final vision of the divine mind. (After pope Honorius II died in 1130 his supporters corruptly installed Innocentius II as his successor, just as they had done in the case of Honorius himself, but a rival faction selected Anacletus II; Bernard arbitrated the dispute in favor of Innocentius. One of his own Cistercian disciples later became Eugenius III and invited Bernard to submit his “Book of Considerations,” which advocated reforming the Catholic Church by restoring papal sanctity.)
In his poem Koshy names the rose “Zoya,” the Russian form of Zoe (Greek for “life”). Vesuvius, near Naples, is the volcano that famously destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 and is the only European volcano that has erupted within the last century. “Nea-polis” (New City) was a Greek settlement, and the volcano may have taken its name from the Greek “not” prefixed to a root related to “I quench” (in the sense of “unquenchable”) or from the words for "I hurl” and “violence,” although the name may also have been a Latin derivation from an Indo-European root meaning “shine.”