Skip to main content

Our Lady of the Wastes: Strange Platypus(es)



 
I am a stranger here
Here
Where there is no water

We have water.
We hear the sound of it
Night and day, night and day
We hear

I am a Pilgrim here
In this waste
Where there are no trees

We have trees.
We hear them rustling in the breezes
Night and day, night and day
We here

And all the voices of the waste places cried:

Too Whoow Who
Too Whoow Who

Dryness, dust and bones
Dryness, dust and bones

Praise to the Serpents of the Wilderness
Glistening scales of concrete and steel
Holocausts of victims
Smoking in the sun
Shining in the moon
Drying
to dust and bones

Whoow Too
Whoow Too

Moloch and Hecate dance
Master of finance and Mistress of Changes
Praise and prosperity for
A hundred Cuylers and
A hundred wandering Phlebases
Children of desolate lands

Too Who
Too

Come and join us
Come and join us
Where the powers all are seated
Mistress Cathy’s on the organ
Brother John will preach the message
A reading from the text
of a Puritan diab’list:
Dia ad aghaidh’s ad aodann
Agus bas dunach ort!
Dhona’s dholas ort,
Agus leat-sa!
That is what they say I said

Too
To

Dayenu!

Where is the Lady of the city;
She who binds and she who looses?
Are her powers now all wither’d
By the breath of concrete serpents;
She who clothes herself in sunlight
Tramples on the disk of Hecate?

The owl of the waste place
Stands beside her spouse
The Dragon
They will bind her, they will eat her
Feed her to the concrete serpents

Dayenu!

By the Fire of Azusa
By the oil of the Stewarts
By the Love of Mother Horton
By the Yankee preacher’s message
By the Power of the Missions
Now unbind her gods of Edom

Dayenu!

Shall these bones live?
Shall these bones live?

Son of Man, Speak.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane: The Platypus Reads Part CCLII

I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard.  This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane.  The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up.  I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all.  Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser.   Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong.  I h...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (Cont.): The Platypus Reads Part CCLI

Wow, it's hard to read anthologies at anything other than a slow crawl.  The change from author to author and style to style is exhausting.  Slowing down is a good thing, though, if it makes time for reflection.  That seems like one good reason to create an anthology: to force readers to slow down and reflect. With that as a preamble, let's move on to today's selections. The Black Ferris by Ray Badbury I didn't expect to see this Sci-Fi heavy hitter in a Fantasy collection, but there you go.  I've tried to get into Bradbury once or twice and failed.  His Martian Chronicles , in particular, resisted all my best efforts.  This short story, however, worked like a charm.  The sense of atmosphere in particular is masterfully done (a sort of Tom Sawyer strays into Edgar Allan Poe).  My only complaint is that there isn't more of it, but apparently Bradbury already fixed that by expanding the story into Something Wicked This Way Comes. This raise...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more