JUNG ON JOYCE’S ULYSSES
he fell
into the maelstrom
or maybe he plunged
heroic, invulnerable as Achilles,
nothing about words
did he fear
and yet
the Sirens, his own Sirens,
when they sang to him, they tore
at his humanity
and Scylla and Charybdis
pulling at him
from opposite directions
threatened to tear
soul from self, author
from man
and so
to Homer
a beginning
and a time
before words
from there
fast forward
to a lost time
a divided time
a time
split from itself, savaged in the jaws of Empire
(no hope
of restoration on
the horizon)
but still
the words flow, the pages
begin to tower
up from the floor
flow like rivers mythological
(both Greek
and Irish
Liffey, Lethe
Shannon and
the Styx)
Oh little
Everyman
figure who
incapsulates us all
embodies our
broken, fragmented
common
humanity
swept aside
by tide
of the times
bobbing in an ocean of
self-
generating words
wine-dark empty, kenning free
this is not
the poetry that
proclaimed a civilization
every
moment iconic, as
if tempered bronze
no
this is the dance that goes
around and
around in
symbolic circles
this is the dance
of the cosmos
sleeping, dreaming, forgetting
emptying itself
until
not a word
not
a whisper
nothing speaks
beyond itself
nothing
says everything
so might as well
cross
every horizon
write
the life
to be
endured
forever
write until
there is no more space
to fill
write
the light
write the shadow
eighteen chapters, seven
hundred pages
and still there is space
place for more
Odysseus navigating the Mediterranean
sailing round in circles, prisoner
of conscience, convenience,
prisoner of love, of
the dark arts, by
virtue of
offense to Poseidon
extreme political prisoner
the words
hounding him
every step
of the way
on the return to Penelope
that will never
happen
can never happen
Penelope long gone
unfaithful to the core
****
no moment where
in supreme Catholicity
the cosmos
comes together
sub specie aeternitate
where it
all supremely means
maybe
an echo though
things seem silent but
are echoing out to infinity
everything so tired, outworn,
exhausted,
overdetermined
the mirror
in which we
first
saw things, composed
the image of the self
shattered
frozen in the moment
of shards scattering, pieces falling,
a razor-
sharp rainbow of a
zillion fragments
as images of creation
go
pretty
explosive
and extreme
no
arc of redemption, today at least,
for our great creator
driven
beyond all
limits
urged
to go demiurge
and this
our answer to an expanding universe
to the smoothness of steel
sharpening
all new technology
to
which
what dare the soul, overawed, say
how might it
speak truth to
final objectivity, absolute
science of meaning?
resist
the building of
such binaries as will
house
Western consciousness
in such
prisons of delight?
