Chapter VI.

I.

relative universe flows through the Mind,
ripples in waves, music to some,
dreadful noise to others. Creatures
unseen, mysteries in song-tormented
green oceans, deep beneath the mantle of
hungry planets, ditzy stars, half-forgotten light.

II.

The Archive of Myth must not be burnt,
protect the emptiness with emptiness.
Even if the artists and the architects have
long gone, the memory of a moment

of clear light must not wither away too
soon. Not before the pages have been
turned by a young person, and the song
has been sung again, just before dusk.

III.

Extreme psychological pain can rust
the soul’s mechanical clockwork, and
eye in eyes, dome in domes, we shall
melt into cloud, echo as summer heat.

Desert Storm has shrunk to size in the
cacophony of winter, has gone missing in
the lower lands, off toward the dunes
and the unfinished quicksands and marshes.

IV.

Volterra is a distant memory now. And so
all the neverending faces and curled lips that
populated the space between unread letters
and unsung characters, between the fall of
finnegan and imaginary spaceships, or cats.

Desert Storm walks in solitude toward
the sea, hurt by thorns of greedy shrub.

V.

Venus rising from the waters, bent on finding
love, defining it, having it sung by poets
high and low, until the subject’s quite dry and
the moon’s embittered light is all that is left.

In the stomach of the whale, Fortune Lobo
fought consciousness with courage; his thought
was heard by ghosts, in unimagined corners.
Then, the music slows, the high-strung notes

VI.

return, tracing the path toward the sea that
suddenly aged Desert Storm is treading in
resilience. Not far from the Gulf of Poets,
or further up toward the rocky shores of
other towns, clusters of coloured houses
like grapes, beside the ever-blasting wave.

VII.

‘What sea is this? What planet? I must
be lost beyond the land of dreams. I,
no longer I. Desert Storm. Is it not a
silly name, given by a random thought?’

‘The bright and clear upper air, far away
from the earth, and all is known. I can
see the steps of Ariadne as stars in the
ether. I need a new name, I need a new

VIII.

purpose. The dreadful house of shadowy
night, the hunger of monstrous Python,
a sea-shell, bringing me to the sky, or the
mountain. Where is the Vivian Wing?’

Across this sea of forgetfulness, there is
a cave. Brothers Oineiros live with their
father Hypnos in a dark and misty cavern
in the remote land of the Cimmerians.

IX.

Whenever needed, one of the brothers
flies off as dream to give advice or comfort.
Desert Storm has perhaps strayed onto
a self-aware planet of metamorphic

forgetfulness, where memorian and
oblivian merge, and the gentle murmur
of water invites slumber. Come join
Hypnos, and his brother Thanatos to

X.

a moment of everlasting sleep, or perhaps
let ego be your fears among the poppies, or
perpetual herbs, all shedding responsibility.
Whenever a dream is needed, swiftly it appears.

Apollo, victorious over the Python, has come
to offer you a grain of sand, rearguard Reader.
With that you can call upon tenderness, or old
age, or strife, or any of the children of the Night.