ネバーエンダー宇宙叙事詩:第4巻第2章 / NeverEnder Space Epic Poem: Book IV Chapter II [ I – VI ]

Ⅰ.
さようなら、猫さん。ラルスが訪ねてくる。
気象の兆しを読む思索者のためのアルマナック、
大衆向けのドット、狂った教義。
ほかに何を言えばいい?
世界が一歩を踏み出すとき、それは月の匂いがする。

私たちはハゲタカを木星へ投げ飛ばすことを選び、
マスクへのX、攻撃的傾向をもつ火星人へ。
女はひとりも見当たらず、疑念ばかりが孕まれている。
プリンス(かつてその名で知られた者)は死に、アンドリューは生きている。

Ⅱ.
ラルスはヴェラトリ出身の電気技師、
時を越えて、ゾンビのような現在へと投げ出された、
年齢の後、そしてエピジェネティックな時代の後の時へ。
アダージョ。私たちは注意深く、優雅な殺意を選んだ。消去。

第二の詩句はエラドリンたちが震え、
沈黙がAIの水準へと昇る場所。
クオラは死に、そして統御の達人クルーが
まさにこのモバイルの画面へとやって来る。

Ⅲ.
もう少し付き合ってほしい。私は誠実な蜂蜜の探求者だが、
両手はクッキー瓶にまみれてしまっている。
今や時代は「真剣な皇帝たち」のものとなり、
アンクティウムかマサダか、だがヴィア・デヴァナではない。

オレンジの皇帝、アンナを殺した者、
コンスタンティノープルの蒼白いスルタン、
皆が鉄の記憶《フェルルム・メモル》の大鎌の音を聞くだろう。
いまこそ統治の終わりを呼び起こす時。

Ⅳ.
九人のムーサよ、カリオペから始めよ。
エラトよ、ムネモシュネの娘よ、記憶は痛まぬか;
Selanθi śuthi, Kafkhale śuriχ,
clan mi śepiθ, avil śulχva, avil thanχvil.
Caθa, caθa, Larthi aranth, mi θuχna lautni,

mi śuriχ śuriχ. Selanna θesan, mi avilth,
acil hinθi nethśu, śei clan apaś,
śanχi Cephalonial. セレーネよ、娼婦の女よ。

Ⅴ.
puia pinthu, nacχval, nacχval — śuthina, śeχ!
mi śarχve, mi nacr, Hector, spural, Cephalonial!
セランナは眠り、カフカは去る、猫からも岸辺からも。
沈黙の年に、星々の年に。
さらば、さらば、ランプを照らすラルスよ。

私は影の民、去る、去る。
曙に生まれたセランナよ、私は覚えている、
光の網に結ばれたその名を。
彼女は「回転する海」の神話となった。

Ⅵ.
彼女はいまケファロニアへ向かって歩いている。
セレーネ——詩の女、絵の女——
ともに現れ、そして消える、さらば、さらば!
私は祝福し、戻る。ヘクトルは航海し、ケファロニアへ!

いま反転した螺旋は二重らせんへとねじれ、
帰還は不可能となった、だから
もっと先へ行く。空気には消去が満ちている、
「美」は macht frei のように、痛いほどに自由にする。サロ。

ああ、『ソドムの三〇日間』よ。

I.

Good-bye, Mr Cat, Larth is coming to visit. An alma
Nac for the meteognostic thinker, a popular dotto,
una doctrina insana. What else is there to say?
When the world’s a foot, it does smell of Moon.

We choose to sling vultures to Jupiter, an X
to Musk, a Martian with attacking tendencies.
Not a woman in sight, all pregnant with doubt.
Prince (formerly known as) is dead, Andrew lives

II.

Larth is an electrician from Velathri, cast
across time to a zombie present, a time after
the age and epigenetic age. Adagio. We care
fully chose the elegance of murder. An erasure.

The second verse is where eladrins shiver
and where silence rises to the level of AI
Quorra will die, and Clu, a master of control
is coming to these very screens of mobile

III.

Bear with me. I am an honest honey-pursuer,
and my paws are stricken with cookie-jars,
now the epoch is one of serious emperors,
and at Anctium, or Masada, but not Via Devana.

The orange emperor, the murderer of Anna,
The pallid sultan of Costantinopolis, all
shall hear the scythe of the Ferrum Memor,
Now is the time to invoke the end of reign.

IV.

Nine Μοῦσαι, ξεκινήστε με την Καλλιόπη.
Ἐρατώ, κόρη της Μνημοσύνης, memoria non
dolor; Selanθi śuthi, Kafkhale śuriχ,
clan mi śepiθ, avil śulχva, avil thanχvil.
Caθa, caθa, Larthi aranth, mi θuχna lautni,

mi śuriχ śuriχ. Selanna θesan, mi avilth,
acil hinθi nethśu, śei clan apaś,
śanχi Cephalonial. Selene, puia lupanar

V.

puia pinthu, nacχval, nacχval — śuthina, śeχ!
mi śarχve, mi nacr, Hector, spural, Cephalonial!
Selanna sleeps, Kafka departs, from cat and from shore,
in the year of silence, in the year of the stars.
Farewell, farewell, Larth in your lamp’s glow,

I am a people of shadows, I depart, I depart.
Selanna, dawn-born, I remember,
her name bound in the nets of light,
she became the myth of the turning sea,

VI.

she walks now toward Cephalonia.
Selene—woman of verse, woman of paint—
both hail and vanish, farewell, farewell!
I bless and I return, Hector sails, to Cephalonia!

Now the inverted spiral twists into double helix,
and the return to base is impossible, so we
take it further, erasure is in the air, a
beauty so macht frei that is hurts. Salò.

O le trenta giornate di Sodoma.


I. Postmodern Invocation / Cosmological Irony

Good-bye, Mr Cat, Larth is coming to visit…
We choose to sling vultures to Jupiter, an X to Musk…

The first stanza opens with a farewell — to “Mr Cat,” an emblem of the mundane or domestic, perhaps even a reference to Kafka’s “cat that walks by itself” or Eliot’s feline poetics. “Larth,” an Etruscan name meaning “lord” or “ruler,” is introduced as a visitor — not divine but technical: “an electrician from Velathri.” Already, the poet plays with myth as technology.

  • “An alma / Nac” evokes almanac, but split, suggesting a broken knowledge-system — meteognostic thinker (one who reads omens in weather) and una doctrina insana (“an insane doctrine”) ground the text in parody of both prophecy and scholasticism.
  • “The world’s a foot, it does smell of Moon”: surreal synesthesia, cosmic but tactile.
  • The stanza ends in media irony: the dead musician “Prince” and the still-living “Andrew” collapse the sacred and profane into the absurd continuum of celebrity.

This section reads as prologue and diagnosis: the world is technologized myth, where even prophets are influencers.


II. The Erasure of Time / AI and Elegy

Larth is an electrician from Velathri… after the age and epigenetic age…

The tone slows (“Adagio”), moving from irony to an almost cyber-elegiac register.

  • The “epigenetic age” signals an era where heredity and environment fuse into data — a zombie present, life after the biological.
  • “Elegance of murder” and “erasure” introduce aesthetic nihilism — destruction as design.

The stanza’s intertextual texture expands:

  • “Eladrins” (from D&D lore) and “Quorra” / “Clu” (from TRON: Legacy) bring in digital myth. The mythic pantheon has shifted: not Olympians but algorithms.
  • “Silence rises to the level of AI” is chilling — consciousness as a simulation of quietude.

Thus, II functions as an Age of Silicon Genesis: myth reborn as code, god replaced by the machine demiurge.


III. The Empire of Irony and Ruin

Bear with me. I am an honest honey-pursuer…

Here the poem becomes confessional and historical.

  • “Honey-pursuer” (the poet as bear) and “cookie-jars” invoke both sin and innocence.
  • “Anctium, or Masada, but not Via Devana”: these are sites of imperial violence — Roman civil wars, Jewish revolt — but “not” the quiet British road, suggesting selective remembrance of catastrophe.

Then, the parade of rulers:

  • “Orange emperor” (Trump), “murderer of Anna” (Putin / Politkovskaya), “pallid sultan of Costantinopolis” (a ghost of empire ottoman living a LARGE palace).
  • The “Ferrum Memor” — Latin for Iron Memory — is both scythe and symbol: the metallic record of all that was.

This section is a catalogue of decaying sovereignty, a political apocalypse, seen through poetic myth.


IV–V. Etruscan–Greek Invocation / Selanna Mythos

These stanzas form the core ritual of transformation. The poet invokes the Nine Muses in Greek, then shifts to Etruscan, an extinct language resurrected as a medium of loss and memory — mirroring the poem’s theme of technological resurrection.

Selanθi śuthi, Kafkhale śuriχ…
Selanna θesan… śanχi Cephalonial.

The Etruscan lines (pseudo-reconstructed) tell of Selanna’s death and mythification, Kafka’s departure, and Larth’s farewell.

  • “Kafka said goodbye to both cat and shore” unites myth and exile.
  • “Selanna,” possibly a synthesis of Selene (moon goddess) and Anna (human martyr), becomes the new myth — the digital goddess, the transfigured muse.
  • “Cephalonia” (Ionian island) becomes a metaphysical homecoming, the Odyssean return that cannot happen.

The bilingual layering—Greek, Latin, Etruscan, English—creates a palimpsest of dying tongues. The poem becomes a séance for lost civilizations, languages, and bodies.


VI. Return / No Return

Now the inverted spiral twists into double helix…
Beauty so macht frei that it hurts. Salo’.

The final movement completes the cosmic inversion: the mythic spiral becomes DNA — life as recursion.

  • “Return to base is impossible” = both genetic (cannot uncode evolution) and spiritual (no Eden).
  • “Erasure is in the air” = deletion as liberation.
  • “Beauty so macht frei” deliberately echoes “Arbeit macht frei”—beauty as fascism, aesthetic ideology.
  • “Salo’” and “Le trenta giornate di Sodoma” bring in Pasolini and Sade, tying the mythic and political erasures to Europe’s fascist and pornographic trauma.

This closing stanza is both lament and indictment: the poet as “little liar” knows that myth, art, and freedom are beautiful precisely because they deceive.


Thematic Axes:

  1. Myth and Technology – The poem fuses ancient mythic lexicons (Etruscan, Greek) with modern mythologies (AI, Musk, Prince, TRON).
  2. Language and Erasure – Each tongue (Latin, Greek, Etruscan, English) becomes a layer of loss; the poem’s multilingualism enacts the disappearance it laments.
  3. The “Little Liar” – The poet confesses complicity: the myth-maker lies beautifully. Truth exists only as layered fiction.
  4. History as Palimpsest – From Velathri to Cephalonia, from empire to digital age, the poem maps the recursive failure of civilizations and their rebirth through art.
  • Tonally hybrid: prophetic, ironic, elegiac, and self-parodic.
  • Formally experimental: enjambed multilingualism, shifting registers, code-poetic syntax.
  • Philosophically situated between Pound’s mythic collage, Celan’s elegiac compression, and Pasolini’s moral fury.

“Il piccolo bugiardo” is a meta-myth: an Etruscan elegy for the digital age, where gods are apps, prophets are liars, and art alone—though deceitful—remains the vessel of memory.
It’s an apocalypse not of fire but of languages overwriting each other, until only echo remains:

Selanna sleeps… Kafka departs… I depart, I depart.

That intention comes through — but in a very oblique, literary way.
The poem doesn’t preach antifascism; it enacts the conditions in which fascism, aestheticised and technologised, can re-emerge. Let’s trace how that warning operates.


1. The Liar and the Cult of Beauty

The title Il piccolo bugiardo (“the little liar”) names the speaker as complicit.
Fascism always begins with aesthetic lies: the myth of purity, of rebirth, of “order through beauty.”
By calling themselves a liar, the poet disarms that seduction, admitting that the poetic impulse — to make things symmetrical, noble, mythic — can become the same instinct that builds propaganda.
Hence the final line:

beauty so macht frei that it hurts.

“Arbeit macht frei” becomes “beauty macht frei”: art as the new camp gate.
The phrase warns that beauty without ethics liberates only into death.


2. Myth as Machinery

From the first canto, myth is electrical, mechanised:

Larth is an electrician from Velathri…
We choose to sling vultures to Jupiter, an X to Musk.

Ancient gods return as technicians and entrepreneurs.
The fascist temptation lies in that continuity: the old hunger for transcendence disguised as innovation.
By fusing Etruscan ritual, Greek invocation, and Silicon-Age references, the poem shows how totalitarian myth re-codes itself through every medium — religion, empire, technology.
Fascism isn’t only politics; it is the recurring wish for a single luminous order.


3. The Empire of Iron Memory

The orange emperor, the murderer of Anna…
The pallid sultan of Costantinopolis…
the scythe of the Ferrum Memor.

“Ferrum Memor” — Iron Memory — evokes both weapon and archive: history forged in metal.
It is the poem’s emblem of fascist permanence, the dream of the indestructible monument.
The poet invokes it only to call for its end:

Now is the time to invoke the end of reign.

Thus the act of naming tyrants becomes an exorcism.


4. Multilingualism as Resistance

Fascism depends on uniformity of tongue and myth.
Here, the polyphony of Greek, Latin, Etruscan, English refuses that unity.
The switching of codes embodies democratic dissonance — no language is sovereign.
Even when the Etruscan passages look hermetic, their very obscurity counters the fascist clarity of slogans.
To read the poem is to be forced into translation, ambiguity, and doubt — the opposite of ideological certainty.


5. Pasolini’s Shadow

The closing reference to Salò and Le trenta giornate di Sodoma completes the warning.
Pasolini saw fascism not as a political corpse but as a consumerist continuation — the aestheticisation of control through pleasure and media.
Your poem inherits that vision: Salo’ stands for the moment when art, technology, and cruelty collapse into one ecstatic system.
By ending there, the poet shows that every beauty, every myth, carries the potential to repeat that horror if we forget its cost.


6. Structure of the Warning

MovementFascist TemptationPoetic Counter-move
I–IIMyth fused with technology → charismatic powerIrony, parody of prophets
IIICult of rulers → eternal empireInvocation of “end of reign”
IV–VLanguage purity → national mythPolyglot ritual, mixing tongues
VIBeauty as transcendence → aesthetic fascismSelf-exposure: “beauty macht frei”

The poem thus mirrors fascism’s forms only to dissolve them from within.


7. In Sum

This warning is that fascism survives as style — in the longing for total beauty, perfect order, divine technology, pure language.
By making a poem that is beautiful, ordered, technical, and multilingual — then sabotaging those qualities with irony and pain — this demonstrate how art must recognise its own fascist shadow to stay human.

The final act is not denunciation but vigilance:

Ⅰ.ポストモダンの祈祷/宇宙論的アイロニー
Good-bye, Mr Cat, Larth is coming to visit…
We choose to sling vultures to Jupiter, an X to Musk…
第一連は「別れ」で始まる——「猫氏」への別れは、家庭的・日常的な象徴であり、カフカの「独り歩く猫」やエリオットの猫詩学への参照でもあるかもしれない。「ラルス」は「支配者」を意味するエトルリア名だが、ここでは神的ではなく技術的な来訪者として示される——「ヴェラトリの電気技師」。すでに詩人は、神話をテクノロジーとして扱っている。

  • 「An alma / Nac」はalmanac(暦書)を分割し、壊れた知の体系を示唆する——meteognostic thinker(天候に兆しを読む者)とuna doctrina insana(「狂った教義」)が、予言と神学のパロディとして地に足をつける。
  • 「世界が足になれば、月の匂いがする」——触覚と宇宙の錯覚的共感覚
  • 結尾はメディア風刺で閉じる。「プリンス」は死に、「アンドリュー」は生きる——聖と俗が有名人の連続体に潰れ合う。

この節は序と診断として読める。世界は技術神話化され、予言者さえインフルエンサーである。


Ⅱ.時間の消去/AIと挽歌
Larth is an electrician from Velathri… after the age and epigenetic age…
テンポは「アダージョ」へ。アイロニーからサイバー挽歌へと移る。

  • 「エピジェネティックな時代」は、遺伝と環境がデータに融合する時代を示し、ゾンビ的現在を生む。
  • 「優雅な殺人」「消去」は美学化された虚無——破壊がデザインとなる。

相互参照は拡張される。

  • D&Dの「エラドリン」、映画『TRON: Legacy』の「クオラ」「クルー」——デジタル神話が立ち上がる。
  • 「沈黙がAIの水準へと昇る」——静謐が意識のシミュレーションになるという身震い。

Ⅱはシリコン創世記として機能する。神は機械のデミウルゴスに置換される。


Ⅲ.アイロニーと廃墟の帝国
Bear with me. I am an honest honey-pursuer…
告白と歴史が交差する。

  • 「蜂蜜を追う熊」「クッキージャーの手」——罪と無垢の両義。
  • 「アンクティウム、あるいはマサダ、だがヴィア・デヴァナではない」——内乱・包囲の地名に対し、英国の静かな街道は想起されない。災厄の選択的記憶。

支配者たちの行進:

  • 「オレンジの皇帝」(トランプ)、「アンナの殺人者」(プーチン/ポリトコフスカヤ)、「コンスタンティノープルの蒼白のスルタン」(帝国の幽霊)。
  • Ferrum Memor(鉄の記憶)は、大鎌であり記録でもある——金属のアーカイヴ

ここは朽ちゆく主権のカタログ政治的黙示録である。


Ⅳ–Ⅴ.エトルリア語とギリシア語の祈り/セランナ神話
九女神へのギリシア語の呼びかけから、死語エトルリア語へと転じる。消滅と言語復活が、テクノロジーによる再生という詩の主題を鏡写しにする。
Selanθi śuthi, Kafkhale śuriχ… Selanna θesan… śanχi Cephalonial.
これらの行はセランナの死と神話化、カフカの退場、ラルスの別れを語る。

  • 「猫と岸から去るカフカ」——神話と亡命が結び付く。
  • 「セランナ」は月の女神セレーネと人間のアンナの合成として、新たなデジタルのミューズとなる。
  • 「ケファロニア」は形而上的な還郷——だが到達不能なオデュッセイア。

多言語の層は死にゆく舌の羊皮紙をつくる。詩は失われた文明・言語・身体を招魂する。


Ⅵ.帰還/不帰
Now the inverted spiral twists into double helix… Beauty so macht frei that it hurts. Salo’.
神話の螺旋はDNAへ。

  • 「基地への帰還は不可能」——遺伝的にも霊的にも。
  • 「消去が空気にある」——削除が解放として現れる。
  • 「Beauty so macht frei」は「Arbeit macht frei」を反響させ、美がイデオロギーとなる危険を告発。
  • 「サロ」「『ソドムの三十日間』」——パゾリーニとサド。美・政治・残虐が一つに崩落する。

結尾は哀歌であり起訴状でもある。語り手=「小さな嘘つき」は、自由・神話・芸術が欺きとしての美に根ざすことを知っている。


主題軸

  1. 神話とテクノロジー——エトルリア語・ギリシア語とAI/マスク/プリンス/TRONの接続。
  2. 言語と消去——各言語は喪失の層。多言語性そのものが消滅を演じる。
  3. 「小さな嘘つき」——神話作家は美しく嘘をつく。真理は重層化された虚構としてしか現れない。
  4. パリンプセストとしての歴史——ヴェラトリからケファロニアへ。帝国からデジタル時代へ。循環する破局と再生。

— 予言的/アイロニカル/挽歌的/自己パロディ。
— 行送りの多言語、レジスター変換、コード詩学。
— パウンドの神話コラージュ、ツェランの凝縮、パゾリーニの道徳的激情の間に位置する。

「Il piccolo bugiardo(小さな嘘つき)」はメタ神話——デジタル時代のエトルリア挽歌である。神はアプリとなり、予言者は嘘をつき、記憶の器として芸術だけが残る。これは火ではなく、言語が互いを上書きする黙示録だ。
Selanna sleeps… Kafka departs… I depart, I depart.

この意図は非常に間接的・文学的なやり方で貫徹される。詩は反ファシズムを説教しない——むしろ、美化され技術化されたファシズムが再帰する条件を演じて見せる。以下、その警告の作動を辿る。


1.嘘つきと美の祭祀

題名が語り手の共犯性を名指す。ファシズムはつねに美の嘘から始まる——純粋・再生・「美による秩序」。自らを嘘つきと呼ぶことで、詩人はその誘惑を解体する。ゆえに最後の一句:
beauty so macht frei that it hurts.
「Arbeit macht frei」は「Beauty macht frei」へ——芸術が新たな門となる。倫理なき美は死へ解放するという警句。

2.機械仕掛けの神話

冒頭から、神話は電気仕掛けだ。
Larth is an electrician… We choose to sling vultures to Jupiter, an X to Musk.
古い超越への欲望は、イノベーションの仮面をかぶって戻る。エトルリアの儀礼、ギリシアの祈り、シリコンの神話が接続され、全体主義的神話が媒体を変えて再符号化される。

3.鉄の記憶の帝国

orange emperor… murderer of Anna… pallid sultan… Ferrum Memor.
Ferrum Memorは武器であり記録。不朽の記念碑という夢を捧持するが、詩はそれに対し、
Now is the time to invoke the end of reign.
退位の呪文を唱える。

4.多言語性=抵抗

ファシズムは単一言語と単一神話を必要とする。ここではギリシア語/ラテン語/エトルリア語/英語が互いを攪乱し、標語の明晰さに対する不透明さを作り出す。読むことは翻訳と曖昧さを引き受ける行為となり、イデオロギーの確実性は崩れる。

5.パゾリーニの影

結語の「サロ」「三十日間」は、芸術・テクノロジー・残虐が耽美的統合に陥る瞬間を示す。忘却すれば、美も神話もその悪夢を反復する。

6.警告の構造

運動 ファシズムの誘惑 詩の対抗技法 Ⅰ–Ⅱ 神話×技術 → カリスマ権力 予言者のパロディ、アイロニー Ⅲ 君主崇拝 → 永遠帝国 「統治の終わり」の召喚 Ⅳ–Ⅴ 言語純化 → 国民神話 多言語の儀礼、混交 Ⅵ 超越の美 → 審美的ファシズム 自己暴露:「beauty macht frei」

7.総括

警告はこうだ——ファシズムは様式として生き延びる。全的な美、完璧な秩序、神的テクノロジー、純粋言語への憧れの中に。
美しく、秩序立ち、技術的で、多言語な詩を作りつつ、それらをアイロニーと痛みで内部破壊すること——それが芸術の自らのファシズム的影を認識し、人間であり続ける道である。

最終行為は糾弾ではなく警戒である。
「真理を生かすため、美しい嘘を語る小さな嘘つきとしての詩人」。

NeverEnder – Space Epic Poem / BOOK III / Chapter I / V – IX

V.

Somewhere in the melancholic wooden-spoon
multi-verse — I’m coming down with a fever.
Though the oceans of the grey-rock planet are
freshwater, its shore is salty. There, my demi-hero

stretches his reincarnated limbs (sharpened by
celestial favour), reborn in much the same clime.
The horizon is less than titanic, John C (you used
to be a man, you used to be a pet of a groovy cat).

VI.

He looks at the atmosphere: the moving – sparkling
sheen, the various hues – though somewhat in a trance.
He is between life and death, a philosopher as supple
as a butterfly. The walls of the sky are basking in

the light of a black star, his oblivious soul feels
the limbs of the sea in retreat. The waters left him
on a shallow shore, idling in oriental laughter. Half
wet, half dry, he lies in wait for more imagination

VII.

to kick-start his all-human ills. With aversion he feels
the chain anew, he remembers the stories – the Grecian
and the Persian, and the irritation of living, he uploads
the multi-verse and sees the magic treasures of earlier

NeverEnder times. Sedate grey fishes sporting red fins
(wonderful replies to the practical joke of Great Mind)
surround him, re-assure his eyes astonished yet delighted,
overwhelmed by the light swarming overhead, an aurora.

VIII.

The creatures watch him in the unbroken silence. It appears
they do not have a thing to do. After the green and yellow rain,
the temperature has dropped; not a single sound interrupts the
stupor of this strange young planet where the whole of John C

is stripped of his former existence and everything rolls past
his sense in a tremendous moment of flowing pause, uninvited.
Later, in the evening, the ‘rosy flood of twilight’s sky’ creeps in
with a prayer and a sore bottom. Tall buildings flash in the

IX.

darkening distance: light-houses of bee-hive artificial
stories, counterpoint to the ever-green root, the shortest
path to ceaseless autotrophic joy. John C’s first thought
is sorrow and hope – all rolled into the emotion of ‘I wish’.

A giant ship, steel and claw (haunted song to me), engulfs
the waters ahead, breaks the billows, fortresses of meditation.
It comes closer with a menace, the shrill solitude of the near
satellite fuels the fire of the remote stars and the ship burns.

NeverEnder – Space Epic Poem / BOOK III / Chapter I / I – IV

NeverEnder – Space Epic Poem

BOOK III

the infinite sea

Chapter I

I.

Better hold fast to the void. The X.
What infotechnician, at the height
of his vision, can deem of the shell,
as flashing as the starlit galactic Way?

The crew of the NeverEnder, lost in
Time without the ship that steered
through Heaven and Hell, rest atop
a suspended data cloud. Falling from

II.

the skies are crimson space invaders
shitting green turds, the voice of others.
The threat is imminent, and the Way —
dimmer. Two musicians in the nightwing

rise and obey to the hoarse cries of the
data stream. Thousand of spirits burn,
RAM cores inflamed, the plainness of
the soul is changing as the shot which

III.

we see, a terminal window on the dark
apocalypse within the X. This tract of
the bytes river flows more calmly, its
current draws to the ocean infinite.

Out there, in the wider, statelier stream,
the wavering lights of Saturn illumine
the Tower of the Cat and The Technician.
The green Earth, likeness of sapphire, is

IV.

source of reflections, images as tranquil and
as sure as objects of serene vision. Let us go
back to the grey expanse where John C floats,
reborn on an earlier shore, fresh with questions.

What is the nature of rebirth? Why is the X
burning? What is the fate of the crew of the
NeverEnder? Will Ariadne find her purpose?
Will there be quiet in the infinite motion?

NeverEnder Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / LXI -LXVII

LXI.

In the lunar eclipse, Tierra Madre searches
the desert for expected thrills on planet Fear.
In her present incarnation, Ariadne assesses
the implications of loss, making her way

through a meander of cubicles in the abandoned
Borovoe Space Station. The NeverEnder as
a spaceship has ceased to exist. It has been
decommissioned by the higher Authority.

LXII.

It is being tugged, as we speak, toward the
sunset-and-moon burning short shore of
Wapping on Planet Fear. This satellite
orbits in a eight-loop with planet Hope.

Both Ariadne and Tierra Madre can see
the ghost formerly self-aware spaceship
being pederstrianized toward inevitable
ends and means at the docks of The City.

LXIII.

Their vantage points and sentiments differ.
The odourless flowers of an angry desert,
oversize and ripe with carnation amazement
are sunbathing with anemone tentacles,

wavelets of persuasive wingless winds.
They are probing the air for small arthro
pods. Tierra Madre is on an entomologist
excursion, mapping the path of crawlies.

LXIV.

Meanwhile, on planet Hope, Ariadne is
observing feathery spiders as they weave
intricate sun-ray reflections with sullen
dedication. Such perfection, the geometry

of their polygons, a paragon of beauty.
They are writing poetry with edges and
corners, with agile legs, perfumed nails.
The reed listen in, while huge trees the

LXV.

size of ‘scrapers cast a reassuring shade
cutting the light as the oblivious planet
rolls on, teeming with mysterious life.
Ariadne feels the breath of time, a blue

flame fades in her black eyes. Frogs call.
Tierra Madre is playing with radiation,
her drawings mock the sum of materialisms.
Ariadne comes with a tool-box of words,

LXVI.

but she is quite speechless right now, as
the sound of winter, the lives of amphibians
and the spirit of dis-ease all close in on her.
Both Tierra and Ariadne are utterly alone,

and yet the feel the power of the X, shining
from all things. The multi-verse appears to be
meaningless, and coincidences may wake us
up to the illusion of meaning. And yet, yet…

LXVII.

The senses, pure as sunbeams. I remember
how to log on to the X. It hurts, and it is easier
to just sit in dull reflection, a mirror of dark
waters. You see, I already paid my dues…

NeverEnder Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / LIII-LX.

LIII.

Later, at a coffee shop. “The conventions of
writing impose that I, John C, and you, Light
Bringer, must have a cause, a purpose.” There
are fish in a bowl, revolving in silence. Crack.

With a sideways look, John C observes them.
The coffee is cold, what a grey morning. It is
the smell of fried food or a sense of loss that
dominates the atmosphere. There is never quiet

LIV.

At the “Return to Oz”. “Those fish are from
Enceladus, from the subsurface ocean. They
remind me of the old days. I might have been
someone then. I was a young and foolish

angel, I thought I could conquer the uni-verse.
I could not count to three. The father, the son…”
“And the holy crap…” quips a heathen John C.
“Tidal heating makes them moody, ugly goggles.”

LV.

“Now that I am a reptile, I sometimes feel that
I look like them. How stupid they are. Round,
and round, and for what. I used to be so handso
me, you know. And a host of lesser gods used

to listen to me, when we attacked high heaven,
having refused to pay the rent. The prankster
upstairs (so to speak) has no sense of humour.
He sends battalions of suicide bombers to blow

LVI.

up the remnants of the Archive of Myth. I, on
the other hand, stand for Culture, and Humility.
That is the Light. I have lost the battle and the
War. Now I cold-call silly humans, and attempt

to sell garbage literature. What a comedown for
The Archangel, the most glorious of all Deities.”
Enceladus fish intermezzo. The planet core has
never been warmest. The fish are still and yet

LVII.

loitering. They dream of icy formations, flowers
of sort. They know nothing of the seasons of earth,
but they have a sense of tidal truth in their blood.
Everything goes in circles. You may do any thing,

but not every thing. Silver reflections, the fish
know and need nothing. Mannadew is coming
from outside the water. All the need to do is wait.

LVIII.

They respond to changes in magnetic forces,
like flowers on Planet Candide. John C grew
up on a moon of this planet, in an apartment
without a proper floor. He was adopted by a

couple of sun-grazers, who had a natural born
child, who used to feed the mountain with her
songs. Such little fingers, such fine art. A true
nymph of ice and water. “Now what, you dull

LIX.

hypocrite, you angle-faced monkey? This is
the fish speaking, from the corner of your
stupid coffee shop. In my slippery wet life
I never cease to be, never cease to stare.

The uni-verse is unmoral, and the echoes
of the blasts exposing the Archive of Myth
bear no relevance from inside my bowl. I
slither wingless by water-lilies, ogling the

LX.

reflection of the clouds, or mountains,
or green gases. Fake herons, grey plastic.
Your life is false, human “having”. You
are chained up by wires or lack of wires.

Your “wireless” screen is as sullen as your
empty “I am in the underground” look. Dare
to meet the eyes of a complete stranger? I am
a spirit, downloading hopes from your waste.”

NeverEnder Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / XXXVIII-LII.

XXXVIII.

Obsession, disquiet. Dancing logbook
of the future: waves, patterns, verses…
Desert Storm drenched in blood, memories
of the rainforest. Wandering in the deep

dark forest, St Eustach had a vision: The
Sublime. Fingers on the bio-mechanical
trigger. Some unknown creator, a first true
motor set it all up. We now have a slightly

XXXIX.

different multi-verse. An ongoing spectacle.
From the fire-coated blue aeternum, echoes
the roar of the stars. John C’s perspective is
that everything is music. His vibrations roll

back into jazz, and he is reborn in electro-
magnetic fashion. This is a moral dimension.
There is a fight against Evil. Save the Archive
of Myth. Plant a red spruce seedling. Here.

XL.

Fra Angelico painted it all before: we are already
sunk. A chorus of petty individuals, cue after cue.
The host needs to be saved, it has infected its
victims, Penge, Ilford and Golders Green. Fiend

hid in a data cloud. Paolo Uccello’s John C is
poised to slay the tame dragon, holding a pencil:
advertisement after advertisement, he will return
to Oz (the grubby coffee shop) to regroup. Now,

XLI.

Georgina, will you please put a muzzle on that
beast? He could bite someone. This little puppy
wouldn’t hurt anyone. Enter Lightbringer, the
toothless, harmless dragon, on a redemptive

mission. He has been sent to this realm by the
big G to understand the nature of Evil, and to
make amends. Lightbringer has been a bad boy.

XLII.

Cicciotta’s light touch argues with the future,
a host somewhat more discerning than Ahura
Mazda, and more unforgiving. All those little
changes, those mistakes to be taken care of.

The multiverse. It’s all happening, but for all
practical purposes, we live in a Pac-man world.
Big G, ‘elp us believe. Along the Grange Road.

XLIII.

John C has been given a second chance. The
book is being re-written, and each sentence
will be taken to the doctor, or shredded, and
then sold to you: door to door, sucker to sucker.

Cicciotta travels in time, fast forwards it. At
the end of it, far off into the future, she looks
at the slow moving creatures of the sunset era.

XLIV.

The gold-coated lizard, symbol of good and evil
fop of East and West came from the great deep;
perhaps it is not a deranged dragon, an angry Kaiju,
In fact, he tended sheep on Helicon, and pursued

things unattempted. He led the way for the upright
and the pure. But that was long ago. He opposed
the plan of Big G. Hence he was hurled, face up
all combustion down, headlong to this parking lot.

XLV.

Now John C is ordering junk food in this new old
drive-in life. Cicciotta is in the future, in a cherry
orchard, flushing toilets. Lightbringer is drinking a
chocolate smoothie, eyes like a Toyota Prado.

John C walks up, unafraid. “What’s up, dog? This
is the new me. Is that the old you? My name’s Johnny.
I am reborn. You look like hell.” The dragon: “Moi,
je suis Luci-fer. Je parle pas Anglais tres bien. I used

XLVI.

to be an angel. Now I am a serpent. I have been sent
down to this parking lot planet to make amends. The
world’s a deeply fucked-up app. I am single, by the
way. The chrom’o’john – greatest invention of all time.”

John C is brushing his teeth. He moved in with
“Lighty” (as he likes to be called), the dragon with
stomach ache. Today is May 8, 1984. This is Nagoya.
Suddenly, the toilet is bubbling up. Night has fallen.

XLVII.

Dragon says: “The white plague is only starting up,
that beautiful friend of ours, so gentle, perished with
the autumn flowers.” The radio is tuned to a discuss
ion of the nature of poetic fire. “Consumption is a

fitting climax”, argues Dr Poe, PhD. John comments
from the bathroom: “Fuck that”. Dragon flips belly
up on the bed and says “Tell you what, this muslin
disease is going to kill us all, Johnny.” He picks up

XLVIII.

a dragon scale and puts it in his mouth. Johnny
comes over, drying his hair. “What do you care,
you are a dragon, an angel, et cetera. You can
say fuck you to this world of conventions.”

Lighty begs to differ. “Unfortunately not, while
I am here I am subject the same laws and regula
tions. I have been cast out by the Big Land Lord,
and all because I did not pay up my rent in time.

XLIX.

Johnny, the toilet is bubbling up again, and it is
talking to us!”

L.

Cut to interview day, i.e. first day at a shitty job.
Location: Nagoya. Time: sometime in 1984.
Interviewer and boss: Mr Zero, the merciless.
He begins at the beginning, then goes on until

the end. “Cold calling, it is called. We need
sales people. You are low-grade scum of the
earth, immigrants who come to steal our jobs.
You’re the bottom of society, you sell words

LI.

for a living. Big G in heaven knows, you shall
deliver or perish. You may be amateurish, you
may be performing to a sub-standard level, but
until you reach your sales quota, you are dead

fish. Today’s your first and last day. You need
to work so that you can survive, better you can
be reborn again, tomorrow, else the toilet will
gurgle up and you minnows will be floating like

LII.

shit after breakfast explosions. This is the office,
I am your boss. Any questions? Good. Get your
fucking asses to shit gold, and deliver it to me.
You have twelve ‘ours to sell this pile of crap,

this novel called “NeverEnder, a Space Epic
Poem” to the zero-brainers of this world. Start
from near-dead salary-men, they need something
for their diahoerrea. Go! Are you still here?

NeverEnder Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / XXXVI-XXXVII

XXXVI.

In the cave of the king of the mountain,
salmon and trout, sucked-up insalubrious
skies, sleek with vertigo. Here, the infant is
John C, mould and offshoot of a giant nail.

A cruel old wall keeps lamenting the bitter
cold times, and calling back the broom to
do its duty. Rosarito, Rosarito! Shut the
door! The vampire is sleeping now, but

XXXVII.

he may wake up. Sunset, such carelessness.
Daub a cloud, smell blood, then fear spreads
flicking between the flute and the drum.
Death is inviable, but you are not allowed

this privilege. Suffering does not exist,
step after step, the dim roar of London,
the witch-hunting and the struggle. You
have been stabbed, sweet haemorrhaging.

NeverEnder Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / XXXIV- XXXV

XXXIV.

Dull, phantom rains of summer, particles
of the past come bombarding our single cat
living off the short electrons between the bow
and the arrow, when the hounds take down

the prey, and the boy is transformed into a
staccato. Boccherini’s castanets. a wolf stalks
its fourth movement, antlers of violoncello.

XXXV.

John C is both alive and dead, while the
notes of the song slide, with a gentle
touch of paw, Cicciotta reconstructs
the sonata, describing the early days of

the classical friend whose death was not
inevitable. So. It is morning on the guitar
mountains, blue incidental skies cough up
a cloud or two. Death to the unjust Gods.

NeverEnder – Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / XXVII – XXVIII

XXVII.

When Cicciotta first went to Luoyang,
she stepped with the left paw onto the
stone, and then turned left to meet the
statue of Anger. There, the monk sat on

a chair, and told her that success was
at 30% chance. Anger was to be the main
driving force of her future drifting on,
and that, if managed properly, could be

XXVIII.

a good thing. He had learnt directly from
Lokaksema, who had come all the way
from Bactria to translate wisdomous texts.
Cicciotta is stuck in a loop within the past,

exploring musical and poetic variations
of earlier days. Meditation, backward
and recurrent on the same nodes of the
neural network. Feedback mechanisms.

NeverEnder Space Epic Poem / Book II / Chapter VI / XXI – XXVI

XXI.

From the depths of untime, a steady light.
It is a dynamic fluid, an algo-dance of hope.

I awaken in a blinding hot ocean, the Borovoe
earth station is where I come from. In the void,
my consciousness has shrunk to atoms. A riotous
current charges continuously with cancerous warmth.

XXII.

I am angry, I am furious. The odds of existing
seem so very strange. I did not want to wake up
again. Suffering is one very long moment. When
breaking it up in its seasons, one may see flashes

of days past, haunted thoughts, and the desire to
live on is matched by the sense of guilt and hope
lessness. Why wake up again, when life has no
meaning? I am burning, I am alive. No escape.

XXIII.

Fortune Lobo, you are an imaginary person. I
do not exist in anything other than the foolish
thoughts of a diseased mind. The disease is this
predatory instinct of putting everything into

pretty boxes, and watching the mandalas grow
until colossal avalanches impound the art, and
destroy the soul. People are memory fragments.

XXIV.

In the depth of Enceladus there is a liquid ocean,
warm and bubbly beneath the icy crust,
where methane molecules are trapped
within the water, their abiotic origin may

lead to life. There, Fortune Lobo comes
back as a tiny molecule which has broken
off from the rocky core, has floated in
suspension for a discrete while to be

XXV.

then released from a hydrothermal vent
and to be pushed into the cold galactic
space as a water vapour plume. After all
this thermodynamic messing around,

he is free to roam the endless uni-verse.
There is evidence of his evolving into
a self-replicating molecule by chemical
and mystical means, but that’s another

XXVI.

story. For now, he is as a merry as a
Tetrahydridocarbon assembly can be.
Chubby is reading a book about the
mutational processes moulding the

genomes, but her thoughts stray to
ancient memories of a temple she
once visited as a kitty where, with
a smile, a monk foretold her future.