Kit Kelen #14 - a scripture for the mist

14

a scripture for mist translation

after Melinda Smith, after Beatrice Machet, after Dominique Hecq, after me

https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/melinda-smith-5-after-beatrice-machet.html

At the baptism of James VI & I (17.12.1566), men with tails dance around as satyrs, and this freaks out the English visitors. His mum, Mary, doesn't allow the priest to spit in the baby's mouth, as was the custom at the time. Later in life, James tortures and burns witches (most famously Agnis Sampson). He writes his own book on demons and gets the Bible all translated). What a guy!

Yaybut begat

and this went on

fog first

the body hidden

resolves into light rain

whole tribe in tongues

come camel's eye needling

blood upon

it's Babel I tell ya

and brimstone too

I sing of them not as they were

caoutchouc

gist for the mill

and powder or a latex spray

I like it vulcanised the best

so firm

I love a swerve of atoms

it was a season such for

fructify

and fecund, mellow

Miss Construe and Miss Demeanour

make a cosy pact

rub and bring that whippet, sniff

sometimes use restraints

blood upon them, yay

and surely put to

raze the lot to ground

it's all in King James

(high, mighty prince)

out of a storm construe witches to burn

have them kneel first though

lots at least of feeling up

to find the Devil's sign

and wizards get it in the neck

for being too familiar

stone them with stones

what else?

it's prescribed in the book of good instructions

elastic cattle on the prod
and shocked with waves

say spume

garotte

changed utterly

I must have got the whole thing wrong

but they go up like wicks

to drift in such an instance, ah...

mistaking fun for fact

lay my city on the plain

and turn the wife to salt

but will a witch confess?

let's shave them till we're under skin

cover in blood

in thunder

too early to tell

mid-sentence

throes of

the event

culpable in

years, seasons

moments

equally

spoken till

the wind stills

who's going to dance on the head of a pin?

Miss Cegenation, whisper it

my foal another colour

then sun shone

lucid interval!

all sorts of insects stirred to light

the rot

was all translated

and every act of speech is

this curry goes right through

a chase of tail to mean at all

Miss Prision

visited me in my cell

... not so lonely then

but bounce upon

spirit a self away

spindrift

it could be into cloud

could be into the blue

*

in all the dream of waking

this has to have been

stray from stars

light falls to us

imagine very very far

you might just get a glimpse