Read Online Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeanette Winterson
Ads: Link
be a lie, overstating what is better understood invisibly, it is possible to resist Time’s pull. The body ages, dies, but the mind is free. If the body is personal, the mind is transpersonal, its range is not limited by action or desire. Its range is not limited by identity.
I need the dark places to get outside of common sense. To go beyond the smug ring of electric light that pretends to illuminate the world.
‘Nothing exists beyond this,’ sings the world, glaring at me from its yellow sockets, ‘nothing exists beyond now.’
I challenge the stale yellow light to a duel.
Fight me. Fight me now. Hand to hand combat between the living and the dead. The optimistic flesh and the spanner-twist of mortality. One full turn clockwise and the rusted bolts seal the lid. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the tick, tick ticking, and the ghastly fingers creeping round the smug enamel face.
Time and the bell. The sea-bell through the sea-fog. The warning bell at night-time, the waking bell at day. The wedding bell and the final bell. The black-clappered bell and the broken day.
Under the black bell, lie the bodies in single file, one behind the other. One hard on the heels of another, one by one, the fall, the clang, silence.
Time and the bell. The sun dial on my chest. The breast plate that is my inheritance. The sun makes his circuit and drags me with him, traces his journey over my body, leaving deep ruts where the shadows collect. Time passes over me, the shadows lengthen, the dial darkens.
What time is it? Look at my body and you can tell. Count the rings as you would on a tree. Count the ridges on the cumulus of my skin. I am my own burial mound and the ancient pit of my end.
I am a warrior. I wear my breast plate proudly. The beaten gold plate protects my heart from all ravages but those of time. Time, my old enemy, who has built his sombre castle out of my ribs. Time, whose thing I am, writes on me.
What to do with the parchment? What to do with the bloody ink? What to do with the lines on my body?
The lines around my eyes are in terza rima, three above, three below. There is a quatrain at my chin and a sonnet on each breast, Villanelle is the poise of my hands. (Thankfully, there is still no trace of vers libre.)
What to do with these lines?
I have raided my own body and made my poem out of his. Split Time’s metre and snapped his smooth rhythms. I have learned his forms and mastered them and so become mistress of what is my own. I am a warrior and this is the epic of my resistance.
That which is only living can only die.
The spirit has gone out of the world. I fear the dead bodies settling around me, the corpses of humanity, fly-blown and ragged. I fear the executive zombies, the shop zombies, the Church zombies, the writerly zombies, all mouthing platitudes, the language of the dead, all mistaking hobbies for passions, the folly of the dead.
When all speak the same speak the poet can no longer speak. The language is rich when it is fed from difference. Where there is no difference there is no richness. There is no distinguishing among the dead.
Eat the same apples, day comes, night falls. Read the same newspapers, day comes, night falls. Turn on the television, day comes, night falls. Assert your individuality with one voice. Day comes night falls.
The world is a charnel house racked with the dead. The dead have no need of words, no desires that appetite cannot satisfy. The dead, their greedy mouths, empty, their tongues torn out and hung up to dry. The dried-out shrivelled-up babble of the morgue. The sealed room where the same old words are everyday tortured and killed. They are happy with their dead words. What words they cannot kill they can ignore. The Word ignored. The Word unspoken and unheard. The unknown word that is, in its own tongue, a foreign tongue. The word in exile, locked in the crumbling palaces of the past, its glories faded, its supporters few. The word woven in the tattered arras, a
I need the dark places to get outside of common sense. To go beyond the smug ring of electric light that pretends to illuminate the world.
‘Nothing exists beyond this,’ sings the world, glaring at me from its yellow sockets, ‘nothing exists beyond now.’
I challenge the stale yellow light to a duel.
Fight me. Fight me now. Hand to hand combat between the living and the dead. The optimistic flesh and the spanner-twist of mortality. One full turn clockwise and the rusted bolts seal the lid. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the tick, tick ticking, and the ghastly fingers creeping round the smug enamel face.
Time and the bell. The sea-bell through the sea-fog. The warning bell at night-time, the waking bell at day. The wedding bell and the final bell. The black-clappered bell and the broken day.
Under the black bell, lie the bodies in single file, one behind the other. One hard on the heels of another, one by one, the fall, the clang, silence.
Time and the bell. The sun dial on my chest. The breast plate that is my inheritance. The sun makes his circuit and drags me with him, traces his journey over my body, leaving deep ruts where the shadows collect. Time passes over me, the shadows lengthen, the dial darkens.
What time is it? Look at my body and you can tell. Count the rings as you would on a tree. Count the ridges on the cumulus of my skin. I am my own burial mound and the ancient pit of my end.
I am a warrior. I wear my breast plate proudly. The beaten gold plate protects my heart from all ravages but those of time. Time, my old enemy, who has built his sombre castle out of my ribs. Time, whose thing I am, writes on me.
What to do with the parchment? What to do with the bloody ink? What to do with the lines on my body?
The lines around my eyes are in terza rima, three above, three below. There is a quatrain at my chin and a sonnet on each breast, Villanelle is the poise of my hands. (Thankfully, there is still no trace of vers libre.)
What to do with these lines?
I have raided my own body and made my poem out of his. Split Time’s metre and snapped his smooth rhythms. I have learned his forms and mastered them and so become mistress of what is my own. I am a warrior and this is the epic of my resistance.
That which is only living can only die.
The spirit has gone out of the world. I fear the dead bodies settling around me, the corpses of humanity, fly-blown and ragged. I fear the executive zombies, the shop zombies, the Church zombies, the writerly zombies, all mouthing platitudes, the language of the dead, all mistaking hobbies for passions, the folly of the dead.
When all speak the same speak the poet can no longer speak. The language is rich when it is fed from difference. Where there is no difference there is no richness. There is no distinguishing among the dead.
Eat the same apples, day comes, night falls. Read the same newspapers, day comes, night falls. Turn on the television, day comes, night falls. Assert your individuality with one voice. Day comes night falls.
The world is a charnel house racked with the dead. The dead have no need of words, no desires that appetite cannot satisfy. The dead, their greedy mouths, empty, their tongues torn out and hung up to dry. The dried-out shrivelled-up babble of the morgue. The sealed room where the same old words are everyday tortured and killed. They are happy with their dead words. What words they cannot kill they can ignore. The Word ignored. The Word unspoken and unheard. The unknown word that is, in its own tongue, a foreign tongue. The word in exile, locked in the crumbling palaces of the past, its glories faded, its supporters few. The word woven in the tattered arras, a
Similar Books
