Роджер Желязны - To Spin Is Miracle Cat

But you never know.

Keep your eyes open, your feet on the ground.

If it feels right, don't do it.

Watch the other players watching.

RIPTIDE

Riptide and foristan. Tal vez, too. Vielleicht, perhaps.

I sometimes think of stories I have never written . . .

He has made it through the 470-meter navigable aperture

at the spinning disc-edge of a black hole

equivalent to eight solar masses.

(Clever computer, Anubis-like, to guide him.)

Now, telling the story,

a page from Descent into the Maelstrom,

as he flashes by,

he shows his alien audience

his own ship, this ship,

hanging there, bug-in-web-like,

upon the event horizon.

Grand final image.

(Or would photon-decay do it in?)

Didn't like it. Not really a story. Hence, nothing.

Except for that damned image . . .

Watching your own eternal doom. Cracking jokes about it . . .

One of the great pleasures of mortality, I suppose,

is knowing that others are suffering, too.

And of writing, that others have fragments

that drive them just as mad:

Medusa smiled . . .

God Owes Me $6.57 . . .

Itself Surprised . . .

The Cyborg Connection . . .

"Send them an Apocalypse Card."

"Think dead thoughts."

"You have ten minutes to fall in love."

The greatest argument I know for sadistic deities

is that inspiration comes in pieces

and some of them never fit.

Objective correlatives are nice things to have about,

but these are untidy scraps that almost make it,

and could, I suppose, correlate

if they tried just a little harder.

But they won't. After awhile you feel sure.

It is from their species that I learned

the true meaning of love-hate,

a lesson one can usually do without.

Somewhere deep within there may be a message,

but they hung up before I got it.

There should be a divorce-getting,

stake-driving process available,

a rite of exorcism for not-quite-ideas

that simply won't give up.

Seizing them and strewing them across the ergosphere

may be the only way.

But if they were to make it through

that damned aperture

and return to show me themselves,

bug-like, in the web of forces, waving -

Day of Homeothermy, The Man with the Wooden Heart,

Startangle, Cheeterwing, Chuttle and Pocketstar -

I would ...

Bleed upon them, I suppose,

curse, send the tracenfeef, shiddoes and slugell

off to the Quickwind where Dweeble dwells

to struff their guffs where the antiblob

flarts before the Logrus.

Even then, I wonder ...

There may be things of which I never shall be free,

immortal as myself, bugging me down ages,

proof against revenge.

My world is crowded and an alien valley.

They sing against the closing of my eyes.

1955-60

AWAKENING

As I watch the billion-nuanced dawn stream

through pages of my brain,

Like Loki screaming back to Asgard

with his hair afire,

I feel I have gotten upon the moment

three monsters which shall destroy the world:

My world, designed of ice,

looped in supple frame, gray,

And pillaring the heavens on furled cloth towers,

as still as the inside of a jewel,

Has shuddered to a sluggish consistency

with the crowing of a cock upon a dunghill;

The steps on a bridge, once broken,

have the hateful rainbow

over my sea-son's home,

As Hel, my burning daughter,

all wisdom and half-corpse,

Stirs beside me now within the incestuous parabola

of a poorly reconstructed Faust

regretting a beautiful moment;

The sheet of flame has risen,

wall behind me now -

immolating cerement to better time -

As the mechanical ankles

of a man who has sired deity

paraphrase in numbered warmth away

The treading of a Wolf behind the icy sun.

NUAGES

Our Lady of Guadalupe

to thee we pray

Deliver us the living

Bless the souls of our ancestors

writhing in the Great Snake

on outward fits of day

Talk to the silent

Breathe on those without breath

Wreathe in greatnesses of grace

Thy sun-dog and his kin

who move through sand

in winnowings of coral

tide by sand

past apertures of star

Waft on high the mothers of our men

Bless them

who pry careers of molten sun-pearl

the open mouthed clamshells of cloud

CACTUS KING

It has been said that no land lies so vile

but kingship would console one's presence there;

no spit of Hell too small

for Lucifer to dwell supreme,

post-fall.

But Lord! the exile autocrat

imprisoned by such reign!

with two-edged sword of Proust

that pricks a will to power

(nettle of reply from out a fading past) -

as here, most lovely Bonaparte,

my master of the rocks,

we dub the bowing, red and cactus head.

TESTAMENT

Strange, that here I should think of you.

The ashes are not bitter,

nor the dust excessive.

There are no trees

to hold the three small beasts:

fear, shame, and mocking laughter ...

but yesterday discomfort

fell back across this path,

sapping seas of innocence

I'd builded a waste:

diminutive dimples of darkness

slashed shadow to prairie dog's stare:

adjudicant , still angel cast of browness,

preposition to fire, despair ...

STORM AND SUNRISE

...machine of day pulling taffy.

FROM A SEAT IN THE CHILL PARK

Green wrestles yellow on that pillared island,

scuffing occasional brown clods.

DUCKS

Landed by the bullet

the banded angel

breathes orison

her final wing

PAINTPOT

... perpetual spa of blue

where clouds boil and dip chameleon hue.

THE LAST

And sorely bites the blade

behind Cassandra brows!

Waters mirror murder, fuse

with care-cut faces, darken all

about the chariot of disbelief.

They will not hear the word,

truer than their thousand syllables'

beauty, but bear its black fins

wrapped in nets of apparency

upon their choral back;

and the ever gentle mutter

of cloth about rushing

works wordless concordance

with golden and double doors opened

to blood-struck Agamemon down.

ST. SECAIRE'S

Tripple topped steeples

of brass,

steel,

and I forget what other-

poking with massive

and insect probosci-

suck a passing cloud,

prick to sudden star-wound

night's most Negro thing ...

Ye I salute,

holiest of vampires!

bread of metaphor,

being,

and I know not what,

in many-topped minds

of the minder.

ICEAGE

O

why

the sky

so tortured

today? one says

aloud, quick finger

uncoiled sudden up over

their heads. They touch at

them then with meaning, so that

is all there was to vision this day

so blue and taut, that spotless lay

under stone fingers, which the play

of steel muscle tore brittly at

and beat, while a blind cat

amid the snow grew her-

self an extra, fur-

less tail, laid

in cannoned

chimney

lea

THE GOD AND FRUSTRATE SHRINE

Tower and weep,

o steeple.

The flashing phalanx

waves

its ton of fist.

THE GAME'S THIRTEENTH STRIKE

Each nettle shreds a silence,

needling in furrows

of forehead seeming shine

to setting pins

in passioned gallery.

STORM

Ferocious moment,

written on the eye when

movements writhe to incandescence

the hour,