Sympathetic Magic Part 5

The utterance of a tulip in every parable Christ talked; rosebuds gleaming milk on the breath of lilacs their s.h.i.+elds of lilies shone where Solomon walked.

Page 53 Song of Songs is none other than the poet's heart, water across stones.

a warm sun working double s.h.i.+fts as a pitchfork stacking memories on a summer's day shooing aside leaves of the Cecropia tree; old Walt resting on a bench mumbling his prayers.

Page 54 SOUTHWARK

I noticed a bust of Shakespeare, an effigy in stone with latticing to mirror the ages. In the same cathedral a notation commented John Harvard was baptized here.

Outside, rain fell on tombstones scarcely readable, their letters frail imitations of what each man considered important in life.

The church itself breathed renewal. We learn John Gower, epic poet to the court of Richard II, wors.h.i.+pped here. I thought of translucence, then muir and gems the wise men brought the Infant Christ.

Prayer candles glowed and fell into a lap of pyre. The crypt held Edmund, brother to the Bard.

A handsome altar betrayed sentiments Gray used in his elegy to another courtyard. My thoughts continued onto nearby Tower Bridge, steel and energy dynamos before steps of the mult.i.tude released at five.

A sign read no alcohol was to be consumed on church grounds.

The very name of the place visited was poetic, half twist of muscle, more pull of silent breath.

Page 55 KUBLAI KHAN

The j.a.panese are coming! Now there's a fresh twist and just when Pearl Harbor seemed poised to become another Asiamerindian household word amid electronics, megavision and technological hoopla.

Surprise. They're outslugging us. We're cannon fodder amidst cunning economic wiles. The "sneaky"

Yellow Peril (updated and given a newer "slant" from that 19th century prejudicial posturing) has gone awry. No death march at Bataan. No G.I. blues. Old Cornpipes General MacArthur at ease; Inchon still years away. Where is Emperor Tojo when we need him? Who remembers the Aryans of the East? A Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Is SEATO still intact? If Korea, Formosa, Singapore and Hong Kong are "little j.a.pans" does that mean we're to become, by default, the new coolies?

Tha land of the Rising Sun is broader than a battles.h.i.+p listing in heavy seas -- it's the New world Order. Is North America being prepared as hewers of grain and drawers of petroleum? Alas, co-existence brings dilemmas: the Toyota outwits even a "K" car. And them outpacing our GNP at 6% per annum. It's enough to rethink the whole scheme of things. They're obviously in the forefront of the New Economic Policy. More than just "Nippon" -- that's simply a bad press release from the dark days of a misunderstood, but euphemistically labelled "second global conflict".

Page 56 Rubber and fibre sanctions will do it every lime. The Arizona and Oklahoma will testify to that. Feudal j.a.pan would never have tolerated it, either. Who's to say the Samurai are caught up in splilting hairs?

Admiral Perry should have stayed out of Tokyo Bay.

The Earthquake of 1923 just made things worse.

Land's End means more than Manchuria and resources.

Industry and wily opportunism have broader vistas.

The Kuril Islands are a No Man's Land hut so are the Ainus, a primordial white race of Asia.

What's red and white and comes in with the tide?

America. Compared to the j.a.panese miracle, it's all washed up. It's hard to contemplate N.Y.C. as a suburb of Osaka, but try. The j.a.panese believe in communal bathing, so will North Americans when the recession hits full stride. Remember, shower with a friend.

j.a.pan is a land of aura. Of mystery. Genghis Khan never got there in one piece but sent his legions anyway. Flotsam and jetsam. A bully vanquished.

1066 in reverse.

Britain was the workshop of the Victorian world.

j.a.pan is the Britain of the universe. The whole cosmos is borrowing her tricks. No one does things so efficiently. No one has developed cooperation to such a fine "T". Nowhere is individualism shepherded to the goal of the "greater good".

Page 57 Pierre Trudeau would be pleased. "To each his own according to his worth." Sounds impressive. Does that mean Jaffa oranges are safe to eat -- mercury and cyanide poisoning notwithstanding. Will the Levant acknowledge the supremacy of the Orient?

What's new about mulberry leaves? Are silk worms interlopers, too?

Shogun is too realistic for the narrow orchestration of facts. The difference? They play to win.

Hands down, Kirin makes a wonderful beer. Sus.h.i.+ bars are all the rage. Leyte Gulf was more than a tempura explosion, Corning Ware or "Made in j.a.pan"

labels produced in bulk.

Coral Gardens is a real and legitimate extension of the Rice Factory idea.

c.i.p.angu. As you like, what you will. No race has undergone a swifter transformation in the world's eye.

They deserve more than groping admiration. They deserve our admirals, too. Who else outfoxed military victory reversing it from the insides cadaver out? The peter principle enshrined. The victors don't enjoy the spoils.

The Lion's Share is as it should.

Page 58 HOMUNCULAR FORMS

Cape aux Morts.

Cape Diable, Points of Ma.s.sacre Rocks and Island a plethora of Wreck Bays.

But on Funk Island, nothing matters.

Brahmsian rhetoric could describe the island Prokofievian, the sound of Mars homuncular forms; an imperative monotone.

Murrelings fell from cliffs into the sea, rose and floated in foam, screaming.

Olivaceous puddles.

Murres and gannets, kittiwakes, sun splashed white & pitiless light on rock -- argon, radon, krypton seasons of millennia suffocating in the original gases of earth: xenon, neon.

Granite intestines with its outer edge lost in the darkness between the stars.

Page 59 ANTARCTICA

Perhaps it is needed to balance the planet: to provide employment for penguins, or that ice in the form of crystals calls forth tiny sleighs.

That the orange hibiscus be a.s.sociated only with deepest tropics ...plankton learn to feed Baleen whales And iron hulks, off s.h.i.+ps. submit to greater Masters.

the elements.

SECOND THEORIES

Another supposition projects...

snowy wastes are but vapour trails of jets and tatter sails.

Sleet comes only from cannonized rain, galvanized by inclement ironmongers.

Yet a third hypothesizes frozen energy is stored in the form of ice caps and that the lost amongst departed souls are reborn with every powdery breath.