8 Winderby's Last Case - Duncan McGibbon (read book txt) 📗

fulminated
with the anathema by the same, uncle the Pope
and privated of the dignity of the Cardinalature.
as quoted in private audience
by the English ambassador,
“Heresy, you stubborn, apostate dolt,
is a family matter.”
Yet his natured self could not naturalize
itself even to Adam, with this effort
he remained content
and one day was transferred (transferito)
either to an abbey,
or to his father's villa never to be seen since,
buried perhaps in the church
“ebbene, sepoltura nell Chiesa, o a sentimento di altri,
or in the grounds of the Villa... nella
Villa Silentini, senza alcuna memoria.’

Though Rome rumoured that his recreations
were broadly devoid of observable goodness,
a natural divinity in immanent ecstasy
for Adam as Christ, had expelled his heart.
Whereupon the course of his life was interrupted
by an importunate death encountered privately
not without suspicion of poison
(non senza sospetto di veleno)
prepared if it can be believed, domestically
and breathed in as incense.

32.From “The Windows”

Dear Attwater,

Quid tunc!
Sad youth with a white lie
What then? Cried the dramatic years,
the persons taking the part of time,
the hospital hours?
So Alberti's eye has taken wing
from its case in Bloomsbury.
(Hill’s Corpus, one six one)
The curators are dumbfounded,
yet the story has no time for them.
The break -in, mentioned now
can come at the end
in the sequence of events.
Then what?
Wait, if you want, for the security
officer's report, encoded for paper people.
Take Les Fenêtres,
old men who die kissing the glass.
What then? cried the windows, open on the spaces.
Mallarmé’s angel glides in on Cayley’s ‘New Flyer.’
How are we to get through all this sight?
Appollinaire, in enamels,
sits at the Delauneys’ windows.
His train flies over with Wilbur and Orville,
Earmley, Blackfriars, Rome, Paris ,Lyon, Brindisi, Kythera
let alone Vancouver, Hyères, Maintenon,
Harmondsworth, Les Antilles.
How many tears does it take
for the poor youth to dab them
with a white tie?
How many spiders wove in the light?
Then what? cried the reader,
whose higher skills are under employed
or should it be the thirties still
take the 2.30 from Howth Station
and take Yeats’ ghost to read with you
So what then? cried the poet
like any other, he changed his shirts regularly
like any other critical myth,
hunted a cipher
to a reputed discourse,
he made friends, he wrote,
he dreamt, he died.
Then what?
What effort counts,
if pain is the price?
What shame not worth it
to be finished with pain.?
What then?
and what if the spurned Virgilian lover got even?
What then?
So the world is under threat from number?
So what?
Seeing all thing and distinguishing each separate one.
So what if you drink the pearls dissolved in vinegar?
Can you taste them?
Or if it is the Critique of Last Judgement
So what?
The narrative is determined,
Alberti’s eye is on the wing.
Yet the story is not time bound,
We can begin at the end if we want

So then what?
The story is unpredictable,
we can expand, give references,
bring in actors to meet the characters,
tell you more, tell you less...

What then?
The windows are open.

What then?
The light is winding in.

Yours sincerely,
Cedric Winderby M.A. (Oxon) M.D.(Freiburg)

33. The Triumph of Opacity

The maidservant survived to tell
about a another woman,
who got in at Blackfriars
wearing Elizabethan clothes,
A man wearing a frock coat
and a long black cloak
whom I recognize as me,
climbs in after her.
The woman takes out a script and
shows it to her new companion.
This time they rehearse
Webster’s unfinished play;

(Fizzleshot: show title-page)
Diomedes and Penthesilea.)
(Through window)
‘My part? I'm supposed to be Penthesilea
Well just for a joke. Yours is Achilles.
It's all written down here. Would You
awfully, mind if I practised on you.’

(Jump cut. Flash back to Elizabethan stage)
Diomedes: "Why did you have the message in your pocket?"

Penthesileia:"I...I...took it from Ulysses in case it
came to any harm. In case it tore, or
someone might have stolen it "
Diomedes:" Then why didn't you give it back
Penthesliea: I felt faint... I was taken with an illness, Sir?
Diomedes: Why did you go back to return to bed so quickly?
Penthesilea: It was a sudden chill, sir. I thought it felt cold

Diomedes: Light these lights!
Penthesilea Thou comest to bring good news
(Enter Achilles)
Achilles: No, lady, I bring a grave message
Penthesilea What news?
Achilles: Bring the weapons here.
Penthesilea What grave, lover, you mock me.
Achilles: No. I do not mock. Your mouth shall hollow thy grave.
Penthesilea How can a mouth dig earth?
Achilles: A dirge, ma'am digs the grave, to reach the earth
Penthesilea And Earth is no more.
Achilles: I have a gift from Calchas to replace it
Prothoe,: What? Lords! and Tapers
Calchas: (Arming Penthesileia)
Aye, and a fair garland of lily flowers have I tied here as
your last garland. See, they’re pink and white, with red beneath for treachery.
Penthesileia: (Aside to servant) Run, cry, this soldier seeks my death and bid farewell the sister of my joy.
Calchas: Stop her mouth and take her hence
Penthesileia: She is my servant and waits on me,
Calchas: Then bid her depart, dear Lady, or she will be sent
Prothoe,: Farewell.
Penthesilea: Look to my garden and water it well.
What my blood has committed,
may the labour of my hands absolve.
Calchas: No stay, be a second in this duel.
(Penthesilea and Diomedes fight)
Prothoe,: (Penthesleia wounds Diomedes) What full met the dirge!
Calchas: Sweet Achilles, avenge your burning rage.
Penthesileia: Then fight, fight!
Calchas: Thou should’st have a horror of this clash.
Penthesilea. (Achilles and Penthesileia fight)
It doeth not affright. My warmed blood shall flush
out fear from my tearless cheeks
Calchas: Stay, my ditty yet should set thee trembling
(Pipes)
The whispering clay invites thee to stay.
Worm, ant and owl smell out the way.
While friend Robin-red-breast
robs your tresses for a nest,
The wolf shall not harm your peace,
for he shall dwell in your grave for lease.
Death will turn your beauty into dung
and pluck the sweet berry of your tongue.
Traitress of the brave, appeal no more!
at Achilles’ blows, your coil swills to gore.
Penthesileia: Go my friend, bless me in my shroud
for his blow ends me, my sword’s unstained.
(Dies)
Achilles: Now go. My eyes are misted, heaven fall to me.
I noticed the willow herbs’ startling colour
and is that a fieldfare in the hawthorn?
Yet nothing rivals the face I have killed.”
(Jump cut to Winderby on the train)
I find it difficult to speak to the man.
What I had wanted to say is now
out of place in a rehearsal .
Then I see it is the same man.
The Silencer addresses me:
( Jump cut to Webster, sitting next to Winderby on the train)

‘For the action of the Play turns well generally,
I must recall the industry of my friend
Mistress Noyes, whose true imitation of life,
gave a tragic quality to value, if not to preserve.
(Tracking shot of train travelling at night. Voiceover Winderby)
The girl, wearing an Elizabethan costume,
with strange armour lies on the seat.
It must have been him who pulled the chord
which is all I remember before the sudden squeal
of breaks on steel. The man I know to be The Silencer
becomes feral, runs along the corridor and jumps .
The engine is Descartes Machine Class without Ryle’s ghost,
driven by Turing under manic but achievable orders.


34,. Message to the
to the Cythera Ferry Master

Hoarse with a blockage of baked ash,
the upper airs caught the volcano’s solidarity.
The isotherms have a wearied defence
which displace the eruptions,
dried in a shower of classical semen,
and strike at the river bed
and strangle its tidal slack.
Yes I admit I died long since.

Remembering the cost to the Appeal Courts,
what I want to say depends
on finding the code in which I can
make contact with