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

/> be safely concluded, we can consider
the whole extent of authentic and historical
literature. It too is impregnated with a
precise silence on this group of female statues.
The significance of this can be further
deduced when we consider that
over no other work of art has such a silence
ever been passed. Even the Amber Room
can be reconstructed. This argues for a specific
intention, even a deliberate plot in
intellectual history to oppose its meaning.
Which leaves the question of the pieces' specific
design. The variants are a deliberate attempt
to sow confusion. Claims for its design conflict
more widely among recent authorities. Muckowsky
says the floor figures are caryatides
to a four-sided fountain. Oberlin has it they
are the four legs of a table. Both are
agreed that the nymph's heads are represented
as fabulous animals, yet there is no agreement
as to which Leonardo's Windsor drawing 161 of
monsters is copied for the terrible face, or if
copied at all. Others quote the traditional
Biblical tetramorphs. The lion, the eagle, the bull
and the winged man. Others refer to hunted
animals such as the hare, the doe, the swan
and the vixen
Others again of elemental animals, the salamander,
the fish, the bird and the bear.
For Soto, the animals symbolise the seasons, whereas
for Topsesel, they refer to incarnations of Zeus.
Aratus claims they are the transformations
of Artemis' followers, Callisto, a bear,
Penthesilea, Procris and Antiope,
Agreement is not part of the game here, but the piece
is local and can be found , we can report
with Gombrich rationality has
been established - once the person
is secure, we are in pursuit.
Keep me informed of every existent
and nonexistent state of affairs.
I am, Sir,
your obedient servant, Frederick Attwater.
Master of the Office of Enigma
in the Ministry of Special (Ontological)secrets.


39 From the Sempiternal Correspondance to Attwater.

Dear Frederick,
They say what they want to, mostly,
as the forces of order which represent the States of affairs
are sensitive and know a thousand ways to waive
any of the bylaws they still remember
(Imprisonment for blasphemy, mild flogging
for wearing a mask and libel
are all the propositions they insist on)

Yet the States are abuzz with character
assassinations, foul talk
and no-one can tell who the other is ,
especially at mid-day.
Only at carnival are faces revealed.
Yet you had a complaint about me
delivered this morning. I found it in the letterbox
along with bills and greeting cards -
it was a good place to disguise it.
My code may be too precise, but
in a place where norms are vague,
it is in our interest

Here plague, banditry and anathema
are the casual dangers, breaking
another's ideolect is looked on as a
competitive sport.
An English woman in
polka-dot shorts is trying
to rescue an old piano from the bar.

Mission control must learn to understand
the conditions under which your agents have to work.
Your refusal of promotion is all too predictable.
Obscurity is for all to hear and see,
none to publish,
published and not in print,
famous and out of print,
promoted and still, still as still.

Yours sincerely,
Cedric Winderby (Disembodied)


40. Request for PR Services from Hierophant et Cie

May I commission services from you?
I speak for the woman, Tracy Cley, a Mystic
Alchemist, piano councilor and frenzied theologian,
whom I found wandering the airport,
with French Poets who didn’t exist,
and her new guardian, Frederick Attwater:
someone you would call dead and another
woman whom I would call alive but still.
I sought you out from dozens in the book.
I have been accused of crude seductions of old men
to make a profit from their dotage, especially
in the case of H.G.Wells and failed.
On being “jilted” I went mad, deluded
about Martians and litigious.
All this is libel just to get my silence
as I saw a golden light and gods descending,
beautiful, lofty thoughts, but deadly
for humans. I was not the only one,
H.G.Wells, a witness too,
has been kidnapped and has been held
against his wishes in a private
Government museum of covert desires.

41. The Further Wanderings of Winderby 3

“The audience applauded and the music,
care of Gabrieli, began.
After an interval, the actors
walked on to the ampitheatre again:
The second scene was from Correggio's Cefalo
The argument was intoned
Procris has doubted the fidelity of her husband,
Cepahlo, who hides in the bushes
while her husband is out hunting...

Madame la Marquise, hunched closer and closer
into the bushes. She strained for the
sound of her husband and peered through
a mass of thick and thorny blackcurrent
bushes. She could hear no voices, but
behind her suddenly she heard a sound.

Applause and the final act began
at once. The actors intoned the argument
of the fourth act of Aminta.
Effie found herself facing the most
hideous face she had ever seen.
She had been standing under a willow tree
Now she found she could not move
Her hair was stiff and hurt when she
struggled to move.”

“The problem with strangers
is that they must always
tell their own tale.”
“If you say so Mr Winderby,
as you saw yourself.”

“In silk she moved,
her hair in ringlets,
Her broad face proved
by her singlet.
Her orange tree
had learnt to walk,
a well-formed base
for her boughs to talk
moulding her chaste
shoulders and hips.
Voluptas, a baccante
shepherdess to the throng
casts aside her flock
and takes to the
peschiera,

Who found you there,
who led you down
through the loggia?
A masked cripple
who was speechless,
spoke in Pico's
riddles of silence
and gestured you
take refuge as Tacita,
finger to mouth,

He wears the costume
of Aminto, her shepherd,
Procris.

All three froze into a living freeze:
Madame La Marquise had
seen the others only briefly
and after the memory of the blunt wound
had been led into metempsychosis
to awaken into stone. The Erato stepping
gently onto her right shoulder.
Callisto had seen La Marquise in the bushes
and had stood there waiting for
the rush, her sister had preserved
her from harm and had led
her to the left position.
Alcestis, had felt herself released
by a crippled man with a deformed
forehead who led her to it and
by the still crouching figures of
La Marquise and her daughter.
They saw an unhewn block
called Erato, standing victorious
above them. She held out her arms
to support the figures
and awoke into stone.
Silentio passed by glowing as the sun,
but still crippled.”

That’s enough, girl.
like all dream landscapes,
yours has a harsh climate.
yet you are the only survivor.


42. Hand-Carried: to the Very Reverend
Silentio Silentini, Bandit-King
of Unknown whereabouts, Kerkyra.C/o The Vatican.

The documents included with this letter
show that I have been a target since I saw
you and your associates descend
to the New York Library backlot
in golden epiphany and metaphor.
I have seen a young man called Norman
walk out of the sea like a God
to his wife who was sorely vexed to see him
and dropped ice-cream on her bikini top
before he parted the skies and left with her,
like a streak of diesel fuel against the sky.
Death is now near. Its place is now my choice.
Although I am a Buddhist, I would welcome
any opportunity to take the veil, as it
would make it hard for CIA to spot me in crowds.
I have bought a Martian language tape
and will quickly learn your diction.
having sought to be a Refugee in Oxford
and in Paris and in Brindisi, I turn to you now
knowing you may dispose of me,
but I could be your hostage and
the subject of investigations.
I live in the USA, but if you can suggest
a meeting-place, I have a screwdriver
and can dismantle any lights
to disable monitoring and any telephone
to configure the ether and have contact.
I am sane. I do not believe in the official myths,
the Grassy Knoll Sniper, The Second Red Scare,
The Crown Contract on Princess Di.
I saw them land. I saw the dives flow
with ice-cream. I saw the wine-filled port.
They had ivy and the city was filled with popcorn.
Why would children laugh from birth if they had not?
Why do the mountains make room for us?
Haven’t you noticed, the sun rises more exactly
every day?
 


6.Picture: Winderby Pulls It Off

43.Three Non spatial Studies in Specificity

1.Winderby on Epic Consciousness and the Survival of Europe

The dark waves crash and recede from the shore.
The poets intone by the fires, wanting a meal
more than applause. Polyxena and Iphigenia
hold hands across the page of invented script.
Permission and redress bloody the fatal narrative:
the cheeks of a young girl bronzed in the firelight:
the thigh of another in the scorch of a northeast wind.
The posture of combat unfurls from the camps.

2.Winderby on Deserts

The sands prick the faces of the monks
who have returned to Mistra
from Asia, bearing the relics
of the martyred girls from Aulis, Troy
and the finger bone of Jephtha’s daughter.
To the tunes of the Hypolydian
a hymn to silence.


3.Winderby On Heathlands

Music: Holst, Egdon Heath

I had defined myself to dust. Each particle
withdrew from a name that wanted to numb it,
yet broke down into a smaller one
only to bend at the angry buzz of redefinition.
Supervenient machines combed the blue skies
leaving interlaced ropes of spent implication.
I hid from their deadly logic,
watching the thud of axioms
on innocent experience.
Here on this bracken heathland
of inhospitable literary climates,
I hid with Tess, escaped with Cordelia,
stuck straight with Jane. They faded to Isolde.
who spoke:

“ I am unwrapped from the mystery of the churches.
what is left but the chase and the capture.
My body is an allegory of lust. That thrill
of male Troubadours whose task is discovery.
The lark in the clear morning, the gleam
of sunlight where primroses grow
on the green lawn and my smooth young skin,
fresh as the rain that falls by the riverbank.
I, Aziman recoil in fear and you ask for mercy?
I shudder, wrapped in the dread of man’s treasure
and you speak of wounds? Isolde faded to Callisto,
“I am stricken with the poison dart of unyielding
secular delight.” and my dust turned to flesh


44. The Ultimate Determination of the Enemy,


Once settled in the place,
I found I could shimmer
and glide like the populous
spectres you would find
on any Greek island,
though Graves and the Durrells
are the loudest spirits.
One day, without speaking,
Polyxena began to sleepwalk
into the sea and disappeared.
The locals were whispering
a