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

accommodate Swinburne’s
non-bodily components,
the dear philosopher that is,
whom I refuted once in Chelsea,
only to be thanked as if
I had done him a great favour ,
not the founder Male-Lesbian.
I will use pilcrows as signals.
and I shall stop at Enigma number stations.
Existence without the body
was always a logical possibility
on British trains, despite
Brunel’s timetabled Empiricism.
Descartes can take me
the rest of the way, once
the mid channel border is crossed
between Esse and Posse.
Then the shade of Severinus Boethius,
from Pavia to Brindisi.
Only in Britain does Europe
cease to be a possibility.
I will hum San Severino’s forma
to the tune of esse.
Then there’s Greece to argue
between the Platonic Daimons
of the broad gauge and the
narrow circulars of the Prime Mover.
I remember when I was very unwell
being told I had month to live.
It was winter and my book was unfinished.
and I admired the confidence which the Deacon
implied we can a live a life, despite its brevity.
(Back shot black and white)
I remember my visit to Deacon Northcote left me
surer of my book’s conclusions, but a natural beatitude
must still be accounted for in tradition.
Blessed are the born for they shall live
is a Wordsworthian tautology at best.
Basil’s muffins were delicious
and his roses had come out
Where the Lord takes us is another matter,
I told him, our redeemed nature
lies beyond our touch, as touch
is now beyond my right hand.
Did I always feel I
had the solution in my sights?
I heard Basil Northcote’s Bamptons
in the University Church .
“A pool that sometimes clears to reveal the spring beneath.”
he spoke of, as I sat in my new clericals
at his feet. I remember I never took off
my cycle-clips I was so excited and
had a new tin of tobacco
which I threw into the air.
(to talking lips)
It lies to be shown how natural desires
can, if given time and the right resources,
fulfill the knowledge of the hand that
formed them. What if there
were an hypothetically infinite man?
but immortal, simply unredeemed, but
of endless duration, his life could
be a proof that even he could
find a true Deity to worship.
The Catholic Church speaks
in the authority of Pius XIIth,
of separate beings on other worlds,
none called to salvation yet putatively
worshippers of a creative deity
on a separate planet.

It is time to catch my invention.

(Lips fade)


3.Dance:The Wanderer and The Furnace


15. The Athanor Home Manual

1. General Instruction
Conceal, or destroy all claims to the word's
notorious relations with reality, including affairs.
(Any oversight will obstruct alembic efficiency)
Papers, particularly those
in the form of love-letters, or brief notes
on the coherent transfer of logical meaning
should be hidden under floorboards,
buried in compost heaps at night
or concealed in ambiguous remarks.

Once this has been done completely,
consistently and you have tested your work,
you may commence reading.

You will come to a question, usually at dawn,
preceded by a dotted line of rapid eye movements,
indicating the place
where an answer should have been installed.

Then continue reading in sound sleep.


16. The Wanderings of Winderby 1

Then the woman in the room
speaks to me, suddenly and
persuasively. She wears antique
twentieth century dress.
She has a story to tell:
“Giuliano had come up from the village
with a few cans of beans and
the latest American magazines,
telling little of the Normandy evacuations.
Ever since the resistance had been holed up
in Kythera the little pony had taken
the road to the old quarry.
Padre's Silentio’s loyalties
were a little uncertain, but he could be
trusted with the girls, at least with Laura.
Simone would have to look after herself.
Not a man was to be trusted,
but in the present position
his place, hidden in the vaults
of the quarry was a useful one.
He wouldn't act until he had to,
and Guiliano alone had the information.
He also knew that the Padre had
supported Eleftherios Venizelos
and the Liberal party
before the Fascists took over,
which was a useful thing
to keep the man in check.
Pina, being a Communist
would listen to no-one.
That gave them a weakness which,
when the time came, would be useful.
He changed gear and hid the lorry
under the branches of the overgrown orchard.
The moment came sooner that Guiliano
had suspected. A week had gone by and
he had left the four of them
to get more supplies from Potamos.
In town his contact told him,
The Blackshirts wanted the
whole region clear of suspected
resistance. Potamos, especially
was too near the base for comfort.
Besides, Il Duce wanted the place
to entertain visiting Nazis.
La Primavera Hitleriana was due.
The Gestapo especially was fond
of Mozart and Gentile wanted
a performance of Il Re Pastore,
which Toscanini had been working on
before he left for New York.
Then Guiliano knew how he could
spring his trap on the resisters
whom he had left sunbathing
on the lawns, while Silenzio
was posted a look-out on the gate.
The party sent out its agents to look
the place over, cut the grass and
arranged for chairs and tables and
entertainment to be flown in.
It had the advantage of being
out of the way of the Gestapo,
and out of the way of History,
and yet less than a day from home.
The resisters waited in Padre Giovanni's vault
Simone and Pina, the singing girls
were hungry, restless, and
wanted to leave, but the Padre told
them it was safest to stay.
Giuliano’s brother, Luciano found
this gullibility amusing.
He had 'sprung' the lot of them
and waited for his reward.
The hour the Nazis arrived, Giulio
turned his revolver on the group
to pretend he knew nothing of them
and ordered them out to surrender
Yet the concert was already in session
and so they waited in silence. Laura
glaring sullenly at Giulio who
never returned their glances.
The Padre seemed as still as death.

The sound of a voice came from the cave
“Enough that my shepherd
should be my king…
All the bliss I wish to prove
is my shepherd's constant love.
And with joy to see him reign,
free from trouble, free from pain
but should his station change his heart
And my ideal from him depart.
What dreadful torments I would know
As my soul is rent with woe.”

The voice was barely audible,
but the Padre Silentio
picked up the spirit of the aria.
Everyone else joined in.
It seemed the safest thing to do.

“Hail the consented Duce,
the invitation from the sky,
dearer and dearer to our hearts.”

Then a stranger song started,
with a thin, piped accompaniment

“Maenad of dark flowers,
you close your eyes,
drunk with the dark,
seething with warmth, evoe,
you emerge, beautiful,
to join hands with the pallid visitor
who lingers, then reaches , evoe,
for your warm lips
and is silent.
Your skin dissolves shame
from your nakedness,
which basks, soft and dappled
in his blazing furnace.”

Laura stared at the horizon
of lemon trees and olives
The air felt heavier.
At the conclusion
of the opera, the girls came
out of the quarry
and shrieked in terror
at the gun in the hands of a traitor.
Guilio jerked
the gun, the group stood, as still
as leaves in a summer glade.
Suddenly Guilio noticed
they had not moved,
but were motionless,
like standing wax works.
Pina's blouse fluttered in the wind,
but the bodies beneath
were as stiff as plaster,
as several shots proved.
Giulio ran to get the SS officers.
On his return the statues were drifting
away, led by an English couple,
wearing strange Victorian clothes.
Wanting an arrest, the SS took Guilio.
and the entire scratch orchestra.
“Don’t you remember being there?”
the woman asked.”You were one of the Nazis.”
Suddenly I come into existence there
on that sunlit island. I cease and start again
in essence at least, a shadow of awareness.
Was I there then ? Part of a shabby massacre?
Dressed as Antigone, Pina comes to find me,
the troublemaker, with an intuition
about injustice, has come to protest.
I struggle with the keys to my room
until I realize I must lock the door to enter.
She is the party member, the campaign assistant,
the student, the Conservative, the Socialist, the Communist,
the Liberal, the Catholic, the Fascist youth, the Jew
shopped by her own side for moral emotivism.
She is the spectre of the Twentieth Century’
an icon of political failure, the dunce
in the schoolroom of history
whose corpse is found by Hippolyte,
under the glare of Theseus,
who waits in the hallway
with his security men.
She is taken out and tipped into a mass grave,
while the Queen’s latex girdle is posted that witnesses
in a techno-century should turn
into pole-dancers and be seen and not see.

The Queen, stops to speak to me
in Victorian clothes ,a crinoline dress
and a silk jacket with lace
I take her by the hands out
of the breeze of moment to hear her.
Her words are notes of music,
a descending modal sequence,
slow and expressive on a fortepiano...

17. A General Example

How many times did you respond
to the emotional needs
of any musical instrument you cannot play?

(Place your answer here)

Now visualise the emptiness of page two,
check your answer against
the answer printed there
while you were defacing it
(since removed by our service agents)
If you encounter difficulties here,
bear in mind that the same agents
will have repeated your name nationwide
Yet that famous identity of yours
was hardly managing its own existence
while you slept.
What is the status of your name
flashing in the cell phone?
Answer in sound sleep.
If your answer is correctly installed
you may proceed to the next item
which explains the operation
of a perfect insensitivity

If your installation is wrong
you must re-read the preceding word
and cross out our instruction
which is deliberately misleading
Then read it again
and repeat the imagination drill

(Place your answer here)

If your answer is correct this time,
you have crossed out
the wrong instruction.


18.The Wanderings of Winderby 2

”George and I cannot but wonder
at the enormous improvement to transport
brought about by Napoleon's road -builders.
Now, through a whole mountain-pass
a scorching plain and a unsafe sea
we are arrived at Potamos,
a dirty, dusty port where the
people are verminous
On the way we read Webster –
Yes old Dyce's edition.
The people here are too poor to nurture
the values of domestic privacy
We have often been told by our
worthy father that Popery is little better
than paganism; and I find it
to be true ever since I settled in the town
where ignorance, superstition and even
idolatry seem to reign in the most
sovereign manner.
We see little else in the street
besides the processions of priests
and monks or the bambini,
Their begging even at a young age,
is a constant irritation to our journey.
I