Mission Accomplished

This site has fulfilled its purpose; it has documented the Obama years in verse, and allowed me to maintain my sanity. What comes after will be different, and perhaps on a different medium. The four books of The Spy in the House of God are:

1. The Earth is Flat and the Heavens a Dome (2007 - 11/2011)*
2. Gold Smoke and Blue Fire (11/2011 - 10/2013)
3. Adrift Without a Star (10/2013 - 12/2014)
4. The Voice of the Four Winds (1/2015 - 11/2016)

* Poems from after this period may have ended up in the anthology. These dates are approximate.

Have you considered writing or reading traditional poetry, that is, poetry which follows strict structural rules whether rhyme, rhythm, syllables or subject? If, having read through what I have written you are still in doubt that such a thing is possible now, that beauty in verse and poetry is possible anymore, then as they say, go your way. 

But for the rest of you, especially those of you who write, simply start by imitating a writer you enjoy, when you are inspired to do so. There is no need to share the poetry with anyone, but reading it aloud is very helpful. I have been doing a series on various poets of our language (English, that is) on Social Matter. I will continue that, of course, and if you find a poet you like, that should be your starting place.

Oh, and one last thing. read Mencius Moldbug!

End of Cycle, "The Voice of the Four Winds"

This marks the end of my fourth cycle of poetry, this one called "The Voice of the Four Winds." Those who visit the blog will notice that it stopped following my normal "kairometer" color changes, which are the normal liturgical season colors. This is because I sensed, and had long sensed, that an era was coming to an end, specifically an era to which my dissident poetic voice was germane. A flight of birds is a traditional symbol of the departure of souls - of death.

While I have never been a political poet, and will not ever appreciably be (unless the politics should become whether royalism should be considered--) there has indeed been a political element or color to this work. The Voice of the Four Winds was about what the poem says, the end of the dream of Enlightenment. It may be that it stumbles along for another century (such is very likely) but I see in the recent political changes, away from the Enlightenment-inspired democratic internationalism (itself a development of democratic nationalism in reaction to the wars it created when it repudiated classical international law) and towards a reactionary form - form at least - of nationalism.

If it is to be classified as a form of fascism, I think that's not inaccurate. As I am not part of a political party nor speak for or against any of such, I think that present movements could be read as a retread of fascism, but a fascism that is isolationist rather than aggressive; as from the sovereign standpoint what got the fascists in trouble was their willingness to play the aggression game with the then-nascent "international community". This mistake will not be repeated, and certainly the emergence of a nascent national socialism (which I've privately predicted as being one of the two possible normal endpoints of democracy) is not surprising at all.

National socialism tends to combine both nativist and socialist views which both tend to be low-status but high energy. This happens naturally in the democratic cycle of "mobs, then experts, then mobs again" (as per Davila) when the high status mobs (say, for civil rights) and their elite masters fail thoroughly enough. At that point, there is an opening for a centrist candidate who is not moderate - for usually centrism is a moderation of different views which makes them acceptable to the status quo and gives everyone a little taste of what they want, but not the whole hog -- but rather who combines high-energy, low-status, fringe movements who are quite numerous and now willing to row the boat in the same direction.

There is definitely a racial aspect to this, and it is white. But whiteness is complex; I am an Englishman by heritage, and even that identity is itself a combination of tribes (Jutes, Danes, Angles, Saxons, etc) put together for practical reasons. Whiteness as an idea, by the very notion that it is whites and half-whites who simply invented the concern for "minorities" as it is, contains within it both a tremendous pride and chauvinism, as well as a consideration for strangers who are legitimate citizens or subjects of that realm.

Overall, the history of anti-racism is simply the attitudes of high-status-aping and high-class whites against low-status and low-class whites. Minorities were, in this game, simply a side-show and a prop used to demonstrate the moral superiority (and thus right to lord over) of the high-status whites, generally the group Moldbug refers to as Brahmins. Anti-racism is from my perspective, and I think the long-term Christian view will be, simply hatred of the poor.

As Carlyle points out, political equality makes those not capable of realizing it appear to be solecisms; literal miscreations. And such political equality had rendered the poor. Feminism is much like it, and of course unbridled capital is glad to have access to new, cheaper workers; not because it is evil but because it knows its incentives. Socialists, while seeming to oppose such excesses, merely were jealous of the power and wanted also to exploit, but for what they thought of as a good cause. There is no reason to assume that capital can be responsible to drive the best interests of any group of people other than the person presently holding the capital. If not at the service of some realm, it will not, as hoped by liberal fantasists, become its own realm, but rather slowly ruin itself by ruining the source of its prosperity by following its incentives to their end.

This symbolic repudiation is the theme of the Wind book, "Voice of the Four Winds" and it is the winds' voices who seem to say, calling as a symbol of judgment and ruin, that there are very many empty spaces to blow through. Where is the substance? It is long gone.

Thus to me this result - and we refer in this case to the recent Presidential election at the head of the world empire in disarray - was rather inevitable, though not by any means certain. By this is mean, it must needs have eventually happened, but whether one or another contender had succeed at achieving it was not certain. I cannot tell the future, but I can discern the shape of the sky, as our Lord says.

This volume spans a longer time than the others due to fewer poems being written per month, mainly because during this last period my work became far less experimental and far more intentional. Here are the poems. which begin where "Adrift Without a Star" ended. These poems are historical-anecdotal, they tell, like a Steely Dan song, part of a real fragment of real history which might otherwise be unrecorded:

1. Without
2. Storm
3. The Orator Tells of His Secret Joy
4. Burning Down the House 
5. The Song at the Cusp of the Sky
6. Raeleen's Song
7. The Exile
8. Conception
9. The Rose of Love
10. Stepping Out
11. The Auspex in the Winter Light
12. The Sage Ponders Human Industry
13. The Dancer's Daughter
14. Artificial Intelligence
15. Words and Deeds
16. Want and Lack
17. The Driver's Question
18. The Song at the Waiting Sea
19. The Fire of Hearth
20. The Orator Speaks of the Heart
21. Another Canticle for Stories
22. The Time of Iron
23. Candle
24. Lottery
25. Harry Lee
26. Third
27. The Good Mother
28. The Sage Speaks of the Social Medium
29. The Orator Dismisses his Accuser
30. Will and Testament
31. Eggman
32. No Man
33. Rosemary Green
34. A House United*
35. The Orator to the Soothsayers
36. Fifty Shades of Grey
37. Wormwood
38. Laboring Song
39. Crocodile Song
40. The Cathedral
41. To Nothing
42. Rain Comes
43. Canticle for Mentation
44. Who Will Wait For Us
45. Schwarzchild and Cassandra
46. Humanism
47. Revision
48. The Two Before the Storm
49. A Heart of Darkness
50. A Spy In the House of God
51. Political Correctness
52. Storm and Dusk
53. Six-Twenty-Six (6.26)
54. Partly Cloudy
55. Everlasting No More
56. Far Away
57. The Auspex Sings to Rigel Kent
58. The Orator to the Dancer
59. The Sage to the Doctor
60. The Poet and the Auspex
61. Sonnet VI "Leverage"
62. The Sage Considers the Dusk
63. The Orator Considers the Spectacle of Power **
64. Physics
65. Determination
66. The Song of Winnowing
67. The Court's Witness
68. Pandora's Spirits
69. The Novel
70. Sun and Shadow
71. Seven Canticles for Prudence
72. Twelve Types
73. The Stone on the Shore
74. Holography
75. Cold Sun
76. Eleven-Thirteen (11/13)
77. To a Persian Rug
78. A View to a Kill
79. The Rectification of Names
80. Rest
81. The Young
82. The Final Lecture
83. Winter's Afternoon
84. Aeons
85. A Song of Winter
86. Hall of Mirrors
87. A Canticle for Flight
88. The Song at the Great Chasm
89. The Song of the Shacks on the Shore
90. The Future
91. Colder Still That Metal Box
92. Blessing For a Woman
93. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
94. Nineteen-Eighty-Three (1983)
95. By the Waters of Babylon
96. Ever-Near
97. Ars Poetica
98. Borders
99. The Orator Announces the Age
100. The Song of the Pipes
101. The Song of the Idol
102. The Sage Discards the Modern Style
103. Fifty's Lottery
104. Bridge Song
105. The Sage offers the Dire Solution
106. Leave
107. The Song of the Mirror
108. To Silence
109. Gun Control
110. The Longest Mile
111. A House Divided
112. To Sickness
113. The Words of the Companion
114. Under the Sun
115. The Milling-Stone
116. Water Under the Bridge
117. Verses for Economy
118. O Thou Light of Good Cheer
119. Pace
120. The Orator Remarks Upon the Digital Word
121. Sea Before Storm
122. The Song of the Viols
123. Love and Hate
124. Tanuki Song
125. The Onion
126. Zombie Nation
127. Sailing to Naples
128. Rex
129. Dux
130. The Voice of the Four Winds
131. The Inquisitor Speaks

*Also Published at The Mitrailleuse
** The image for this poem was in fact changed much later.

Enjoy reading all of the poems on this site (I should suspect there are at least five hundred good ones) and look forward to new work which will take a different form.

The Inquisitor Speaks

it is addressed thusly:

A postlude.

it reads:

Moloch is us; they have said
And right they were, for they saw
Seeing not with eyes of the dead
Knowing with a less-crooked law;
We railed at them, fine words
Which were the babbling of a child
Just the sharpening of swords
Our press the problem reconciled;
Our religion was eaten from within
By him, but it is us we must assay
The Inquisitor says of our sin:
Qui facit per alium, facit per se.
The end of the thing is found
Not in the lights of Shangri-la
The age of Aquarius? No sound--
But ogres, and the gaping maw;
The world outside of God is darkness.
And God is darkness! Did you know
With "philosophy" no less
They made "above" as it is below?
I shall have my satisfaction;
Followers of Strauss! I bring news--
Has God returned to take action--?
Flee then, where no man may pursue!
Take your cleverly laid fables
Your demons, your dispersed law
We come to clean the stables
We come red in tooth and claw;
White is our tunic of linen-made
Red blood of the cross there brazen
With gold and silver it is inlaid
The sign of victory, it is our blazon;
The Inquisitor speaks, for it is he
The sage, the orator, the poet
It is he who is in truth these three
They are but one, and they know it;
Followers of Strauss! Who else--
Swing gaily from the battlement;
"If ye had yet judged yourselves
You'd have not come under judgment."

a postscript is here written:

The End.

The Voice of the Four Winds

it is addressed thusly:

A vision.

it reads:

"The Dream is dead, the Dream is dead"
That is what the voices of the four winds said;
Calling at the window, rattling at the door
Unseen voices which cannot speak a word
If they once could they cannot any more
Yet this is a semblance of what I heard;

The east wind calls from the morning of the world
The light that was lost when the flag was unfurled
The spring which will not come for them again
Who once laid claim to the innermost light
There will be no more budding of their crops or their men
Let them watch with their lamps in the night;

The south wind sings in the burning zenith-bright
Of walking men in darkness in the mid day's light
Their summers of no cotton, their men of no truth
Who know no thing for what it may be
Their judgements of no power, their mercies of no ruth
Who seek but cannot find equality;

The west wind rumbles in the sunset of the West
With tears it calls beseeching to those we love the best
That have forgotten God, he the crown of our year
His it is now, then to roll up like a cloth
So remember beauty, and the dread of his fear
Kiss the Son quickly then, lest you find Him wroth;

The north wind howls at the pitch of twilight-time
Of those who have not reason, of those who have not rhyme
No good shall be performed in this winter of their soul
Seeming quick to listen, but of their charity
All shall eat and eat but yet never find their full
Passing over good for cold chains of slavery;

Such things have I heard when awake in the night
The death of man's progress, the snuffing of his light
But the winds at this must laugh, for we have been misled
Man went nowhere, for long ago he lost his mark
Yes the four winds said, yes, the Dream is truly dead
Man who was Enlightened was sleep-walking in the dark.

Dux

it is addressed thusly:

An ode.

it reads:

Of he, royalty's conquering son
Bright-faced, prince of cavalry
His dragoons ride with the sound of the gun
And brooks he no base rivalry;
Flames burst forth from tower to tower
His foes must shrink, their faces glower
Announcing his ride from the waiting sea
In this the bright and conquering hour;

He enters the city, though not his yet
But all he sees comes to his hand
Estates and clans will fill his net
Sparse it is, set across the land;
But does no miracles to deceive
He does not need men to believe
For sight is sufficient to understand
Raised chin, sharp eye, laurel wreath;

Usurper they say, who clutch the crown
And wear it not, for they fear the wind
Which bears a bruised reed to the ground
Considering but how he must have sinned
Who bears upon their castles dim
From the plain unto the ocean's rim
But the Duke instead, he merely grinned
For all of these shall come to him.

Rex

it is addressed thusly:

An ode.

it reads:

Terror is something like power;
For in power there is terror indeed;
And fear where strength does tower;
For strength makes fear exceed;
But terror is not power, nor is fear
A difficult thing for some to hear
For God is great, and without need
His peace and dread draw near;

She loves the fearful things in truth
For only strength gives security;
And fear its sign, and even ruth
Is the seal of its magnanimity;
We do not like to be terrorized
A difficult thing some have realized;
For woman senses power and purity
Awesome when it is exercised;

Might is seen in great sacrifice
And true sacrifice needs strength
Giving all has both art and artifice
And art is but giving at length;
The king is such an object of fear
A difficult cross for man to bear
But his giving is then giving thanks--
And his art is powerful, terrible, fair.

Sailing to Naples

it is addressed thusly:

for Tom Barghest.

it reads:

Where the young sit quietly, alone
The aged laugh, their deck chairs
Sit on layer upon layer of stone
Unlost anymore in worldly cares
Add to the rubble and wreck
A fragment of immemorial liturgy
Bottle by bottle tossed off-deck
Trash on trash by the lapping sea;

They think to live forever perhaps
The young alone seem to believe
And silent, watch each wave collapse
That they might live on, disease
Captures middle age with trash
But the patients suffer little for ill
Walk among graffiti, bat not a lash
Knowing this the country of the old, still.

a post-script is here written:

open letter more historical anomalies

Zombie Nation

it is addressed thusly:

A vision.

it reads:

It is well known of the fly
That he must seek his food
His is not to question why
Nor to know of ill or good
The dead as well we know
Even walking to and fro
Have but this single mood--
And no more hope nor grow;

When the rot at first sets in
The smell must flies attract
But of those dead just within
Was the living they had attacked;
America, the zombified
Should be quite well over-flied--
But no flies their mien detract
As their drug is formaldehyde.

a postscript is here written:

a pass-word:
america zombie nation