The Anathemata

Rite and Fore-time (continued)

from the

long drowned out-crops, under, coalesced and southed by the North Channel.1

As though the sea itself were sea-borne

and under weigh

as if the whole Iverniana mare

directed from hyperboreal control-points by strategib of the axis were one complex of formations in depth, moving on a frontage widening with each lesser degree of latitude.

David Jones notes

1 ‘Contemporaneous with the glaciers of North Wales, ice sheets from the Clyde Valley and the Southern Uplands of Scotland, from the Lake District and from the heights of north-eastern Ireland descended and converged into the depression of the Irish Sea. From this area of congestion the combined flows moved southward under great pressure, part escaping directly by way of St George’s Channel, but part thrust against the land mass of North Wales.’ Bernard Smith and T. Neville George in Brit. Reg. Geol. N. Wales, pp. 77-8.

additional notes

a Ivernia: an ancient name for Ireland.

comments

The gouging out of the Irish sea is described in military terms.

semantic structures

glossary

b strategi: plural of the Latin strategus, commander-in-chief.