The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
era, period, epoch, hemeraa.
Through all orogeny:
group, system, series, zone.
Brighting at the five life-layers
species, species, genera, families, order.
Piercing the eskeredb silt, discovering every striac, each score and maculad, lighting all the fragile laminae of the shales.
However Calypso has shuffled the marked pack, veiling with early the late.
Through all unconformities and the sills without sequence, glorying all the under-dapple.
Lighting the Cretaceous and the Trias, for Tyrannosaurus must somehow lie down with herbivores, or, the poet lied, which is not allowed.
However violent the contortion or whatever the inversion of the folding.
Oblique through the fire-wrought cold rock dyked from convulsions under.
Through the slow sedimentations laid by his patient creature of water.
Which ever the direction of the strike, whether the hadee is to the up-throw or the fault normal.
Through all metamorphsf or whatever the pseudomorphoses.g
David Jones notes
additional notes
The geological terms are smaller and smaller divisions of geological time, as are the terms relating to orogeny; the life-layers are in increasing order of generality.
Calypso is an enchantress in Greek mythology; here she is seen as being responsible for the mixing up of the geological layers. Unconformities, lack of sequence etc. are all distinct forms of mixing up. (Though the actions here attributed to her are more those of Circe, a sorceress who transformed men into animals, than of Calypso, who was basically a seductress.)
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a hemera: A period of geological time determined by the maximum development of a fossil plant or animal.
b esker: a filled-up ice channel.
b stria: a scratch or groove on a rock or sediment surface caused by abrasive action of objects being transported above it by ice, water or wind.
d macula: a spot of a lighter or darker colour than the surrounding medium (soil or rock, for example).
e hade: a deviation from the vertical (as used in mining and geology). It may be vertically upward ‘up-throw’ or, more usually, downwards (normal).
f metamorph: a change in shape or form.
g pseudomorph: a mineral that is formed by replacement of an existing mineral (or organic matter) such that the new mineral has the appearance and dimensions of the original.
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