The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
in the under-stills
the washed-white margaron’d relics lie, where the pearl is, as was the weather-eye of Ben Backstaya
lux perpetua luceat ei
and upon all the precursors—as knowed their ropes—that have gone before us under the regimen of the ship-star and sleep the sleep with father Ulysses.1
David Jones notes
1 Cf. Canon of the Mass, prayer, Memento etiam Domine ‘ . . . who are gone before us with the sign of faith and sleep in the sleep of peace’.
additional notes
a See the sea shanty Ben Backstay.
DJ note 1: and DJ would also have had in mind the prophecy in the Odyssey (xi. 134-7) that peaceful death would come to Odysseus (Ulysses) ‘from out of the sea’. (In the event, it was not quite like that. He was killed by a spear tipped with poison from a venomous sea-animal thrown by his unknowing son.)
see also
For the margaron’d relics, see page 113.
comments