The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
And other such prospectors and others again and before again, such as chambered their dead between the nebsa and the nesses.1
And before them
and before again, the precursors at the steer-treesb
many of them
in the old time before them.
These many, all long gone
dona eis requiem.
And the many yet to come that by some new-fangle shootin’ at the sun2 shall check their rhumb-lines
dona eis requiem.
And those as after them
whose fathers shall relate to them of these old times before them. Those as—by what new gear and a deal of dials, gins of propulsion and all manner of contraptions, unguessed even
of a’ admirable scab-shin Nominalist?
David Jones notes
1 The world-distribution of the megaliths is largely coastal; and tends in Britain, at least in the Welsh coastal group, to be more on the lower slopes, between, rather than on, the highest headlands.
Cf. the opinion that has seen in these monuments the dissemination of a cult of the dead by mercantile companies prospecting for metal c. the second millennium BC
2 When in the fifteenth century the Portuguese first began to determine latitude by taking the altitude of the sun at midday, the new technique, called the Regiment of the Sun, was received by sailors with reserve.
Prof E. G. R. Taylor writes, of English seamen, ’To see a man “shooting the sun” (as it was already termed) with a cross-staff was an occasion for mockery. “Have you strook it” he would cry, “Have you strook it”.’
See The Journal of the Institute if Navigation for October 1948.
additional notes
b precursors at the steer trees: i.e. those of ancient days who travelled the seas.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a neb: a peak or highest point; ness: a promontory.
comments
Elen remembers all those seafarers past and present who have died: may they rest in peace.