The Anathemata

The Lady of the Pool (continued)

Though there’s a deal of subsidence hereabouts even so:

gravels, marls, alluviums

here all’s alluvial, cap ’n, and as unstable as these old annals that do gravel us all. For, captain:

even immolated kings

be scarce a match for the deep fluvial doings of the mother.

But leastways

best let sleepers lie

and these slumberers

was great captains, cap’n:

tyrannoia  come in keels from Old Troy

requiescant.

For, these fabliaux1 say, of one other such quondam king

rexque futurus.2 

And you never know, captain

you never know, not with what you might call metaphysical certainty, captain:, our phenomenologyb  is but limited, captain.

So of these let’s say requiescant

till the Sejunction Day!c 

For should these stir, then would our Engle-raumd  in this Brut’s Albion be like to come to some confusion!

You never know, captain:

What’s under works up.

I will not say it shall be so

but, captain, rather I would say:

You never know!

David Jones notes

1 X in fabliaux to be sounded.

2 Cf. Yet som men say in many partys of Inglonde that Kynge Arthur ys nat dede but had by the wyll of oure Lorde Jesu into another place, and men say that he shall com agayne. . . . Yet I woll nat say that hit shall be so . . . men say that there ys wrytten uppon the tumbe thys: Hic iacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus. Malory, XXI, 7.

additional notes

DJ note 2: Hic iacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus: perfectly translated as ‘Here lieth Arthur, the once and future King’. There is one other such King, of course.

c Sejunction Day: Separation Day, the Day of Judgement, when the sheep are separated from the goats. (The word ‘sejunction’, meaning ‘separation’ exists in the OED, but is very rarely used.)

d Engle-raum: English living-space. The thought is that if these legendary ‘strong binder’ heroes do not hold firm for ever (at least until the Day of Judgement), our hard-won English land could be conquered again.

comments

see also

semantic structures

glossary

a tyrannoi: absolute rulers (Greek).

b phenomenology: the study of what can be perceived, without explanation or interpretation.