The Anathemata

Sherthursdaye and Venus day (continued)

(how else his valid matter

for the sign-stream?)1 

Praefect of the strict conduits,a  but

by him the wild-brooks2 

all the humida Tellurisb 

every distillation

toto orbe terrarum.3 

Arglwydd4 of the Fountain

Magister of the Cisterns

whose voice is:

tamquam vox aquarum.

(When at the imagined corners

his salpinx’dc  Diktat is:

Uncover everything!5 )

David Jones notes

1 The references are: to the term ‘valid matter’ used by theologians of the material water in the Sacrament of Water; to the material water essential to the Sacrament of Bread and Wine; to the water-metaphor used of all the seven signs; to the entire sign-world to which the metaphor of water flowing from a common source could apply; to the actual streams, our rivers, which are themselves signs of conveyance and themselves physically convey, which not only provide the metaphors but the material stuff without which the sacraments could not be.

2 Accent on ‘wild’, cf. the West-Sussex locality-name ‘the Wild Brooks’.

3 See the Blessing of the Font: ‘Who opens the fonts of baptism in the whole earth’ (toto orbe terrarum).

4 Arglwydd, Lord, pronounce arr-glooith, ith as in dither, accent on first syllable. Cf. Arglwyddes y Ffynnon, The Lady of the Fountain, the Welsh romance-tale corresponding with the European romance Le Chevalier au Lion.

5 See Donne.
‘At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells .. .’

and Apocalypse I, 15 Vul. and A.V.

additional notes

DJ note 3: Apocalypse 1:15 in the Vulgate reads ‘et pedes ejus similes auricalco, sicut in camino ardenti, et vox illius tamquam vox aquarum multarum’, translated as ‘and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters’ in the A.V.

DJ note 5: also note that the Greek apocalyptein means ‘to uncover’ so that the Apocalypse is an uncovering (of the future Day of Judgement).

a Praefect...conduits: the Roman engineer in charge of the aqueducts.

b humida Telluris: wet things of the earth.

comments

The hymn to water continues.

see also

semantic structures

glossary

c salpinx: an ancient Greek war trumpet.