A Bibliography of the King’s Book or, Eikon Basilike

II. Conversion


I like to be stationary.
                      —Bartleby


Who is not a wild Enthusiast   

in a green meadow   

furious and fell

Arriving on the stage of history   
I saw madness of the world

Stripped of falsification   
and corruption

anthems were singing in Authorem

Father and the Father
by my words will I be justified

Autobiography I saw

Legal righteousness makes us servants   
All good hearers

Opposers or despisers
Night page torn word missing

The family silence   
gave up the ghost

I feared the fall of my child   

resting quietly with some hopes   

as a bird before any

Election—Vocation—
Justification—
Cape of Wind wreathe   
fame out laughing   
Seated on a cloud   
Seacret drift
seacretly behest   
the dear She
comes to all Guilty   
all circling
Eye window soul body   
Pride cannot bow   
Ariadne’s diadem   
zodiac helmet belt
Copyright Credit: Susan Howe, excerpt from “A Bibliography of the King’s Book or, Eikon Basilike” from The Noncomformist's Memorial. Copyright © 1993 by Susan Howe. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: The Nonconformist's Memorial (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)