John Scotus Eriugena at Laon

 

An Ireland, as of chalk, the sky

standing in for the sea, the beach

a reach of blue, the vineyards’

green scooped out in cirque,

in cove, a subtlety of air laps

the eyes, abob like barques

come from afar, and the viator

standing there, poised to dis-

embark, the undercurrent of air

escaping him, tossed to & fro,

gaze wrenched from its angle

of purchase upon the world,

capsized, head now careened

against the suddenness

of rock, eyes whiplashed into new

prospects, he drowns in fire,

enflamed, fine silk aquiver

at the singe of brazier, he

burns: would Hell be as blue,

or the sun the obverse of God?

 

Now at Laon, the Lugdunum

of the North, deposited on this citadel

of chalk, white arx, former

temple of Lug, the light-

god of the Gauls, & he,

this Celt from Hibernia, setting

foot on this podium, this puy,

this platform afloat

at cloud & wind height,

blown in from the septentrion,

breathes in the quintessence

of rains, alevel the briar’s

pinks, zone where water,

at first cold snap, turns to snow.

Fallen from fire. Autumn’s pure light

whitens the mount, the tufa

reverberating the radiance

of a Cyclades isle, here mis-

placed, high above these plains,

by some error in translation.

 

At Lindisfarne, let us suppose —

even if Alcuin’s letters to the island’s

monks exhorting them to combat

the Viking may be evidence

to the contrary — that he studied

Greek, that Charles the Bald,

offshoot of the Pippinids,

summoned him here to Laon

to translate Dionysus. Between

the king’s vineyards & the blue sky,

a whisper of the North Sea

in the channel of Île Sainte when

the seals bark at ebb tide,

Johannes the Hibernian cocks an ear

despite finding his coracle of Latin

too frail a craft to explore the peninsulas

of Greek, & carries with him

the long-lapping waves of Scotland

& seaweed’s tang where kingfisher

nests beside nugget of amber.

 

That which lies out of reach taking

the shape of this white & shadowy

rock on which he is now beached

& whose slope he now climbs, blind

beneath the sun, fallen from the same height

he ascends, would Satan be extending him

his welcome with the same dark

radiance of stone between his eyes

& the same fine peppering of pinks

that spice his senses on either side

of the stairs, against this, what whiteness,

what candor? The sky’s rarified air,

there to calculate the distances between

the things he climbs or descends,

the divisions of the world now

extended, now illuminated between the lines,

the borders of the intangible now flaring up

with darkness, the granular opacities

now brightening, the sun biting into

the margins of the real, the image dying.

 

Denys, foundation of all cathedrals

to come, mentor of naves, stained glass

rosettes, of all the gossamer shadow

spiderwebbing the light from the East

as it rises, Lord of Ionia, oriental

Ionas, Denys, Dionysos,

your Greek sailing the great hill

of Lugdunum, your darkness raining down

its alphas, its Alphei, the dawn

uncorking the fizz of its dations.

John Scotus comments, his violet ink

relighting, igniting the world according

to Plato, filtering the grit of the flower

through the sieve of the eye,

the bran, the curds of light,

sifting out the clots of theology,

in this shadowy cave, the locals

burning every log in sight, hoc lignum,

a bonfire of stones

held in common, lapis iste.

 

And if some hick might ask

Quomodo omnia, quae sunt,

lumina sunt? the master

picks up a stone, a rock

from the Laon vineyard, applies

his know-how to the refractory

matter at hand, crumbles it, cake

of honey humming with the blue

of the ambient sky, the clarity,

the tang, the silky feel of the stone

giving rise to the precise & exact

idea whose line cuts against another

idea, steps hewn, crossing over

into each other, pebble giving rise

to temple, tensile, acts of attention

& hierarchy of effects, blueprints

polished to perfection, prayer

welcomed into its breast by the increase

of the volume of silence springing

from ribbed ogives, from angles.

 

He holds Ireland in his hand

like Carolus Magnus the Apple

of Empire surmounted by the Cross.

To distance oneself from idolatry

means, first & foremost, to gather

together the Earth in godly fashion,

to harden its pit, its core, its blindness

to the sun, its heart of darkness

according to Denys, then to hurl

this handful of earth skywards, so

that it take flight & light like a ball

of sun, cormorant, black oriflamme,

that it crackle chalky winey in the blue

veins of Ouranos, welcomed into

the sack of the crystal vault like a ripe

cherry fallen from its tree in June

among the rungs of the ladder,

if hurled from this great a distance

Earth is no more than a fruit’s seed

in the scrumptious season of God.

 

In the treading vats of Laon, the light

squirts out from underfoot, the Greek

hill bleeds a wine lighter & clearer

than the juice of Santorini,

the vat tips over, the blue gushes out,

the sheer flood of the world saves it

from being swallowed up, God

has created things as numerous as

his glory, hilaritas! Night overtakes

joy on the hill, the winter of all things

recedes into God, from whom they

so luminously proceed, & we philosophers

who make our way by foot, following

the path of photodosia, we reach

the degrees of the world inasmuch

as we take pleasure in its ascent,

Earth in one hand, knees in Earth,

pilgrimage of humility,

voyage of hilarity to the Mount

of Laon, Mountain of Time.