The Seventh State
Phillip A. Ellis
I: The Visitation (I).
At the god's shout, I turned and tried to flee,
through wooden mazes growing dark and grey
beneath the leaves and limbs upturned to stay
the throbbing midday sun that glared at me.
No tattling crows did rise, or venture free,
from lassitude that lay as blood that day,
which flowed from pores, and dried like broken clay
upon my blinded eyes that sought safety.
No snake emerged, no sound, to watch me pass
beneath the trees that held the silence down
upon the cast-off bark and stringy grass.
No path I took allowed my feet to find
a way to flee the fear I felt would drown
in solitude my fog enshrouded mind.
II: Argument.
In solitude my fog enshrouded mind
did seethe with scorn upon my fellow fools
and long to sup among the grinning ghouls,
but I was sick and weak, my eyes were blind.
But verses seemed to be some form, some kind,
some way to lance my rotting soul's pustules,
to spatter all with filth, to choke their mewls,
to exorcise my dark fears undefined.
But time and friendship proved my longings wrong:
I try for now to bow on bended knee,
and hope to win her heart with simple song.
My hopes are humble now, my fears are great;
I live to learn and write so gracefully;
I stand, still, dweller of the Seventh State.
III: The Visitation (II).
I stand, still, dweller of the Seventh State
a state no other eye has ever known,
and from the worlds of things and words has grown
within a space no larger than my pate.
And there, when stars advise the hour is late,
I heed no sounds, no coughs or rasping groan,
but stand, instead, in wolds all overgrown
with mosses formed as beards or hidden hate.
But from beneath the trees where once I fled,
two tiny kittens gambol, wild but shy,
with creamy bibs that dawn had coloured red
and playful steps of glee and great elan.
I looked out on the world — with mournful eye --,
diseased and weakened through the deeds of man.
IV: The Plague.
Diseased and weakened through the deeds of man
that ships had spewed upon this ancient shore,
the land revolts and cries: "No more, no more;
my dreams are nightmares now. No more this plan
to poison me and raise a Caliban
composed of capital and nothing more."
But all we did was delve another sore,
in search of glowing ore, to murder Pan.
But here, deep in the Seventh State, my sore
still speaks with voices, dark and full of hate,
that promise pain will last forever. More,
the kiitens played, their games did seem to say:
"The poison hurts, but pain will soon abate,
and fear will pass away, so choose to stay."
V: Carpe Diem.
And fear will pass away, so choose to stay,
so broach a bottle, pour a glass of wine
that's caught the sun. So bring it down to shine
with golden glow upon our form of clay,
and though this form will die and rot away,
just tarry for a while beneath this pine.
I've hoummos and foccacia — let us dine
and scorn the fools who fear the end of day.
So stay awhile: the lonely night's at hand,
that calls with ocean voice in branch and leaf
of foreign trees intruding on my land,
like soldiers marching on in misery
through vales of nightmare shapes beyond belief,
to stand upon the shores of foreign sea.
VI: The Wanderer.
To stand upon the shore of foreign sea,
and know a land beyond my native home,
where bear and moose are wont to freely roam
beneath the Wain — that fate is not for me.
Beneath the cross, my feet still wander free,
upon the Southern fields of fertile loam
while face is flecked by ocean broadcast foam —
this is the land that moulds my melody.
But never will my inner landscape cease
to be my native soil, with fringes formed
from lands that other visions condensate
while mazy ways, across the Seventh State,
access these token realms that I've transformed
from city states to stranger chersonese.
VII: Hellenica.
From city states to stranger chersonese,
the Greece I love is but a palimpsest
of states that fought to halt Persian conquest,
and fought amongst themselves in war and peace.
But though so much is lost, through time's caprice,
their culture's made my heart a quick conquest.
And in the Seventh State, their old bequest
mutates to strange and chimeric métis.
Though Pindar's eyes would never know his land
that grows within the Seventh State, it hides
behind the works and days of something's hand
that turned my feet to tread from dead city,
to deep within the bush, where Pan resides —
at the god's shout, I turned and tried to flee.