READING
From Liber Lapidis Lazuli: Chapter V.
- O my beautiful God! I swim in Thy heart like a trout in
the mountain torrent.
- I leap from pool to pool in my joy; I am goodly with brown
and gold and silver.
- Why, I am lovelier than the russet autumn woods at the first
snowfall.
- And the crystal cave of my thought is lovelier than I.
- Only one fish-hook can draw me out; it is a woman kneeling
by the bank of the stream. It is she that pours the bright dew
over herself, and into the sand so that the river gushes forth.
- There is a bird on yonder myrtle; only the song of that bird
can draw me out of the pool of Thy heart, O my God!
- Who is this Neapolitan boy that laughs in his happiness?
His lover is the mighty crater of the Mountain of Fire. I saw
his charred limbs borne down the slopes in a stealthy tongue
of liquid stone.
- And Oh! the chirp of the cicada!
- I remember the days when I was cacique in Mexico.
- O my God, wast Thou then as now my beautiful lover?
- Was my boyhood then as now Thy toy, Thy joy?
- Verily, I remember those iron days.
- I remember how we drenched the bitter lakes with our torrent
of gold; how we sank the treasurable image in the crater of Citlaltepetl.
- How the good flame lifted us even unto the lowlands, setting
us down in the impenetrable forest.
- Yea, Thou wast a strange scarlet bird with a bill of gold.
I was Thy mate in the forests of the lowland; and ever we heard
from afar the shrill chant of mutilated priests and the insane
clamour of the Sacrifice of Maidens.
- There was a weird winged God that told us of his wisdom.
- We attained to be starry grains of gold dust in the sands
of a slow river.
- Yea, and that river was the river of space and time also.
- We parted thence; ever to the smaller, ever to the greater,
until now, O sweet God, we are ourselves, the same.
- O God of mine, Thou art like a little white goat with lightning
in his horns!
- I love Thee, I love Thee.
- Every breath, every word, every thought, every deed is an
act of love with Thee.
- The beat of my heart is the pendulum of love.
- The songs of me are the soft sighs:
- The thoughts of me are very rapture:
- And my deeds are the myriads of Thy children, the stars and
the atoms.
- Let there be nothing!
- Let all things drop into this ocean of love!
- Be this devotion a potent spell to exorcise the demons of
the Five!
- Ah God, all is gone! Thou dost consummate Thy rapture.
Falútli! Falútli!
- There is a solemnity of the silence. There is no more voice
at all.
- So shall it be unto the end. We who were dust shall never
fall away into the dust.
- So shall it be.
- Then, O my God, the breath of the Garden of Spices. All
these have a savour averse.
- The cone is cut with an infinite ray; the curve of hyperbolic
life springs into being.
- Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the
chain of systems that is falling away from us.
- First falls the silly world; the world of the old grey land.
- Falls it unthinkably far, with its sorrowful bearded face
presiding over it; it fades to silence and woe.
- We to silence and bliss, and the face is the laughing face
of Eros.
- Smiling we greet him with the secret signs.
- He leads us into the Inverted Palace.
- There is the Heart of Blood, a pyramid reaching its apex
down beyond the Wrong of the Beginning.
- Bury me unto Thy Glory, O beloved, O princely lover of this
harlot maiden, within the Secretest Chamber of the Palace!
- It is done quickly; yea, the seal is set upon the vault.
- There is one that shall avail to open it.
- Nor by memory, nor by imagination, nor by prayer, nor by
fasting, nor by scourging, nor by drugs, nor by ritual, nor by
meditation; only by passive love shall he avail.
- He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat
for the stroke.
- Then shall his blood leap out and write me runes in the sky;
yea, write me runes in the sky.
RESPONSORY
- There is a solemnity of the silence.
- --- There is no more voice at
all.
- Only Thy silence and Thy speech that worship me avail.
- --- There is no...