Day: September 20, 2026

The Qliphoth

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Excerpt

She kicked the crotch of the guy who always calls me Fuckbeard when
Jago’s back is turned, but they managed to hustle her out,along with tearful
Cedric who’d turned his back on the whole scenario.
Now that all is quiet in the dorm, with Wolfbane locked away in solitary and
his supporting cast tranked down safely in their pits, I can safely itemise matters
relating to the Order of the Brazen Head. I’ve gobbed out today’s input of
sleepy-time, thanks to Simba throwing a shrill tantrum that distracted Jago at a
crucial moment of the dosage ritual.
So now, around midnight, in the little cone of bedside light, I am the only
sentient being in the Creation, an archivist of the Akashic scrolls.
Pol Pot’s revolution may have destroyed my artifacts but not the cellular
structure of my memory. Of course she ransacked our home, looting, pillaging,
laying waste . . . But I have the Lore by heart. I’ve copied it out laboriously
over the years, filling a whole series of these black books. Jago pretends to
humour me in this, but I still won’t reveal my stash as his own humours are far
from consistent.
For example, only last month he had a sudden pre-breakfast purge of our
“traumatic memorabilia”, our “hoard of faecal souvenirs” as he called the contents
of our bedside lockers. “This is the dark body of the Madonna you must
destroy!” he shouted at Eamonn and Cedric, sweeping away their framed photos
with his fat hand, grinding the pics underfoot, those saintly mothers and
martyred wives, whoever, it’s all the same to Jago whenever the neo-Freudian
fit hits him.
Yet he was only inches away from a lost knowledge more subversive than
any of his primal infantile soap-operas. I declare this is the Gnosis of the Brazen
head and these are the lost letters of its Lore:
73 Harsnett Road,
London SE 27
March 8, 1943
Dear Firestone,
What a pleasure to receive your letter! It displays a grasp of occult scholarship
which is impressive for someone still in their first year of undergraduate
studies, albeit in the shadow of the Bodleian Library, near the banks of Isis. I
myself took my first degree at Cambridge before my brief scholastic period at
the seminary in Rome and my later researches in Vienna. But the cloisters of
Oxford must still be charged with ancient potency, even in these dismal times.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

George Seferis – Collected Poems

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Thrush

A
House Near the Sea

The houses I had they took from me. It happened
that the times were unpropitious: war, destruction, exile
sometimes the hunter meets the migratory birds
sometimes he doesn’t. Hunting
was good in my time, lots of people felt the shot
the others roam around or go mad in the shelters.
Don’t talk to me about the nightingale, nor the skylark
nor about the little wagtail
inscribing numbers with its tail in the light;
I don’t know many things about houses
I know they have their own race, nothing more.
New at first, like babies
playing in the orchards with the tassels of the sun,
they embroider the colored window shutters
and the shining doors over the day;
when the architect finishes they change,
they shrink or smile or even become resentful
with those who stayed behind, with those who went away
with others who would return if they could
or those who vanished now that the world
has turned into an immense hotel.
I don’t know many things about houses,
I remember their joy and their sorrow
sometimes, when I stop
even when
sometimes, near the sea, in empty rooms
with an iron bed with nothing of my own
looking at the evening spider, I contemplate
that someone is getting ready to come that they dress him up
in white and black cloths with plenty of colorful jewels
and around him venerable ladies
with gray hair and dark lace shawls talk softly
that he gets ready to come and say goodbye to me;
or a woman with quivering eyelashes and slim waist
returning from southern ports,
Smyrna, Rhodes, Syracuse, Alexandria,
from cities closed like warm window shutters
with perfume made of gold fruits and herbs
that she climbs the stairs without seeing
those who slept under the stairs.
Houses, you know, grow easily resentful, when you
empty them.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4279077#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume VI

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Calm Down
He took his walking stick. He stopped ambivalently.
He looked at the road. Should he strike the rock?
Should he ask the neighbour? In any case, he surely
feels the stick in his hand. A tree is opposite him, and
the cloud at the turn of the road; he may choose, he
has time to spare. The dead moisten their fingers
in the underground springs. If one delays in the above
stoa, the others don’t worry. No one worries. They have
already lit the lamp. The place fell on the floor.
The napkin is in the wooden ring since the dead aren’t
afraid of time. In their shoes, sleep the blind and the
made of clay dolls, and their sticks are scarecrows
of bad theatre actors.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4278093#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763785

Redemption

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Excerpt

…at their destination, and they should fasten their seat belts. Hermes
looked down from the window. It was a cloudless night. He had a
superb panoramic view of the city, full of lights flickering in the dark.
He could distinguish the streets and the tall buildings as the aircraft
slowly descended.
They landed, and Hermes got up to take his carry-on bag from
the overhead compartment, stepped off the plane, and said goodbye
to Tom. An airline official led Hermes down the long hallways to the
baggage area. He found his suitcase from the appropriate carousel
and made his way to the arrivals area, where people waited for their
friends and family members. Happy voices were everywhere; people
embraced one another, kissing, laughing, and crying. He turned
around as if to see someone he knew. There was no one there, he knew
no one, and this was his first bitter moment of realization that he was
so far away from people he loved. He wished Magda were here. He
then sat on a bench and wondered aloud,
“And now, where are you going, Hermes?” A question justified
under the circumstances, a question he had no answer to, only the
sense of loss, of abandonment, of forlornness, and fear crept into his
heart. Then, as if from the great source, he felt he heard a voice that
whispered to his heart, not to his ears. And it was the voice of his new
motherland that said,
“Welcome, Hermes, you are here in Vancouver now, go out
there, find your way to do your studies and get your diploma. Your
folks are waiting for you, back in Greece. They look forward to seeing
you back. Your diploma is your goal and nothing less…” were the
words he felt he heard, and the voice wasn’t any other but the voice
of Canada, his temporary motherland, which, like a mother, took
another orphan off the streets and gave him a chance.
Suddenly, the fear he had just felt vanished, and a jolt of enthusiasm
took over his senses. Hermes stood up. His eyes ran around the
space of the large airport hall when his glance met the old woman
whom he had helped in Montreal; she saw him too. At the same
time, a very tall man with a good-looking woman approached…

https://draft2digital.com/book/4172538#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763858