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Frank Corcoran

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HUMBLE HAMBURG DOODLINGS

July 2006

In einer eMail vom 03.07.2006 08:57:45 Westeuropãische Normalzeit schreibt FBCorcoran:

Dear Aleph, Dear -Very Dear Omega,

There was a man in it a long time ago. Eternally hipless, he hymned: ‘‘You always that lazy, Eheye Asher Eheye, never an e-peep from That quarter. Job’s cousinly ‘‘WHY?’’ did try a long time before this my Evening Hymn To Thee, High Shamelessness. Thou at least shalt give a high, shameless indication as to whether I might try again, say tomorrow? Job willed, I intend, You cower, cosmic still. Begob, this is a great game that I am at!’’

The fork (lightning) ran down the livid hay-fork he’d been shouldering all the sultry evening, burrowed down his (now well-roasted) fork, into the patch of hay-field they’d show us kids ever after. I know. I was there. Suppose, just supposing I was that forked. For instance, approach by stealth, my clever little maneen, round-aboutness.

That man hymned again: ‘‘Well, there was this man in the hay-field once, a long time before he came again to write: ‘‘Eternally Hipless Peeper, silent, surly Eheye Asher, all that. Behold my Second Job’s Evening-Hymn To His Heavenly Wink.Hubbell’s stars may sing tetratonically that all’s well, well eternally in their empyrean, high in their high sky. Well, is it?’’

Neither seal-mothers around Skellig Rock nor any rescuing helicopter held that or any clue to ‘‘Why me?’’ Nor fish nor flesh nor high spume from the mystery of the eternal rocks below, not even our own mothers’d have any sane person’s reason to break the cosmic stillness of that one fine day’s haying to reveal this third, bent text from that man in that field with his hay-fork: ‘‘There was a man in a hay-field, right up there, see. A long time in his past that was in it. And forked lightening bisected his hay-fork, split his brain, his very own fork. Happened mighty fast, the poor lips were burned awful. Visionary years later, long retired from hay-making, he took to hymn-writing. Here, I think, is one of his best-known Loved Burned Tunes: ‘Eheye Asher Eheye/ What shalI I get?/ Fast runs my tide/ Even before I’ve died./ Before I ’ve even done/ Slows now my sun./ The son He’d fried,/ His life to him denied./ Who shall tingle-tangle?/ Who decode Heaven’s jangle?/ Untangle skein, then web?/ Make whole my lissom dead?’’’

The fork of lightning was livid. Bisecting, it fulminated down the wet rubber-boots, leaving a persuasive, holy stink. That’s all. ‘‘Begob,’’ joked our cooked hymn-writer, ‘‘This Great Game. Where’s me mouse? Get me me lap-top! Quick!’’

Twilight and his strength fading after that epiphantic, hierophantic, theophonic, theoontic fork-or-be-forked, our hymnster was not stopped, neither was he mocked: ‘‘ Abide with me. Fast fork Your evening might/ Rubber-boots, save me! - Saved my spirits light/ When other helps, my comforters flee/ Help of the helpless, abide with me!

Swift to my close ebbs out this little tide/ Hay-fields grow dim when all around have died./ Change, more change, in all the forks I see/ Through clouded sunshine, abide with me!

I tried my fork; its glorie passed away./ Who like Thyself will fulminate, yet stay?/ Who triumphs still, who’ll rob my grave’s sting?/ What’s then Your pay-off? Which oboulos bring?

I’ll fear no foe with Thee at hand to sing./ What grave victory? Which hands to wring? Tears, have no weight! my fork, no bitterness!/ I’ll worry through, my Thee to bless?’’

The third lightening hit him. Black. No hiss, rubber-oots or smell, forked forker, not a whimper from a dark sky, all the rookeries quiet, dumbfounded. Annihilated his values, burned to a frazzle his mind’s pineal effusions, his hymn-writer’s thrust and push up into the all-quiet-now-again empyrean. In that nano-second as the compressed millions of volts travelled down the left side of the head, through the seeing, yearning, now sizzling ear, down the left shoulder-blade like a Viking blade, further down through the puddings and cleft left haunch and cleft left foot in the now cleft rubber-boot, the man in the field was given a last chance to dream one last dream, his last Burned Hymn. Here is his (now burned) first prose draft: " I’d tried out flying and looping that magical first semester - I’d put the body out horizontal with the others, nose in front, arms flat by your side to minimize all air-resistance, soutanes floating behind us in the tail-stream, go whoosh at high speeds. The quick brandy-quaffing Bretagne night, often we’d a sherry-evening down in further Gijon, then jet quick back against prevailing winds before the Dean of Discipline’d dreamed his first dream. Heavenly! Heavens! The speed of the thing! Air-borne was air-born again! Body rigid as a flying-board high above all earthly woes! Secret, of course. To be caught was to be burned. Near shaves, a few. Plenty of time to craft and scheme and try out a rhythm before landing-time. Composed a few strong, cold ionospheric paeans! Before his life now burned down to a cinder, the rubber-boots too, he’d thought of a last wordy temple, a syllables- sculpture:

‘‘Abide with me./ Fast burns my living coal./ Soon burnt -out/ My living soul./ My tongue blackened/ Very speed slackened/ The poor ICH shattered,/ My hymns battered./

Swift to my close/ Forms now my ash./ My putógaí!/ How now lash/ Can clout me/ Shall touch,/ Re-touch./ Burn,/ Re-burn my lips./ O Thou who forks,/ Where’s now my hips?/ I jetted on high./ That flight was true,/ Hard, selfless, other,/ Perhaps seeking You./ I feel nothing now,/ My flesh its pyre./ No more I’ll try/ high, even higher/ To fuse vermilion/ And hymns, a million/ Times more sheer/ Crafted dear,/ Penned in the sky,/ My pie that didn’t die. / O Heaven’s tangle!/ Who’ll decode this jangle?/ My lonely triangle?/ Every celestial angle?/ The million volts did/ incinerate my Id,/ My mind’s tones./ My yearning moans/ Whiffed this burn,/ Charred self, Turn/ This lightening off./ My hymning off./ Switch down my ecstatic!/ My energy erratic!/ These million sparks I see,/ Where’s they or Thee?/ Abide with me./ Fast fused thes embers’spark/ With cosmic stillness,/ In cosmic dark,/ O Your heat-death,/ My cataclysmic fall,/ O Alphic You, / Accept my sawl!’’

A few phota wandering around the black heath. That was all.




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