Page from the Emerald Tablet
I dream of dust
old, dry, glittering
in a glass animal eye
brimmed with rheumy
flecks of other worlds
fields of forgotten flowers
now dessicated mica
life’s shed substance
abraded on the lathe
cut on the ripsaw
sanded smooth.
I sweep up
my dream dust
with the softest
brush of morning,
mindful of each atomically
weighted speck, carry it
across a tightrope
of my own
cleverly braided skin
teetering, knowing
nothing can fall.
Into the mold it goes,
the crucible over the
flame of loss begins to heat;
the glass tubes
chatter against the
heart’s empty alembic
a hot green boiling
filtering this spagyric mist.
Past present future
uncombine and melt,
float to ash
sulphur salt and mercury
fire earth and water;
take this simple marigold
make it honeysuckle and amber,
labdanum and pearl.
Turn its sallow safron to softened gold
its sharp viridian to the colorless serum
that weeps from a closing wound. Oh,
flush these bitter salts to fragrant musk
and back again to an animate silver,
the radiant water of life.
December 2011
Process Notes: (Almost as long as the poem!) from wikipedia: “The Emerald Tablet, also known as Smaragdine Table, Tabula Smaragdina, or The Secret of Hermes, is a text purporting to reveal the secret of the primordial substance and its transmutations. It claims to be the work of Hermes Trismegistus ("Hermes the Thrice-Greatest"), a legendary Hellenistic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth…” It contains the famously ambiguous phrase, in Isaac Newton’s translation:“That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.”
~The word spagyric is derived from the Greek Spao, to tear open, + ageiro, to collect and can be synonymous with alchemy, but in more modern usage refers to an herbal medicine distilled from calcined ashes.
~In the language of flowers, the marigold symbolizes grief and loss, honeysuckle, devoted affection and love.
~Labdanum is a product of the rockrose used in the perfume industry to simulate the odor of musk found in ambergris, which in turn is used to simulate the fragrance of burned amber.
~‘Aqua vitea,’ the water of life, was a strong concoction of alcoholic spirits often prepared by alchemists in their experiments in distillation, but also had a spiritual significance as the redemptive waters of baptism and faith.
