‘Coffee’s getting cold,’ she called from the next room, not that it was, it was half a second in the cup.
‘So, how’s it going?’ she asked when he appeared with “it’s not going well” in the hunch of his shoulders and in his gait.
‘Well, it’s not going to work.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
‘I’ve got one stanza done.’ He waved a piece of A4 paper.
‘Strong ropes constrain his tossing head,
the great black bull is harshly lead
by small cruel men whose hearts are dead
towards a cave of deepest dread
to kill him far from sight
of those from whom they stole
something something something roll
Something toll.
This evil fills the night.'
‘It’s a weird rhyme scheme – aaaabcccb. Not that I can’t do it. It’s just that the deadline is getting closer a lot faster than satisfaction or … quantity. I’ve got one other line: “His eyelashes are made of flame” – for later on when he has become God. All cattle have awesome eyelashes and the Tibetan pictures all show Yamantaka with flames coming out of his eyes. But there’s too much to get done – the details of the thieves killing the bull in the cave. I heard a woman on the BBC who had watched two bullocks being killed – there was a huge amount of blood and thrashing of legs and so on. And then their finding of the holy man in the back of the cave. Ian Baker describes him as begging for his life but surely he would just calmly request not to be killed because he had further spiritual practice to undertake and then accept with equanimity when they decapitate him? And then the moment when the dead saint gets up and seizes the bull’s bloody head and puts it on his own shoulders – that could be a page or two in itself. Then his raging across the universe, wrathful and furious. It’s interesting from a Christian interpretation – kind of the resurrection combined with the driving out of the money changers: God with a whip, savagely attacking evil. Money changers, those who oppress widows and orphans and the poor – or immigrants. Vice-presidents who instigate wars of aggression, reality television personalities who grab ’em by the pussy … National-Party voters. Christopher Logue in his Iliad put it “those who bear false witness … and judges divorced from justice by contempt of those they judge, plus the accomplices of both, perched on their fences”. I see him blazing across the galaxy like a flaming comet, though I guess astronomically that’s not possible – things only burn in the atmosphere, I guess. See, there are too many things to apply one’s thought to.’
‘Drink your coffee or it will be getting cold.’
They both gazed out the window.
‘I like the eyelash bit though,’ she added.
Barnaby McBryde
‘So, how’s it going?’ she asked when he appeared with “it’s not going well” in the hunch of his shoulders and in his gait.
‘Well, it’s not going to work.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
‘I’ve got one stanza done.’ He waved a piece of A4 paper.
‘Strong ropes constrain his tossing head,
the great black bull is harshly lead
by small cruel men whose hearts are dead
towards a cave of deepest dread
to kill him far from sight
of those from whom they stole
something something something roll
Something toll.
This evil fills the night.'
‘It’s a weird rhyme scheme – aaaabcccb. Not that I can’t do it. It’s just that the deadline is getting closer a lot faster than satisfaction or … quantity. I’ve got one other line: “His eyelashes are made of flame” – for later on when he has become God. All cattle have awesome eyelashes and the Tibetan pictures all show Yamantaka with flames coming out of his eyes. But there’s too much to get done – the details of the thieves killing the bull in the cave. I heard a woman on the BBC who had watched two bullocks being killed – there was a huge amount of blood and thrashing of legs and so on. And then their finding of the holy man in the back of the cave. Ian Baker describes him as begging for his life but surely he would just calmly request not to be killed because he had further spiritual practice to undertake and then accept with equanimity when they decapitate him? And then the moment when the dead saint gets up and seizes the bull’s bloody head and puts it on his own shoulders – that could be a page or two in itself. Then his raging across the universe, wrathful and furious. It’s interesting from a Christian interpretation – kind of the resurrection combined with the driving out of the money changers: God with a whip, savagely attacking evil. Money changers, those who oppress widows and orphans and the poor – or immigrants. Vice-presidents who instigate wars of aggression, reality television personalities who grab ’em by the pussy … National-Party voters. Christopher Logue in his Iliad put it “those who bear false witness … and judges divorced from justice by contempt of those they judge, plus the accomplices of both, perched on their fences”. I see him blazing across the galaxy like a flaming comet, though I guess astronomically that’s not possible – things only burn in the atmosphere, I guess. See, there are too many things to apply one’s thought to.’
‘Drink your coffee or it will be getting cold.’
They both gazed out the window.
‘I like the eyelash bit though,’ she added.
Barnaby McBryde
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