Like Piero della Francesca’s famous sign-conquering subject
in Arezzo I dreamed a dream
that I was a torch-bearing Persian over man,
a prophet of the Truth and an Undiluted Star.
I made howling libations of milk and honey to the Erinyes
and conversed with Zeus the Wise Counselor
and ox-wrangling Hermes of the Oath and Treaty.
My books of holy songs and Dionysiac dithyrambs
I passed on to that vagabond Thracian
when he and his well-armed Minyan companions came to the sea of Azov.
Orpheus of the tri-color cloak carried unspeakable mysteries back to Mousaios
and Kadmeian Mousaios passed the tokens and symbola on to Eumolpos of Eleusis
and Melampos who knows the language of the birds and beasts.
Kekropian Onomokritos stitched together the holy account
and Pherekydes added Cretica and considerable mythic additions,
which he transmitted to Pythagoras the number-obsessed Samian sage
– and when Empedokles who walks in smoke was expelled from the community of silent listeners
he traveled abroad, openly proclaiming what until that time had only been shown to the few
worthy to open the door and cross the mystic threshold.
Such was my dream
and when I awoke I found myself decidedly more German than when I’d fallen
asleep, holidaying in the north of Italy, the former Augusta Taurinorum.
I’m hungry and decide to wander down
into the streets in search of a sausage-seller
and perhaps some entertaining charlatan, puppeteer or rope-straddler
to while away an afternoon watching.
Fate’s heaviness hangs over this moment: finitum non capax infiniti.
I can almost hear the clomping hooves of the Hunter’s dark steed approaching
but I shall manfully shake it off and embrace what awaits me on the other side.
And Cosima had the audacity to call me a sentimental syphilitic!
One day the world shall witness my dream manifest
and fall down in their multitudes.
My coat, my mustache wax, my cane and top hat
– now I’m all set to confront destiny
and taste all the world contains.
World, I am curious and headless and I have a labyrinth in my belly!
World, are you ready to be known?
My Ariadne, I am coming for you.
