Note for Note (Another Pentateuch): Book 1: Plough

By Marcus M Cornelius

In this daring exploration of primeval consciousness Marcus Cornelius has seemingly managed to convey the unknowable. In an achievement of literary genius he has given extraordinary expression to an inchoate time before history. The inspired prose flows with a richly dense imagery containing astonishingly eloquent passages that are demanding and uncompromising.

One finishes Plough enlightened and changed, led to the deepest reaches of the psyche, to places in the self that are almost beyond the capacities of language. There is not a word out of place.

A remarkable tour-de-force that will forever change how you read a book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 14, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595632794

Marcus M Cornelius

MARCUS M. CORNELIUS: graduated from Exeter University (UK), was awarded a Creative Writing Scholarship at Syracuse University (USA), and for seven years was a professor at Hokuriku University (Japan). His other occupations have included many years as a bookseller, and some time as a singer - music has always been the most reliable of friends - and freelance writing and arts management in Australia. i-Universe published his first book, Out of Nowhere - the musical life of Warne Marsh, as well as the first three of eight completed volumes of Sopolyrimu (songs, poems and lyrics for music) and the first four books of the five-part Note for Note (Another Pentateuch). Marcus is now working on a prose work to be called D-tours, the last hundred years, and a book of poetic prose to be called keepers takers. He now lives in Triana (Sevilla) where he feels very much at home. Further details of his work and responses to it can be found at www.marcusmcornelius.net.

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NOTE FOR NOTE

(ANOTHER PENTATEUCH)

BOOK I: PLOUGH

Marcus M. Cornelius

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

NOTE FOR NOTE (Another Pentateuch) BOOK 1: PLOUGH

Copyright © 2008 by Marcus Cornelius

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-0-595-53218-6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-63279-4 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Note to the reader

Early Afternoon, April 8th

Note to the reader

While this book is written in what is called prose, in a form that is called a novel, it is written to be read aloud. The spoken language has a very different quality than language read silently. It is not written to be read quickly (whether read silently or aloud); it is written to be savoured, slowly, perhaps just a few pages at a time.

We are these days in too much of a rush and rarely allow ourselves the necessary time and space for feelings to grow and modulate without pressure. This book requires such time and space.

It could be read if not as a prayer then at least patiently. It requires some effort, and will reward repetition, asking to be read for the pure pleasure of the sound of the language and the meaning of the feelings voiced by the language. It speaks with a voice wrestling with language and perception, to shape them and inform them with the feelings of one seeking coherence amidst incoherence, and fulfilment of the human self in a context that suppresses or oppresses or resists and challenges that human self.

Marcus M. Cornelius

June 2008

*****************

Early Afternoon, April 8th

*****************

....In the shadow of the gate, blind he sat, singing....

.... because I am man I am the man I am woman....

clear the throat and pronounce the oracle propitious, voice husky wavers once clear as a bell the sight of her beheld not since yet in mind’s eye she approaches near to a discernible form though palpably a specter dissembling clear as for ever and even today resistance have I none

as it was then as it is now at the distant reaches of this sprung river of a life attending obscurity, a plaything of celestial whim and consequence from which neither escape nor hiding

see there she approaches undeniably and I must about with purpose lest I am charmed

Not yet as close to heaven as a man may aspire, this acre as far as lungs and devotion and sustenance would allow, a precious distance put between this modest altitude and the setting of former episodes without which even this were a predicament for poets to paint and draw out admiring sighs of furtive envy and fetching glances.

Then such a withering look she was or was it she who withered and my heart too while more pressing in upon me and acute the muffled bite of pain as the nails of my custodian’s zealous hands dig and nip into the yielding flesh of both my arms to arrest each hope and all fondness there and then. No chance of flight or fight, or wish for it, immobilized life enthralled and she excised and mute with not a cut

There, charmed. Must about my purpose lest the spirit prevails.

From this commanding altitude the aspect does delight the eye, a naive distraction I indulge and take the crisp air in through nostrils of the animal I am scenting fresh warnings on a warm and shifting breeze, head cocked, stock still, far casting my banished gaze along a crumpled mass of peaks reaching away to domains raised up to mirror heaven, it is taught so, and, comforted, dispel the vision and its cruelty, restore myself to this jumble of present rituals and tasks postponed. Must about.

Would about yet again my anxious intentions are scraps of life’s detritus flicked aside by nature’s blasts as this fierce power grips me once again, stops me short, dead in my gawky tracks, breath constricted in this scrawny neck, paralysis of will invades me all as icy waters did when suddenly my riper body was immersed within the cascading wintery spout of water that issued from that rock high overhead and does even now for I can hear it still, a hush of solace, as this wind blows stronger as it comes the closer into me, ominous and omnipotent over whatever manner of man I am, arrested in so many ways before this, and a tiny spot of warmth at the center of this chest of me of mine and the fearsome though familiar gust will have its way with the woman I am before it and flood these lungs and, tender, expanding, ease this white head back a trifle on its perch and sedate my terror and push out a humming monotone which never falters, never has yet, in its ascending volume an unquavering boom and here I once sturdy tree boughs bend before the blast incessant and insistent on no let or hindrance as I am overcome again and reverberate in every limb and pore, a bell struck, vibrations fluttering fluctuate now more now less in depth of intensity and what I would or what I must succumbs perforce. Eyes see nothing but pure darkness. Nerves feel nothing but wondrous maternal warmth of one sustained and saturating tone.

many such like these moments passing pausing on all paws doglike man panting for rest as scarce as bog rhubarb or the warning wraith

hoist up from crouch to arms heaved high with an alacrity beyond my white and flowing beards, knotty joints crack and stretch as like I was about to fly to that other world to which my finger tips seem joined and would hasten on towards leaving the best of what remains of me behind them

splayed upright on a non-existent rack, illumined by the soft and prying eye of one more morning’s sun flowering in fresh ascent above the turrets of these fortress peaks, resistance is there none, a dew drop on a lotus leaf, faint spot of life on nature’s fabric, a stain upon a holy robe, this I, a blot upon the face of heaven’s earth, disclosed

in form all clarity, in essence unaccounted for, lost without trace, assumed dead many years back along the path from which nature’s profusion has long since rubbed out the flimsy evidence of my transit, bereft, the sport of spirits local and unconfined to place, the single sound swells in me, pervades and permeates all of the space I am and issues constant as if I was inhaling it from out the ground on which I stand were I the very wind itself issuing free and boundless in a single O from this old mouth but every part of me contributing it echoes down within, round and pure, a sound filling the corridors and chambers of a deep and ancient cave to a capacity that may rip and rupture the earth, on and on and on and on through time was she stands there in calling distance within reach thoughts of that future blown away in this wind I am that man standing here limbs aloft not supported but pulled up a tree uprooted standing rooted about to rupture from the force of it or lose my essence in this world trembling gust expelling whatever is left of me to the last gasp of sound wrenched out of me clear as a bell

for all the world I am a world convulsing to disgorge its contents in a spout of elemental wholeness dissolve into energy and return again within the womb of She or Him the progenitor of this grand design of blessed domains mirroring heaven under Heaven’s watch and my paltry lifelone lifelong tasks all incomplete taken with it like a snowflake in an ember, not in fury but elysium borne to the plains of paradise where we shall meet where shall we meet again if not there to be reflections joined once more to their original imprint and recline at our leisure in perpetual union, motionless moved infinitely close and infinitely beyond division of differences, needing neither time nor sight nor sensation nor memory nor knowledge, cupped as we shall be within the luscious warmth of

aahmaah aahmaah

how I do confuse myself with what is round about staring into the prying sun to see within it me feeling the power of all beginnings without a plucked hair’s shred of any kind of proof which had I that much no more so

but proof that man I am still as the fit abandons me, discards me like a snake its skin and I crumple to the deck a sail brought down by a storm snapped mast, one breath close to glory and in the next toppled from my horse a fallen warrior in this ruthless conflict that claims all before it and on all fours myself dog-like, dogged by the ghost-like form come harbinger to be the witness of my outlasting days

what wraith goes there skipping away behind the sun’s imperious circumference and there it goes bounding from peak to peak and vanishes within the holy mount itself to laugh along the corridors beneath the mountain’s flanks frail as a winter breath yet vast so vast its form not visible all at once or behind it or all around it no sense of size or actual thereness, no means of verifying or dispelling or discounting, yet small too if it wills to be small enough and so nimbly light upon my once imposing shoulders to sneak thief-like within my ear and taunt and claim me

Stay your ground or life is short the herald cried, the sharp command arriving like an arrow piercing the soil before my bare feet and then seize him but fear had already done that and I could no more than stand and stare into the glint of her eye

who now comes near, a barely whispered thought not daring to set the lips in motion and expel so bold a challenge as I have heard, who, for suspicion is there that some stray hobgoblin has me by the ears again, unseen yet seeing, no sound yet I understand it importunes me to forbear and so I will collect myself and apply my little strength

would about would the unseen mischief makers let me

yes at least there are things to do that will outlast me not least my very frame, or do I survive it, only a question, yes, there are beads to recite and the temple still to furbish and names to repeat of she or he we know not I know and grains to measure out days by, a bowl for each, my seamless garment wash and mend, impurities to rinse within the numbing waters of the spring, sandals to sew and delusions to escape at length and carve such wisdom as I have obtained upon