And to Ecstasy

By Marjon Mossammaparastan

And to Ecstasy is a poetic journey through space and time, projecting a transcendental element of reality. In her exquisite poems, Marjon Mossammaparast explores the physical experience of being human, bound to four dimensions, matching it with the belief we are also spirit beings. At its core, this work contemplates the desire to move beyond the limitations of bodies, into an expanded metaphysical notion of identity, carried by intuition.
Mossammaparast constructs the collection, arranged in three parts, from displaced fragments and mere glimpses. Through the call and response of landscapes and countries, there is the constancy and insistence of reconciliation. This is the language of the exile: not just geographically, but a spirit constrained by the physical seeking return home.
Where all that is vibrant vibrates
beyond the sticking place of names
to the borderfields where signs change their value:
Split a piece of wood, and I am there;
lift up the stone, and you will find me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781743822289

Marjon Mossammaparastan

Marjon Mossammaparast is a secondary school teacher of English residing in Melbourne. She has had her poetry published in many Australian literary journals, including The Weekend Australian Review, Southerly, Island, Mascara Literary Review, Contrappasso, Australian Poetry Journal, as well as international publications Antipodes (US) and The Moth Magazine (UK). Her poem, 'The Spanish Revelation', was longlisted for the Ron Pretty Poetry Prize in 2016. Her first book,That Sight (Cordite Books, 2018) was awarded the Mary Gilmore Award.

Book preview

[There]

Prologue

And all we need is to cross that Gulf

where gold is the thing with feathers

diamonds make the sky.

I am orphaned of my countries

turning north to a city that burned

forty years ago

turning south to a land fanned by hellfire

chokeholds of fuel, fuel, fuel

Transiting Doha, December 2019

Again the hills have pinned me at the armpits,

a claustrophobia of steep rise.

parallel earth with her grazing animals,

I remember distant brown cattle along the Tambo,

that probably have burnt out now.

Heath and moorland bisect the Lakes on the way to Penrith

but it’s the apocalypse in my thoughts,

charred koala tufts that break this green relief,

a northern season still in equilibrium.

It’s cinders of kangaroo in my eye, embers

shaking paradise out of trees.

Forget even the homes on fire, that may be rebuilt:

it’s the Open of Hand and the Destroyer on the doorstep,

in the backyard of homespun refugees.

It’s earth that has been ground,

speaking the language of unheeded waterfalls, river runs,

on once-verdant skin of the long-drawn back.

Penrith to Carlisle

The maker of the bow, the maker of the parrying shield.

The maker of the arrow echoing dead through cambium.

Not Unknown or Anonymous: made and held in the hand

across a morning.

Accompanied by hissing in the grass.

Man imbibing time. Time imbibing man. Both paring down,

dipped once in the honey pot.

Once Known etches hardwood code, signifier absent as Woi Wurrung.

Now arranged in dim midden, Once Known lies among