Galaxies (fragment)

passtimes and killtimes i wendaway darkling for mindamends through this minimeandering instant of minutes instancing somebody and instanced beyond to telltale a scheherazade thistory my fairy how many fates are there in each nullitywee thread discard nines leaving nought scheherazade scheherazade a nightstory a thousandtimes overtold then the sonnyboy soulumbering into this nightdark florest came and a drago sevensnouted dragoned his swellhand into a fernavid and cavernish grottohollow my boy wants knowhow to unpick this threadform how to sideslip this cavern only the dragon all dragoning knows the key to this festival and now the dragon at his siesta is asnoozing then when myboy began his ringawinnow round a rosaromanorum gesta in the bosk he stumbled on the sleepy beauty bellabella tell me a life thistory but sleppy beauty in the silence sleepeyed on and nobody told him if there was any forthgoes myboy to a kingdom interlunar where the dead king was up and the upwas king is dead but nobody told him the sidedlip thistory myboy is only so posed now to suffer the firetrial to ford the bosk and florrage through the river for the headbone that is there in the well’s depth in the depth of pickatomb and catafalque in this well is a caput mortuum myboy doth to godbye suffer a seachange in the caboose but the head does not tell the thistory of its well if there was or if there was not if it was a girl or a boy a swan of anothertime appears to him in a dream and to the swan country takes him swirling in a bird flock myboy asks the swan about the thistory he sings his swan song and swanenchants himself and now is Mrs Sun in the One-Who-Waits and her golden rain illuminates myboy she is in her danaë tower incubus princess crowned by a shower tell me your pluvial tale how it was the gold in a torrent of dust made spawn your treasure but auriconfused the princess of gold clammed up and for to find the taletale myboy wend on his way from post to pillar from muse to medusa all dot in white and white in dot scheherazade my fairy this is all going nowhere princess my princess what a thistory of maze-understanding how many more veins and volutes and volutions find me a verysimil that will make of speech the verity and transform in fate a fairy this sybilline simil of destiny’s mercurianimal serpentine malefemale and in speech transforms the fate find me this wickedworking blindworm fishword where the song sings the tale of the song where the why does not tell how where the egg searches in the egg for its retribrilliant ovality where the fire became water the water a body of vapor where the nude unmakes its not and the nut snows itself with nothing a fairy tells a tale that is her deathsong but nobody not even a tiny one can know of this fairy her tale where it begins indeed where it finishes there is no soul to face for to be told it she is all enchanted water go boy my tinyboy to unimagine this fatamorgana is fatiguising a malefelonious sentence you dig miles downunder and come out in the well where you dig you work three hundred for three cent you change diamonds myriads for a crude coal who knows if this coal might be diamondiferous dust the mother-of-diamonds morgana of the charmstones and the boy went and the legend does not tell of his ongoing if he came back or did not if from his going one does not come back the legend pokerface does not say only unsays only keeps going around and around and around

Translation by Norman Potter and Christopher Middleton