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Transcription of Manuscript 9

 Transcription of Manuscript 9

This transcription may be read with the image of the manuscripts opened in a separate browser window. Since it will be apparent from the images, no attempt is made to make the transcription correspond exactly to the spacing of the manuscripts.  

Words that seem indecipherable are indicated by [word] or [words]. A conjectural reading of a word is indicated by, for example: swan[?]. This transcription should be considered a rough draft. Many words that seem indecipherable to one reader will be clear to another. Pease suggest your own corrections to Timothy Materer.

Note near Top

Monday

Jerl

D's book in

Public Library

Titles for A Scattering of Salts

Novelette 3

Cosmo

Upward Look

Four Columns in Left Margin, Left to Right

The young minotaur

Leans Sits in evening glow

Against the portico

By which we enter the maze

 

 He has taken off

            monstrous

The terrible bull-head          of the bull

            His eyes [word] & glaze

Sun turned his black locks red

                                    turn[?] blood

He's calm & [words] for blood[?]

As a drawing by

            Cocteau

selfless

 

 His robe parts to show

            the flank

The thigh like noble cactus

            small               limb

Dense with soft black gold spines

                                    Curled [word]

[word] weapons incapable

                        of doing harm.

                                                            looks at us

                                                                        tenderly

We have come from Athens

As tribute their  This year's tribute — to

                                    Crete

Elderly women grandmothers & women

For him to  For him

            He means to devour

            All that we've

                        felt & seen

            In our/ long lives,

            All that we know; All that we've seen & said

                                    meat

            And Mind's heart & heart's blood —

                                                Take me, I pray

— one by one we

                        advance

            like figures in a

                        frieze

            But then

            He rises, says come in 

Bottom Half

 his robe has opened to expose the thigh

            the hard

Soft  ciliate spines of a [word] cactus          hydrant

Sits in the sunny portal of the                     thick

            dreaming       maze

 

It is to him,

            each spring,

The young minotaur to whom

Ten elders, men & women, are sent each year

As tribute.  He is beautiful as a

                                    Cretean drawing;

A beast?  Does he really mean to devour them.

He looks at them so lovingly. He wants      

            not them       

To eat what they know, what they've

                                                felt & seen

In the course of their long lives.

But there is no way.

He <still> lives in a world before the stoa

The give & take of master & pupil.

A few more years & he will ask the

                                    [word] last[?] poet

[words]

If he was thinking of Donne when he

                                                wrote that line —

                                             

                                    Sept  22

                                  middle of night