Stockings hang from the shower rod over our antique tub, as the girls slide
into hot water and fall to flesh. Im reading a sensual little volume of cabalistic
sonnets Kuhlmanns The Lily Rose[i] -- a pamphlet really and the room fills with candle-scented steam as the north
wind escapes the lips of our stuttering martyr:
One, air, fire; named both far and wide,
Three, nine, ground; nearly avoid the tide!
Everything changes, Everything loves,
Everything seems to hate:
Who will think it follows from this,
That humans, with wisdom, must mate?
Thalia blows suds from her wrist, then gently kisses Rosamunde, as I invoke
the madness of his disorderly abyss: his frost, his fog, his fire and wind, his
firebrands, and his straw filled kiln. What golden stag slipped in mud beneath
a smoky moon, what desolate lake? We search for God in the lining of a
coffin, in kisses and quarrels, in wine and meat, hate and deceit, and his incessant sevens and nines: Basilisks gnaw there, he says, spinning the wheel of language.
My voice moves through the meter, urging them to love in the cool vapors. Whispered
names betwixt, drive the poems to crescendo
When the water drains, I caress them into catlike contentment with a terry
cloth towel, drying legs, and daubing breasts and we lie in bed, scotch sharp on Thalias lips, Roses sweet with Chianti, three
bodies short of breath
We start together, but then Thalia whispers that she will always be glad we
had this union, twisting cool sheets and coming from so far away that we lift the bed and drop it and when our cries die,
we find ourselves sideways with feet against a window except for Rosalyn, who is sitting on the edge of the mattress, wrapped
in a blanket.
Afterwards, Thalia rinses the numbing non-oxynol from her tongue, and Rosamunde
dresses to leave.
Where? I ask. Why?
Because she is confused...
[i]
AKA: Quirin Kuhlmann's (b. Breslau 1651- d. Moscow 1689) Neubegeisterter Böhme (Boehm Newly
Inspired) Leiden 1674. English translation quoted in my text by Russ Yoder. After traveling most of Europe, the Rosicrucian Chiliast Ekstatiker Kuhlmann
was burned to death in Moscow in a fire fueled (like Bruno) by the pages of his own works, after months of torture. He may be the last person in history burned at the stake for heresy, though some were burned for other
crimes after this date and others were hanged, etc. for witchcraft. Founder of
the Jesuelite Brotherhood and prolific poet. Certain aspects of Kuhlmanns text can only be understood in the original
language, due to his cryptic use of embedded meanings in the sounds and patterns of the letters themselves. Gottfried Arnold has a chapter on Kuhlmann in his Ketzergeschichte.
