TAROT BY DANTE II–III

TAROT BY DANTE II

The boy holds a white flower

under the white sun in the yellow sky

as if it were cut out, a white flower

of folded skin skimmed from the top of a burning zero.

These moulded numbers, each different

(otherwise I couldn’t have one)

each the entire garden

but in one–

Even More! cried the white dog.

Around the fountain of the sleeping magus

the brooms break and multiply themselves.

II.

As I read over that I heard my future self saying that I appeared confused, because it was a moment of transformation for me. And then the voice was gone. That had addressed Peter? You? To tell of a purple house? In the picture The Fool’s tunic is patterned with poppies or moonflowers. He wears a turban and his other hand holds a black staff over his shoulder, at the end of which is a traveling bag. He is following a song to the edge of a cliff. But he holds a white flower, and the song is a form of sleep that never leaves, a knot, that teaches the future tense of seeing is self, by which we see ourselves in the lasting image. Dressed strangely in the imago, requital of love.

TAROT BY DANTE III

In this new house I wanted to pull a new card so I began sorting the deck on the dining room table until Robert and Charlotte came, and as Robert picked some up The Star fell on the table, and when he turned over his hand which was full of cards there was the Queen of Wands. And those were the only two cards we saw.

The Star has in the middle of the sky a big yellow star of eight points, and around it are eight more stars, white and also of eight points, so the foregrounded figure is not taken by, but is, the count. A naked lady kneels on the earth while her front foot rests upon the water. She pours souls from life into life– from one pitcher the water forms rivers on the earth that lead back to the sea in which she pours her other pitcher. She pours and takes nothing, true nakedness: uncounted herself. A living number that is the count. An ibis sits on top of the tree. This is called chutor, when a thousand armed deity pours water from a vase to feed the hungry ghosts below. On earth. The souls are poured from life to life but some take longer to reach the sea. Mystery of water.

The Queen of Wands looks more like Franz Liszt than I ever did. She wears a golden mantle and sits on a throne whose arms are supported by lions of gold. In one hand she holds a sunflower, imported from the great American plains, and behind her throne we can see the sand, already shifting over the borders of lesser beings. The back of her throne is hammered gold, and shows two lions holding up a sunflower between them. She is what becomes of the mysteries of Mithras. A black cat sits at her feet, giving off sparks. She is not a witch. She holds a wand in bloom, and stands behind the door of the witches meanings, who are wardens. Destroyed together with the bull, they take off their skins to become lions, and from their suffering walk forth. But that is all we know of her, that part laid down at each other’s side, so we can see. And we see, rising to our feet, that her cloak is fastened by a brooch in the shape of a squirrel’s face. Beyond that, at last, we only see what there is to see.