Fusiturricula Lullaby (by Gjertrud Schnackenberg)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Heavenly Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from the winning volume on the 2011 International Shortlist).

1A visit to the shores of lullabies,

2So far from here, so very far away,

3A floor of sand, it doesn’t matter where,

4And overhead a water-ceiling sways;

5A shell is summoned to materialize--

6The holy life, a spiral, hushed and pure,

7Complete unto itself--a spiral shell

8Is summoned from a substratum of wonder:

9And all is well now, hush now, close your eyes,

10Around a primal, ragged nucleus

11Accumulated layers crystallize:

12An embryonic seashell pulls itself

13Through being-portals intricately placed

14In seas of non-existence; caught; self-caught

15In nets of pasts-and-futures synchronized

16In present-nows: the Many and the One--

17It doesn’t matter, really, how it’s done,

18The how of it; the why; it doesn’t know

19How atoms in the ancient paradox

20Can pass from unseen particles to seen

21Or why a chain of atoms interlocks

22And manifests in blurry pink and green;

23It doesn’t matter really, where it’s from--

24Descended from an ancient nacre-dream,

25Self-fabricating through genetic codes

26Without an archetype to utilize,

27As if the wondrous deed it’s summoned to

28Were all that ever mattered, seam by seam

29Volutions from a nacre-nucleus

30Of violet iridescence: being-whorl

31With everything in play, and all in play,

32And all is well now, hush now, close your eyes--

33A shell appears--Fusiturricula--

34And uses its inherited clairvoyance

35To plot a logarithmic spiral round

36An axis of rotation evermore

37And evermore-forevermore unseen,

38Through pre-existing numbers, one-two-three,

39And shyly browsing algae as it ponders

40Angular momentum; symmetry;

41Successively self-generating curves

42Projecting helixes, the axis fixed;

43Then tilting on its axis; torsion-tilt;

44Compulsion and desire mixed with toil;

45An overhanging cusp becomes a spire

46By pushing up and forward on the coil:

47Irregularly oscillating whorls

48Are flaring out in ruffled calcium;

49Pure rhythmia;

50 Slow motion suturings,

51With no one there to sew them, perforate

52The apex, boring through: a water-vent,

53Inhalant and exhalant;

54 knotted threads

55Are pulled to fasten equidistant nodes

56Along a helix-rim;

57 a clockwise twist

58And twirling stripes through interrupted bands

59Are darkly lit, through brilliant whites and creams,

60Like lightning bolts in violet-tinted brown

61That zigzag in slow motion, down and down

62From node to node to node; a lightning dream

63Descending ridge by ridge:

64 Sensation: Fizz--

65Salt water circulating past and through

66The ruffled aperture – existence is

67A taste of ocean water on a tongue--

68And then Fusiturricula, intent

69On browsing, sets in motion moving veils

70Of sands that long ago and far away

71Were magma rocks with twisted veins of ore

72From which the sand was ground and empty shells

73Like lightning-stricken spires, surface-fused

74With used-up bolts of lightning, lie around--

75Nacreous, in almost-silence, hushed

76Among the lulling engines of the sea--

77But hush now, close your eyes now, all is well:

78Underwater ink enlarges, blurs,

79In violet-brown across a spiral shell:

80A record of volution fills a scroll

81With wondrous deeds and great accomplishings,

82A record of a summons not refused:

83Of logarithms visible and fused

84With thoughts in rows of spiral beaded cords

85As X goes to infinity; impearled;

86Violet; and inviolate; self-endowed;

87Itself the writing, and itself the scroll

88The writing’s written on; and self-aware

89With never-ever-to-be-verbalized

90Awareness of awareness of awareness,

91Instantiation; all in play; a sole

92Immaculate example of itself;

93And in the aperture, the remnants of

94A Heavenly Question, lightly brushed across

95With opalescent ore of consciousness:

96The universe is where? Is hanging where?

97And overhead a water-ceiling sways,

98And all is done in play; in heaven above

99The ceiling of the sea is drawing streams

100Of shining answers through its question-sieves:

101Is matter the enchanted lathe? Or mind?

102But which one spirals from the other’s blade?

103And all the waves at the beginning-end

104Of all that comes and goes and takes and gives

105And all in play and all that dies and lives

106Materializes; dematerializes;

107Five, and four, and three, and two, and one--

108And all is brought to being; all effaced;

109And all that could be done has now been done;

110And all is well and hush now, never mind;

111Fusiturricula slowly withdraws

112Its being; self-enfolding; self-enclosed;

113And all it toiled for turns out to be

114No matter--nothing much--nothing at all--

115Merely the realm where "being" was confined

116And what was evanescent evanesced;

117And then a spiral shell washed by a wave

118Is carried forward in a foaming crest;

119But that was long ago and far away,

120It doesn’t matter, really, when it was,

121And close your eyes now, hush now, all is well,

122And far from here, so very far away,

123A wave sets down an empty spiral shell

124And draws away, it doesn’t matter where,

125Among the other waves that come and go,

126And other waves appear and disappear

127And hush now, all is well, and far from here

128All heaven and earth appear; and evanesce;

129A self-engulfing spiral, ridge by ridge,

130That disappears in waves that come and go

131And all that could be done is done; and seven;

132And six; and five; and four; and three; and two;

133And one … and disappearing … far away …

134Enraptured to the end, and all in play,

135A spiral slowly turns itself in heaven.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011