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grind-the-rust — I am Forever with Me

Published: 2011-06-18 12:27:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 1256; Favourites: 38; Downloads: 19
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Description This was drawn soon after re-reading Mervyn Peake's "I am forver with me" for the umpteenth time ... The figures are the the "the ghost man" and "the man of startling armour" from the poem...
...carrying two contradictory vivid realities in one flesh is strange...

(full view, if you please)

Here is the poem, in full - I had to type it up as I couldn't find it online.

I am forever with me; I am always
Companion to the ghost-man whom I nurture.
Down the long streets of midnight I am with me,
In summer arbours we are bound together.
Drifting through starlight on a bruise-blue harbour,
Or wounded raw with the bright stones of winter,
There I am with me, haunting me forever,
My ghost-man and my lover

I am forever with me: throat nor finger
Have our strange nearness; nor the hammers beating
At the rich foundry of the heart are closer,
Nor breath for all its surge, nor the lips meeting.
The two familiar hands, the cold twin eyes,
And the fantastic ribs, all foreign structure.
The brow's portentious bone and the skull's laughter.
Even the sighs
that shake us, shake a mould of alien nature.

Alone, we haunt alone, this temporal pillar:
This doomed, this transient flesh, these chemicals
Of pallid colour.

We are alone, the incompatibles
Who love, and hate, foster and fear each other.
The ghost man and the man of startling armour.
The Gabriel-headed scorner
White like light!
And I
The plunger.

Arises in me now the pilferer
Of hollow goods, the sprig and the swashbuckler.
I find in me the boy of shoddy glamour
And violent laughter.
The penny pirate and his cheap adventure...
Stars! and the cocky feather!

Sudden, I rise
And rip away his cloak of crimson paper;
Smashing his wooden sword, his tinsel visor
I pluck the gaudy marbles from his eyes -
When lo! there is another
Where he had been, white Gabriel the Scorner.

No plaster cast, no imitation figure
Is he, nor replica
Of some snow-muscled marble.
He is the one eternal
And terrible original.
For a lit moment flares the miracle
In the clay prison -
In me the modren angel has arisen.

Alive, the million million, and the dead
Breathe from the furrow and the wooden table:
Gulped with the wine, broken with bread,
Arising through the green sheets of the stubble.
In fruit, in flower, springing invisible
The phantom dead who knew the double owner,
The ghost-man, and the fellow
Of obvious colour.

One of a million million, I. The sons
Of our sons' sons and all teh unborn people.
For each the autumn grief and the spring bubble;
For each the eyelash and the vein of purple,

For everyone, the double man: the torture.
The struggle and teh grim, perpetual laughter.
For everyone his Gabriel and the Mocker,
The stillness, and the fountain, and the Master.
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Comments: 7

Cradlesin [2011-11-04 17:15:59 +0000 UTC]

This is just beautiful, really! So much to be seen here, I keep looking it over and over again, and discovering more details that I absolutely love. Wonderful.

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Pramin [2011-10-03 09:24:56 +0000 UTC]

Awesome..

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ArchangelLupus [2011-06-18 20:47:02 +0000 UTC]

This is absolutely stunning. It's so visceral and spiritual. I love how expressive it is and the poem is also beautiful.

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grind-the-rust In reply to ArchangelLupus [2011-06-19 03:05:36 +0000 UTC]

*smiles* thanks for your kind words. I guess I've been keepind the drawings petty raw lately... Think it's for the best for now...

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ArchangelLupus In reply to grind-the-rust [2011-06-19 17:40:54 +0000 UTC]

Raw is good. It really strips down an idea to it's bare bones and has a stronger sense of truth.

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CharmQuark [2011-06-18 15:27:59 +0000 UTC]

This is gorgeous. So much energy and movement in those lines, and that white is so striking...

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grind-the-rust In reply to CharmQuark [2011-06-19 03:03:18 +0000 UTC]

cheers! I've moved towards doing much looser drawings lately, it seems to prevent me from overworking the pictures. And yes, I'm in love with white paint-pens lately - it's just so luminous against the paper.
thanks for the kind words.

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