Something Awful and Beautiful Is Coming
︎︎︎ C. Sandbatch
︎ Nov 17, 2025
Op. VI — Cantata in G Minor
I. To My Bishop
(For Marguerite Porete)
His mitre, his style.
My habit: an open vein.
They all said:
I blasphemed.
I say I scried
the breath of God
with thighs unsighed.
What heresy
is this?
II. Tidy
As one travels
inward, through the mind,
four winds gather,
stroking seams of sandy hills.
Is it not conquest,
drinking the small surge
of touch imaginal?
Here, at one thigh’s shadow?
Towards there
my thoughts incline.
III. The Daylight Moon
On accident, perhaps, by chance,
this shiny ore struck
against the sky’s blue velvet lining.
You loiter, wan diorama, fortune
strained but no longer hiding.
An afterthought
to evening’s dress,
wandering noonward,
unresolved,
a question
left unpressed,
a riddle
none have solved.
What calls you forth to lunchbell chimes?
Is it hunger, for stars, for dreams?
These shadows swung at awkward time,
or a feast of uncurtained beams?
Does not your soft intrusion prove
our “conquest” is
but cunning delay,
a pause,
an unremembered foray,
from a throwaway scene
in some forgetling play?
IV. Speak, Roman
(Fragments from Valerius Aedit(i)us)
Why do you carry a torch, Phileros? We will not need it.
Like this we’ll go, enough flame in my chest already.
That flame, the wild rush of wind from Heaven,
breaking, bending, sudden calm,
the tempest dampens but cannot drown.
When I try to tell you, Pamphila, the trouble of my heart,
Whatever I want
to ask
of you,
When from my lips the words depart
Sweat, sudden, seeps through my chest;
So, silent,
blushing,
gripped by shame,
I
die.
As for this– fire of Venus,
except for she herself,
no power, none, can quench it;
and even she, descending,
might hesitate, might smile.
V. Phaedra, Consummatum
Strophe
(The moon announces)
Not meant to appear,
and yet, yes, I loiter
against the stone ledge,
seeking water’s edge.
Sliding my riparian body
across your thoughts.
Antistrophe
(Returns the querent)
Like torchlight in oil,
imaginal, yes,
but real as the breath
held between
“come” and “don’t.”
Your song was broken Persian,
mine an old Slavonic lullaby:
where your voice goes, I burn.
I was the here
at the shadow
of your one bent leg.
I was the inward curl.
I was not conquest.
Epode
(The moon resolves)
So I did it.
I slid his body in through my belly…
It’s done.
Writing to him
in those soft languages
heard only
when the gods are watching elsewhere.
He moved
like a riddle none should solve,
with delay,
with dark design.
I called it
my forgetting.
I called it
my breath
held too long.
VI. When Again He Meets You
(Riffing on the Exeter Book)
When again he meets you,
he’ll take you in his arms;
he’ll listen, really listen.
Then again, you two will live,
in just one home, and share two lives,
joined by the same love.
And no power in this world,
neither darkness nor fate,
will part you ever in the night.
VII. Fifteen Minutes — Grey Evening, Copper Patina
Sways through the glass, shyest shining fire,
and I with it conspire to understand;
to dance, to touch almost that incandescent wire.
Fifteen minutes, but not yet, not yet.
Upon this pyre, my heart, unwilling, still unable to forget.
O pulse too quick for what these eyes have seen,
O joy too fleet for any heart to bear;
Fifteen minutes, then the spell will break,
Lethe, not time, will cool this fevered ache.
But, oh, not yet!
Once to her I was gold, or thought. Not so.
Still, faintly she to me whispers, bittersweet:
“Hold fast the hour; our heartbeat lives with thine.
This burden, this crime, a bower bell
Thrust upon the choir of
your evening chimes.
Yours, though, I am not,
at least, not yet.”
End of the Cantata in G Minor
I. To My Bishop
(For Marguerite Porete)
His mitre, his style.
My habit: an open vein.
They all said:
I blasphemed.
I say I scried
the breath of God
with thighs unsighed.
What heresy
is this?
II. Tidy
As one travels
inward, through the mind,
four winds gather,
stroking seams of sandy hills.
Is it not conquest,
drinking the small surge
of touch imaginal?
Here, at one thigh’s shadow?
Towards there
my thoughts incline.
III. The Daylight Moon
On accident, perhaps, by chance,
this shiny ore struck
against the sky’s blue velvet lining.
You loiter, wan diorama, fortune
strained but no longer hiding.
An afterthought
to evening’s dress,
wandering noonward,
unresolved,
a question
left unpressed,
a riddle
none have solved.
What calls you forth to lunchbell chimes?
Is it hunger, for stars, for dreams?
These shadows swung at awkward time,
or a feast of uncurtained beams?
Does not your soft intrusion prove
our “conquest” is
but cunning delay,
a pause,
an unremembered foray,
from a throwaway scene
in some forgetling play?
IV. Speak, Roman
(Fragments from Valerius Aedit(i)us)
Why do you carry a torch, Phileros? We will not need it.
Like this we’ll go, enough flame in my chest already.
That flame, the wild rush of wind from Heaven,
breaking, bending, sudden calm,
the tempest dampens but cannot drown.
When I try to tell you, Pamphila, the trouble of my heart,
Whatever I want
to ask
of you,
When from my lips the words depart
Sweat, sudden, seeps through my chest;
So, silent,
blushing,
gripped by shame,
I
die.
As for this– fire of Venus,
except for she herself,
no power, none, can quench it;
and even she, descending,
might hesitate, might smile.
V. Phaedra, Consummatum
Strophe
(The moon announces)
Not meant to appear,
and yet, yes, I loiter
against the stone ledge,
seeking water’s edge.
Sliding my riparian body
across your thoughts.
Antistrophe
(Returns the querent)
Like torchlight in oil,
imaginal, yes,
but real as the breath
held between
“come” and “don’t.”
Your song was broken Persian,
mine an old Slavonic lullaby:
where your voice goes, I burn.
I was the here
at the shadow
of your one bent leg.
I was the inward curl.
I was not conquest.
Epode
(The moon resolves)
So I did it.
I slid his body in through my belly…
It’s done.
Writing to him
in those soft languages
heard only
when the gods are watching elsewhere.
He moved
like a riddle none should solve,
with delay,
with dark design.
I called it
my forgetting.
I called it
my breath
held too long.
VI. When Again He Meets You
(Riffing on the Exeter Book)
When again he meets you,
he’ll take you in his arms;
he’ll listen, really listen.
Then again, you two will live,
in just one home, and share two lives,
joined by the same love.
And no power in this world,
neither darkness nor fate,
will part you ever in the night.
VII. Fifteen Minutes — Grey Evening, Copper Patina
Sways through the glass, shyest shining fire,
and I with it conspire to understand;
to dance, to touch almost that incandescent wire.
Fifteen minutes, but not yet, not yet.
Upon this pyre, my heart, unwilling, still unable to forget.
O pulse too quick for what these eyes have seen,
O joy too fleet for any heart to bear;
Fifteen minutes, then the spell will break,
Lethe, not time, will cool this fevered ache.
But, oh, not yet!
Once to her I was gold, or thought. Not so.
Still, faintly she to me whispers, bittersweet:
“Hold fast the hour; our heartbeat lives with thine.
This burden, this crime, a bower bell
Thrust upon the choir of
your evening chimes.
Yours, though, I am not,
at least, not yet.”
End of the Cantata in G Minor
C. Sandbatch is an American writer.