Mine Eidolon

Preface

In this small book, I hope to bring you to the image of bliss as is found in the
Celtic arias of the English Chanel which in some ancient ways are relative to Chinese
cultural history. I personally believe the Chinese recollection of Paradise, both from the
eternal soul’s recollection and the overall recollection within the whole human organism
over time, to be the most close to ethereal paradise. This perception of mine only comes
from the Irish and Dutch in me as a cultural influence on my persona. On certain winter
mornings I would lay in bed and reflect on the paradise I had been in. Almost as a mist
remaining on glass or early morning grass. This unction is imbued in the lands of the
Channels and in my own dreams as a boy. That time of innocence that brings the light
of paradise into night dreams. A place of lonely longings where all souls will meet one
by one at a time. Roads of destiny meet at all ends in the same place as they began but
not exactly the same after having grown with their persona having traveled and travailed
through the vast ocean of time.
After scoping the sight with the images from the most beautiful usages of the
French language as Victor Hugo, it would almost seem as though one had been in such
places in other phases of our own souls journey from pre-birth to birth and moving to
dying back into Eternity. This objective journey is our pilgrimage together from the
conscious day to our dreaming at night. Always some one of us sleeping at any given
time throughout the world and some one of us awake. This interrelationship is a full
nexus of one human world interacting with itself and forming many individuals from all
its trials and tribulations. So I call this book “Mine Eidolon” in reminiscence of those
days of yore when I would be lost in the contemplations of this higher realm; touching as
it were the underscore of all human origins by way of Dutch and Irish lore. Realizing
only now how close to Chinese this culture is by that timeless connection of humanity
without boarders of languages which lives in love.
The Dove of peace is like a dream but greater. His wings span outward over time
and timeless space. Indeed his breath began the motion that would give form to
nothingness. Gate of Heaven makes the mark here for what was believed about the
stone circles of the Channel Islands which are made into little mounds. This was a
“miniature” construct of paradise; One large hill of Kush surrounded by ether represented
by the surrounding stones. Of course, every Irishman knows that waking is the time of
response to the ethereal recollections and carries with him all day making the rays of the
sun more bright. I recollect these joyful rays of morning when I lay next to my wife.
Its like an undying boyhood in the dreams which make life glow and grow into a rare
flower. She is my inspiration in this work and a true kindred spirit in that place before
time when we met in the heart of the Spirit.
Thinking on the work called “Metaphysics,” I can only compare it with Dreams in
the color blue. Though their points of view are a little different, they both mention the
infidelity of seeking after Paradise and relating that it has a blue horizon and is the “field
of dreams.” Dreams are of us before we became sin in our mothers womb. Dreams are
phantoms; God is Faith! In His mind before time, we are ever correct. It is the perilous
journey through time that we must make in order to go forward from here to eternity.
 Prudhomme in this poem, points to the eeriness of salvation without a Cross and
seeks to emboss that upon our minds eye. What is the answer? It lays in “The
Assumption” by Ponce de Leon. In learning how to die sweetly in Loving Jesus back so
much as to give up the Ghost. The Assumption of Mary is the keystone of our
advancement in peace. While no one disserves it, it still is in the air for those who want
it. The most gentile living leads to the most gentile dieing. So the prayer says: “O Lady
of Good Living, assist us, we who pray to you, the ever faithful. Day after day, in the
engagements of our Baptism, in the sentiments of our Faith, and to the practice of
Charity.”
Mine Eidolon
By Joseph Markenstein

Red…the median between time and eternity. Will go with us first in tears!

All the moods of life are from within us perceiving and receiving others in a sea.

If our blood, being red, is read as a real visual of eternal red moods within passion.

The many mansions and houses in sympathy reflect dimly as it were an Eidolon;

Passim pseudothyrum rubrum est, even a cretonne of Cressida would find this heaven
True,

But there is a deeper Heaven in Blue before the setting Sun at close of Day,

And forward through the night our daily end to spend just one more night of flight in
Dreams.

From Every Soul emanates your Eminence from Eternity to Eternity between Time.

Mean Time is Kind for You are its Centre and fly by; casting moments with proponents.

For man is between himself eternally; from before his individual birth to his individual
passage.

Here is where the recollections take place like an event horizon below and above the
moment.

In every age of each of us is the shedding of our bedding down every night looking past
ages.

Dream light flights, are seen in the sheen of eternity’s resurrection, subjection to will;

Along the way see how the space of grace is the flesh of the son of man still in our
stillness.

The prowess of Ponce de Leon is the Seat of Wisdom who in Her Assumption pays our
bill;

Fills our hearts with the Unction to Love God so much as to die crying tears in
joyfulness.

The Fifty Fifth Birthday of Little Debbie

By Joseph Markenstein

In fifty five years you are

The battlement without blemish,
All other's who suffer scares
Can never find the finish.

Your childhood lingers on

And you are forever twenty-one,
All fire in confligration
From all the braid of a nun.

Wistful in wishes as in prayers

All the other children nieve
In comparison; you are more rare
And display in your dreams, these eves.

The soft, subtile night so bright,

In those wings of dreams remembered.
When you wake with the thought well tight;
Your perception is Decembered.

Go on through your day in myst,

With your weather-cock on North.
The turning of the shrew, your wrist,
Turns you without shame on cloth.

The fiber of your eyes in sway,

Make tame from fame compared to you.
And your Love shall display
Our feelings all the same too.

Five and fifty years have you now

And I bow to you, other me.
For the sake of yoke and brow,
We are the same in company.
So to God I ask: keep your noon,
Wait for me coming upon you fast;
To last till I am five and fifty too,
So together our ship to mast.

Written for my wife Deborah on 12-7-09 the feast of St Ambos.

Translation of Reves by Me...that is We inVictorEd

Dreams by Victor Hugo

Part I

Friends, long from the villa,

Long from the palaces of kings,
Long from the court Torquemada,
Long from the vile enchilada,
Finding, finding,

In fields where the soul flies

It recollects in dreaming,
On one obscure good-bye
Where fare the world never arrives
Nether flood, nether steam,

Some vantage in the ruff,

Some shelter of lost time,
A port on the rivers cuff,
A nest under the fluff,
A mansion in the brine!

Catch the me well somber,

Well calm, well hydrant,
Covered by trees without number,
Within the silence and slumber,
Poured profoundmant!

Which there, above all things,

Faithful to those who have me,
My plane verse, and posing
T[w]eetered on some budding,
T[w]eetered on a giant tree.

Who would press with audace,

For all knots to be dislaced
For a flight without case,
Equalized within space
Like a bird attaché.

Part II

A song in sky We arrive,

Which herbal essence and play,
Never themselves achieve,
And at night I conceive
At my dream of the day!

The same white as the sheet

When at the horizon I see,
It would bar the Star Fleet,
And it is like a Crete
Between life and me!

Let the muse who plumbs

In my night to shine,
The sleep is prolonged,
And for eternal long
Fear of rise and shine.

That all my senses

Menses the deus ploy
And sweeping, impressing
Its tenet embracing
In round-a-lay with my toy
What to my dream enchained,
Everyone, the triumphant eye,
The cradle enchanted,
As the sisters ancient
Cradled their brother child!

Part III

It is believed on the cliff,

It is believed in the forests,
As one breathes at a riff,
And so nothing we stiff
See the sky close pressed!

There, all is like a dream;

Every voice of words,
All spoken, a song in stream
Waves on the sheen,
And Air where fly the birds.

It is one voice profound,

A universal spry,
It is the globe who grounds,
It is the roll of the mound
On the ocean of the sky.

It is the echo magnified

Those of the voice of Goethe,
It is the hymn seraphied
Of the world pacified
Where goethe this who goethe;

Where, deaf to women‘s crystals,

To complaints and stifles,
The soul is mixed with souls
As the flame is in flames,
As the tide is in tidal!
Part IV

The vast snore, at all hours,

Heard in this desert.
Paris, a bate scour,
For the voices which sour
Our gift of vain concert.

Oh! the antique Bretagnique!

Some lethos aequos!
In the forest celtique
Some dungeon goethique!
Forgone Jaunuarios

Sister tower Ivory

Where I bough my cradle,
Maybe aviary chivalry,
Panache of Wallace Beery
On his granite sable!

Providing that, embossed

From a much higher strand
The height of a Rood Cross,
Gaping, probauched
Devolves a tree grand!

That summer charm of mille-an

Unveil myself a sky-blue;
Which winter my fah-mille-an,
In the atrium taken, brake-in
All in red of great view!

In these woods my kingdoms,

If the night air bite,
Who'd semble to sight their domes,
These headies of Fano-tones
Toccata in D-Night!

That these virgins, bees

Whose heaves are filled,
By chumming on me, sleaze,
Shaken to my eves
Their dresses have thousand folds!
Which with voices plaintive,
The shadows of heroes
A repast for fugitives,
White under my cleaves,
Shadow over my windows!

Part V

If my muse loquats
Bears his nest, rest so tried
And his family forsakes
The room he has raked
With an old iron side;

It is that I love these ages

Most beautiful, if not the best,
That our epoch has more sages;
In their wild cages
I attach “me,” to the rest

The swallow sways upward

By her flight to the heights,
Fluxing on winds hovering,
Choosing for her foundlings
A nest from the vultures sight.

Your family humble and gentle,

Mannered, and of accord,
The beak subdued and floral,
All is a breeze on her mantle,
The egg of the Concorde.

In the ancient arms

My roads they conjoin,
And ruminant from barbs,
Laughing, Nephilim bards,
Of great Super-Loins!

Part VI
As it may, frost on glass,
Rejuvenate my All
In the steeple surpass,
Like a truffle of grass
In the cracks of the walls.

But, Goth or jamboree,

From World delineate,
I will live lumengenti,
In ecstasy and prairie,
Obliging, obligate!

translated Oct 1st 2008

Metaphysics by Sully Prudhomme

When the man, just so open upon repose,

From the earth they had conquered by face and bowl,
Round from him placed stones in a mural,
The asses in fallows,
He used his leisure nobly for his master.
Haunted by a higher concern,
To Nature he had been made faster,
He would like to discern.

The happy prime of the day,

And, Tremblers, like bathing blonds
Who blushing and frazzled upon leaving the water,
In the east tinged by purple and gold ether ponds.
The man under the kiss of rays in his pupils
Tender by posing his hand on his booty:
These forms rendering his heart visible in those pupils,
His name is Beauty!

Since the sun chaste the vapors of the wine,

And the horizon without end is known in dislacement;
The frail born long for the morning saturation
Fell, monstrating a bear fear of the blue desert.
The man conceived then that spirit carried by an angel
Who is ever before their vision
But shut with drought the bout eternal
For dimming the depths of the heavens.
Sounding out the abyss in the courtyards of the earth, humble servant,
And singing themselves into an earth unity,
Seized by a sublime and pious reprimand,
His name is Infinity!

Since the Night, when he lived, in its shadows and signs,

The orbs monstrous, jealous to marry
Now constrained to wrestle in the arms who entwine,
Try without ceasing a blind man’s serendipity
Sensing what the harmony, a work of Einstein,
Is the work of liberty,
He recognized Feinstein
In arms who charm and never castigate,
In the motion primeval, Boss of all bosses,
Whose act is without caprice and without chains on the astute,
And saluting the Cause of all causes,
He is named Absolute!

At the End, like he saw, despite lengthy reproof

Of a Job that never ends, the material preservatives,
And all the ancient world under a new suit
The weight perseveres.
In a flood of change like in the storm, the eye
Sensing that he needs a bed, a cradle Beth-le-hem,
A Spring where life incessantly imbibes,
His name the Substance where faces Death-le-hem!

Blessed with a strong support, fort of a faith sensed.

From these gross altars he negligees the fire,
And, noble for neither obeying in ‘would’ the laws of thought,
He knew then who’s name is God!
Workers by the Sea by Victor Hugo

THE ISLANDS OF MANCHE

THE OLD WOUNDS

The Atlantic rounds our coasts. The pressure from the pole currents defaced our
west cliffs. The pebble wall which we have on the sea are diminished by Saint-Valery
on the Somme in Ingouville, the vast blocks wavering, the waves of pebble clouds, our
ports docked or encrusted, the mouth of our rivers…blocked. Every day a piece of bread
from the Normand earth would slip away and be forgotten under the noise. This
prodigious work, ending today, has been terrible. He has failed in the swap of this
immense spur, Lands-end. They have judged the force of the polar flux and the violence
of this erosion of the low-land that it would have made its way to Cherbourg and Brest.
This formation of the gulf of Manche is something of a lone Frenchman behind the times
of history. The last ocean voyage decisively made on our side having yet a definite date.
In 709, sixty years after the advent of Charlemagne, a sea battle had detached Jersey from
France. Of all the other summits in the land previously submerged are, like Jersey, now
visible. These coves who rise out of the water, are the isles. It is this which is named
the “archipelago of Normandy.” This naming is a laborious human formality.
About the industry of the sea who has been in ruins, has succeeded the industry of
men who have been one people.

II
GEURNESEY

Stone quarries in the south, sand beaches in the north; here the rocks are scraped
and there the sand is dunned. A plant reclining in the prairies with the rolling of the hills
and the relief of the rocks; and for fringing this picture: folds of green flounce, foam of
the waves; along the coast, the flocks who are shaved; and all those who have died in the
distance; over all the low-lying beaches, a massive parapet, cut into stairs and landings,
where the sand comes over, and the onslaught of waters, has carved an unique vessel; the
sails dismasted for the coming storm; someone, from the valley, from the Ville-au-Roi,
from Saint-Pierre-Port, from Torteval, turning again; in the cliffs, the clefts; in the dunes,
the dorms, the shepherd dog, the cow dog in journey or in work; the little merchant carts
of the town galloping in the by-ways; frequent the dark houses, paving the west with their
tears; cocks, hens, manure; over all cyclone fencing; close to the old Havre, badly
destroyed, was admirable with their free hand, their powerful pipes and their heavy
chains; farms enclosed by woods; the walled fields for higher support and the cordons of
dry stone walls drew on the planes a bizarre squaring; here and there, ramparts around the
thistles, of the cottages in granite, hanging huts, cabins which defy gravity; meanwhile, in
lieu of the more wild, a little building on the nines, mounted with a bell, this is a school;
two or three brooks at the bottom of the ravine; elms and oaks; a lily is expressed even by
those who live not there, as Guernesey Lily; in the season of grate work with eight
horse-power carts; in front of the homes, large hay stacks surrounded in a circle like
Stonehenge; spiked Irish gorse; roundabout the gardens of the ancient French style,
where they were tailored, fastened with wood, stone vases, in the midst of vegetables
and produce; budding flowers in the enclosures of green-houses; evergreens among the
potatoes; all around on the grass were signs of ware, and was colored with Adel vise; in
the cemeteries, without a cross, the lime-stones resemble the full moon of the White
women of virginity; ten gothic bells on the mantle; old churches, doctrines on the nines;
the protestant rite logged in Catholic architecture; on sand or waves, the gloomy Celtic
mists congregated under diverse forms, monuments, lithes, long stones, stones of fairies,
stones with brazes, stones with curves, displays, stonehenges, altars, stone temples; all
sorts of tracks; after the druids, the abbots; after the abbots, the rectors; remembrances
fallen down from heaven; of a Hells Point, then the Mount St. Michael Archangel; then
another point called Icarus, becomes the cape of Dicart; almost as many flowers in winter
as in summer. There is Guernesey.

III

GUERNESEY ON DISPLAY

Fertile earth, comfort, strength, neither better pasturing anywhere. The wheat is
celebrated, and the cows are illustrated. The culture of plants in Saint-Pierre-du-Bois are
equal to how many lambs lilied the plateau of Confolens. The agricultural commerce of
France and England hailed as chief works the woods and prairies of Guernesey. The
agriculture has served as a strong vitality of course, an excellent cross-road vivifying all
the isles. The roads are very good. At the fork of two roads is bossed on the plane a
stone range with a Cross. The most ancient bailey of Guernesey, these in 1284, first on
the list, Gaultier de la Salle, has been pending on mending the offending of justice. This
cross, called the Bailey Cross, marked in lieu of its last genuflection and its last fast.
The sea in the waves and the bays are made gay from the shallows, as gross
abstraction on sweet bread, segmented red from white, two-fold black and yellow, with
wall to wall green, blue and orange, lorries, jaspers, marbles, floating flowers on water.
Intended for enriching the monotone song of the helm which navigates and pulls the tow
rope.
No less these fishermen, these laborers have a content air. The gardeners are the
same. The sun, saturating the smoothen rocks, is potent; the agley, which is on the
limestone and on the marsh, adjoining the salt stones; what an extraordinary vitality; the
energy is poring to the extraordinary; magnolias, myrtles, daphnes, oleander, blue
hydrangeas; the fuchsias are excessive; they have there verbene arcades of triphyllae;
they have also walls of geraniums; oranges and citrus come up from the flat lands; the
grapevines are walled into a greenhouse; here, it is excellent; the camelias are like trees;
looking in the gardens the aloe flowers are higher then the houses. Nothing more
opulent or more prodigious than this vegetation masquerading and ornamenting the cute
facades of the cottages in the villages.
Guernesey, gracious on one side and terrible on the other. The west, devastated,
is under the pressure of those great winds. The breezes and the gusts, the creeks
assuaged, the patched barks, the fallows, the moors, the hovels, hammocks sometimes
flapping in its sagging, the meager herds, the herbs curt and salty, and the grand aspect of
poverty: severe.
Li-Hou is a little isle along the coast, it is desert, accessible only to the low sea.
She is full of Brussels and Belgiums. The rabbits of Li-Hou know the hours. They
don’t leave their howls until high seas. They tease men. Their love, the ocean, is their
isolation. These great fraternities are all natural. Were there any hollow alluviums in
the bay of Vason, they have found them there. It has been, under a mysterious quick
sand, in a forest.
The fishers bullied by this whist of winds wound by these clever pilots. The sea
is particularly within the isles of Manche. The bay of Cancale, very close, is the land’s
point where the seas see all the more.

IV

THE GRASS

The grass in Guernesey, it is the grass of all grass, a little more crass rich perhaps;
it is almost like the turf of Cluges or of Gemenos. You find there fescue and bluegrass,
like in the coming of the first herbs, more the crows feet of cynodon and the floating
sea-weed, or more the moist bromine amid the hoisted thorns, even more than the
canaries of Canaries, the bent grass which gives a green tint, the stalks of ryegrass, the
yellow fallows, Yorkshire who has the tigers tail, the sweet vernal which is supernal,
amourette who forms, severe storms, the wild wing flower is soft and sweet, sister
timothy, brother foxtail of which the pone forms a little club, the stripe profoundly
packed, Elyme fixing the grass row. Is this all, no, they are more straight though these
flowers do curl, the foxtail in the middle, and the same, by some native names, like
andropogon. It has the crepida leaves of the Dandelion which make the day, and the
Siberian sow who make the year. Everywhere around here is grass; and never wanting
for grass; this is the landscape proper to the archipelago; it must be granite for a basement
and ocean for a house.
Now it finds its course inside there and brings a fling over the multitude of
insects, the hideous ones, the others charming; under the heath, the centipedes, the
worms, the weevils, the ants occupied by milking the Aphids of their milk, the locusts
drink, the ladybugs, bugs from God above, the woodworm, the bug from the devil; over
the turf, in the plain air, the dragonfly, the inchworm, the bee, the quad-winged of gold,
the velourian banks, the lacewings of lace, the flies in red breast, the taped gape, then you
have some idea of the open spectacle of the dreamy June, at mid-day, the best of Jerbourg
or the Fermain-Bay offers a word-worker some little dream, and a poet a pocket.
 Ever new you can appreciate in lieu this blue green grass a little slab ingratiated
where are gravitated these two letters: W. D. which signed “War Department.” That’s
just. It must be well whichever civilization dominates. Without this their limitation
would be known. Go to the edge of the Rhin; searching for the spent coins more ignored
by nature; at certain points the land has a dint of majestial show which is ‘would be
pontifical‘; they will say that God is more present here than there; put yourself in these
isles where the mountains have been more in solitude and where the woods have been the
more in silence; choose, I suppose, Andernach and its atmosphere; treat yourself to a visit
on this obscure and impassable lake: Laach, almost as mysterious as it is uncommon; no
tranquility more august; the peripatetic life is there in all its religious serenity; never
trouble; everywhere profound order from great natural disorder; promenade yourself
attentively, in this desert; it is voluptuous like the springtime and melancholic like the
autumn; a spree of hike; leave your past like a ruined abbey, free yourself in the peace
couched ravines, among these bird songs and hung leaves, seep into the cup of your hand
the water of springs, walking, meditating, obligating; a cottage stands; it marks the angle
of a hammock enfolded under the trees; it is green, preserved and charming, all vested
with laurels and flowers, open to children and laughter; when you bedight, and the coin
of the hut cuts into one dazzling tear of shade and of light, on an old peer of this
engraving seen, under the name of hammock Niederbreisig, It reads: 22nd landing
battalion 2nd camp. When you find yourself in this village, you believe you are in a
squadron. Such is man.

THE PERALS OF THE SEA

The overfall, which read: daredevil, is scribbled everywhere on the west coast of
Guernesey. The waves foam, disheveled. The night, on the peak of the cliffs reposes,
in dim lights, perceived, it is said, and affirmed by sea crawlers, of warnings or erring.
Some warnings, harsh and credulous, marvelous under the seaweed of legends, this
nietch moored and infernal which nothing can touch without the hand burning up. Such
local denominations, Tinttajeu, for example (from the gallois, Tin-Tagel), indicates the
presents of the devil. Eustache, who is Wace, said this in these few verses:
What starts the sea to be joined,
Under the growth and then purloined,
Darkened the heavens, darkened the mansion;
Coughing cost the sea all expansion.

Manche is too uncommitted today where in the times of Tewdrig, Umbrafel,

Hamon-dhu, and the dark and chivalrous Emyr Lhydau, reposed at the isle of Groix, after
Quimperle. It has, within these pages, the coo of the ocean theatre which it must defy.
This for example, is frequently capricious with the rosy winds from the Channel Islands:
a temperate breeze from the south east; the tranquility arrives, tranquility complete; you
breathe; this shower sometimes for an hour; then the force of an hurricane, debarks for
the south east, retrieved from the north west; it will take you in queue, it takes you to the
head; it is here the tempest is turned. If you are not an old captain or a native inhabitant,
then take the advantage of calm weather, and weigh the decision to turn-about face
according to the winds race, in the end, the seaman is disquieted and somber.
Ribeyrolles, who is going to die in Brazil, is written on all the various pleats‘, in
he’s day at Guernesey, a personal memento made every day, were the wool pulled over
his clovers: “First of January: first up, a storm. A skipper arrives at Portrieux, he’s perdu
yesterday on the Esplanade. 2. Three mats lost at Rocquaine. They went to America.
Seven men died; Twenty survived. 3. The storage hadn’t come yet. 4. The weather
was porridge. (a bit later)…14. Rains. Landslide on the mains that killed a man. 15.
High times, the fawn remained for a little season. --- 22. A sudden squall. Five sullen
clouds skulking off the west side. -- 24. The storm persists. Clouds on all sides.”
Almost forever reposing in this mint of the ocean. From here the cries of gulls
flows through the centuries in this gust without end like the old poet laureate
Lhy-ouar’h-henn, this Jeremias of the sea.
But the high winds are no greater risk than to navigate the islands; the squalls are
violent, and that violence is in-violet. To return through the gate, or head for the cape, in
having carefully placed the central effort of putting the sails lower; should they overshoot
all the crags, they could loose the battle. The great perils of these parapets are invisible,
present every day, and others more fatal compared to these beautiful temperatures. In
recounting these, a special maneuver is necessary. The mariners of west Guernesey are
excellent in this sort of maneuver who would call a preemptive strike. No person has
studied like these the three dangers of the tranquil sea, the seen, the heard, and the
blurb’d. The seen, is the common thing; the heard (in lieu of the obscure), this is limbo;
the blurb’d (sometimes pronounced Beelzebub), is the tribulation, the navel, between the
Scylla and Charybdis, the burning lake under the sea.

VI

THE CLIFFS

In the archipelago of Manche, one side is wild. The islands have an interior
happiness, but on the surface crude and boisterous. Manche is something almost
Mediterranean, the waves are curt and violent, the swells are only a splash. A strange
hammering of the boulders, and profoundly shammering the cliff-sides. Which along
this sea-side pass for a series of illusions.
At every moment the crags are flagged and you’re made a dunce. Where do
these illusions find profusion? Inside the granit. Nothing is more strange. These
enormous looking toads of stones exit the foam no doubt for air; these giant nuns are
harried, leaning toward the horizon; these petrified pleats from their christening are
formed by the howling seas and winds; kings crowned by Pluto meditate on their massive
thrones that haven’t been removed from their foam; many of these beings buried in the
upright rocks and enfolded by their arms; seems as fingers on an open hand.
Everywhere there, there’s an infirmity. As you approach, it has more or less nothing
there. The stone has faded. Behold a fortress, behold a temple in the crude, behold the
chaos of the hovels and the walls torn out, all the brake out of a deserted village. It has
no existence, neither community, nor temple, nor fortress; it’s only the cliff. To chart an
advance or a retreat or circumvent or turn right around, the current is deplorable; as there
is no telescope without a more prompt collapse; the rock’s aspects degrade so they may
recompose; this viewpoint is off the hook. This block is a tripod, since it is a lion, since
it is an angel, and opens its wings; since it is a seated figure reading a book. Nothing
changes form like these storms, and neither do these rocks.
Forms aroused in the illusion of grandeur, not from beauty. Leagues from there.
They are sometimes beleaguered and hideous. The rocks have nodules, tumors, keys,
bruises, spectacles, and warts. The mountains have stairs made from the earth.
Madame de Stare attends to Mr. Chateaubriand, who’s shoulders are a little higher,
talking bad about the Alpes, he said: “maimed by jealousy.” The long lines and the
majestic majesty of nature, the novices of the sea, the outline of the mountains, the
gloomy forests, the blue of the sky, complicating the unknown about the enormous
fracture in company with harmony. The beauty has the lines, the deformity has the
sinews. It has a smile and a grin. The melting of the stones by water has the same
effect as on the rest. This flow deposed, it is stable and yet in-cohesive. This agonizing
repast of chaos is the same within creation. These wonders are scars. An ugliness,
sometimes dazzling, is prefixed in things more majestic and assemble a protest against
the natural order. It grimaces in the clouds. It has an unseemly ceiling. All the
bulwarks are bruised by the flood, in the foliage, in the rocks, and not knowing which
parapets are left to glimpse. The profane by domain. Never a contour is aligned.
Great, yes; pure, no. Tease these clouds; all kinds of faces have been drawn, all
resemblances have been forlorn, all kinds of figures have been sketched; searching this
place for a Grecian coast. Find Caliban, not Venus; if ever you never see the Parthenon.
But sometimes, in the sleepy night, some great dark table, posed on the steps of clouds,
and boulders fogged in, will emboss in the angry sky the moonlighted Stonehenge
immense and monstrous.

VII

WHERE THE OCEAN MEETS THE LAND

 In Guernesey, the sharecrops are monumental. Some of them dress the roadside
like a wall of stalks planted like a decoration where they are pressed side by side to the
gates of carters and the gates of pedestrians. The time has dug in the lines and left
profound mounds where the turtle peasants itself into its shell, and where it is not
uncommon to see bats craping. The hammocks under the trees are decrepit and an eye
sore. Cottages here are like biers to the Cathedrals. A stone bungalow, way of the
Hubies, has on their wall an inscription with flare of the colonnade and this date: 1405.
An other, from the Balmoral side, offers a façade, as do the houses of the holy Ernani and
Astigarraga, a brazen sculpture in plain stone. More than not, are seen in the strong
Cyclops fencing, the cockle-shell staircases and the arching vaults of rebirth. Never a
door which has its cornerstone is without a gibbet of granite.
Other bungalows were once small boats; the hull of the boat reversed, it is skewed
on stakes, which makes a roof. A knave, an high seat, it’s a church; the vault bellow is
the captains cabin; the reception of a prayer, turns and tames the sea. In the parishes of
the dry west, the dry wells, standing among a little patch of wasteland, almost mimics the
Arab marabou. A support column with a stone thatch on a fence in the field; recognizing
a certain mark on the gargoyles and base-relieves which were inscribed by night.
Ravines spread out pell-mell there on their slope: ferns, morning glories, spectacle roses,
wolves, holly in its vivacious red, hawthorn, red thorn, Scottish heather, the robust of
white flowers in the family of Oleanders, and these long grey lines, spoken colonels of
Henry the fourth. In the midst of all this, grass abounds and a prosperous clove of
willow herbs, heavy grazing off of donkeys, the plants embossed with elegance and
propriety of the word resonance. Overall, thickets, cherry blossoms, all sorts of foliage;
a green Cush where romped to a winged world, tasted by a world gone rampant;
blackbirds, linnets, red-breasts, jay-birds, would be woodpeckers; the oriels from
Ardennes are quick to tighten; flocks of starlings move in spirals; alongside the finch,
goldfinch, the birds singing in the Picardie dialect, the crows with red feet. Here and
there, even a snake.
From small waterfalls, falling pieces of soaked wood, which form small rivulets,
turn the mills and make a rhythmic beat beneath the branches. In the middle of some
farmyards are cider presses and the old stone circles hollowed where the wheel roll
crushed apples. Cattle are drinking from troughs, please these like sarcophagi. A Celtic
king has been made compost in his coffer of granite where the cows drink peacefully
with wide eyes. The woodpeckers and the wagtails come with loving familiarity to
pillage the chicken’s grain. Along the sea everything is wild. Wind cools the grass as
the sun burns. Some churches have flanks of ivy which crawl up the bell-tower. On the
borders, in the deserted heaths, a bulge of stone at the end of the cottage. The boats
pulled to shore, in a makeshift port, bolstered by boulders. The sail boats seen on the
horizon are rise’n with more ochre and yellow salmon colors than white ones. On the
side of the island with wind and rain the trees have a furrow of lichen; the stones
themselves seem to mean precaution and have a “moussecular” skin, tough and firm.
There are whispers, murmurs, rustling branches, flutters of seabirds, some with a payload
of fish in their mouths, a flurry of butterflies varying in colour dependin’ on the season,
and deep groaning within the stones, snore. Horses gallop on the greenery crossing the
fallows. They are rolling, bounding, then stopping, unfurling all their manes into the
wind, and looking it in the face the space of the winds who grate indefinitely. In May,
the gay and rural farmhouses with the mariners are covered with wildflowers; by June, a
wall of lilacs.
In the dunes, are craters from cannon balls. The patrimony left by cannons
benefits the countrymen; with fisherman’s fowlers frowning on the foundlings of their
craters. Between the four walls of the blockhouse dismantled, a stray donkey or a goat
in gauntlet, grazes like Spain the bluegrass range. The children half naked, “rear”.
They sense in the game of laments which they trace in the sand. In the evening, the
sunset, radiant on the horizon, yellow flowers in the underpass with heifers retuning
slowly chewing their cud on the right and the left, which makes the dog bark. The wild
waves of the west break in the undulation under the sea; what rare temperance and
viberance. In the twilight, the fences, burrows daylight onto their stones, making a black
lacing. The brisk of the wind heard in the wilderness gives a sensation of extraordinary
openness.

VIII

SAINT-PIERRE-PORT

Saint Pierre Port, capital of Guernesey, has been made in the shade of houses
sculpted in wood, brought from Saint Malo. A beautiful stone house from the sixteenth
century is Grand Cru on the Grand Rue.
Saint Pierre Port is a Frank port. The town is rallied by a charming disarray of
valleys and hills gathered around Old Havre as if they had been shaken by the hand of a
giant. With gullies for streets, stairs shorten the turns. The streets are very steep climbs
and descend at a gallop by the excellent Anglo-Norman teams.
In the main square, the market women sit in plane sight on the pavement, and take
on the winter rain, but that has nothing on the bronze statue of the prince. Falling a foot
of water by the year in Jersey, and ten and a demi in Guernesey. The fishing spot, a vast
covered hall, have marble tables where are spread the magnificent fishers, a myriad of
miracles, from Guernesey. There is no public library. It is a mechanical and literal
society. There is a college; though, edified more by churches than any other thing.
When they are built, it must be approved by the council elders. It is not unseemly to see,
at this point, passing in the street chariots carrying wood encased with shrapnel given to a
carpenter for their chapel.
There is a courthouse. The judges, vested in purple, opine in high voice. In the
last century, meat cutters could not sell a spell of beef or mutton before the judges had
poured over the meat.
 Forcing the particular protestant churches against the official Church. Enter in
one of these chapels. You hear a countryman explaining to others the heresy of
Jansenism. It is said the nuance is between the mother of Christ and the mother of God,
or teach where the strength of the Father, in tandem to the Son, does not exert his Power
through Him, so that its discourses are often punctuated with Orthodox punches.
Stillness is the Law of Sunday. Everything is permitted, except to drink a tear of
beer on Sunday. If you have thirst on the day of the first, you offend the dignity of
Amos Chick who is licensed to sell ale and cider on High Street. The law of Sunday:
sing without swing. Outside of prayer, they say not: my God, rather they say, my Good.
Good replaces God. A youth under French rule of a boarding school, having picked up
her scissors with this exclamation: Oh my God! Was expelled for expounding on the
name of God. Here it is still more biblical and evangelical.
A theater is here. A small door, opening into a corridor on a deserted street, this
is the entrance. The interior resembles the style of architecture adopted for alfalfa in tan.
Satan has no hoses, and the housing is gross lodging. The theatre is face to face with the
prison, just another lodging of the same kind.
On the north hill in Castle Carey (solely; one must say Carey Castle), there is a
precious collection of paintings, the plus-part: Spanish. Publicized as a coming museum.
In certain aristocratic houses remaining specimens of these curious painted tiles from
Holland which lines the chimney of Czar Peter Saardam, and these beautiful
amalgamated tapestries, written in Portuguese “azulejos,” products of great art, the
ancient amalgamations, revived today, more admirable than ever, thanks to initiatives like
the Doctor Lasalle, has factories like Premieres, potters and painters as Deck and Devers.
The crossroad of Antin in Jersey is called Red Bullion, the hamlet Saint Germain
of Guernesey is named the Hate-rock. The beautiful streets straight and narrow,
interspersed with gardens. Saint Pierre Port has trees as high as the roofs, more nests
than houses, and more sounds of birds than of cars. Hate-rock has a grand patrician
appearance from the haughty quarters of London, and are far and ex-centric.
Cross a ravine, step over Mill Street, and enter a sort of niche between two tall
houses, climb a up a shafted and interminable staircase with crooked and loose tiles, and
you are in a chique village; filled with hovels, prairie potholes, unpaved streets, gabled
heights, collapsed houses, deserted rooms without doors or windows where the grass
concurs the corners and the cracks, beams crossing the street, ruins which block the way,
here and there some hovels are inhabited, naked little boys and pale women who are
believed to be Zaatcha.
In Saint Pierre Port, it’s not the watchmakers, it’s the watch; it’s not the
auctioneer, it’s the auction, it’s not the picture, it’s picturesque; it’s not the stone cutter,
it’s the stone; there is no trimmer, rather it’s the trimmed; it’s not the cook, it’s the cock;
it’s not the knock at the door, it’s the door being knocked. Mrs. Pescott is “Customer
Officer and supplier of ships.” A hair cutter muttered in his shop the death of
Wellington in these terms: “The commander of the soldiers is dead.”
Women go from door to door selling small trinkets purchased at bazaars or flea
markets, this industry is called antiquing. The bargain hunters, very poor, earn a few
pence each day. Hear a word from the peddler: “Do you think this is very pretty, I saved
seven sous a week.” In passing our friends gave five franks a day; they say: “Thank you
sir, this will allow me to buy a big one.”
 In May the yachts begin to arrive, the roads are populated by these pleasant
seamen; the most part are rigged schooners, some of them are steam driven. The yachts
cost their holdings one hundred thousand francs a month.
Cricket is popular where boxing is snuffed. The temperate societies prevail, very
useful, they say. They have their processions, and promenade their banners with an
apparel for the Masons who attend the same cabarets. Tavern tenders tell the drunkards
whom they serve, “Drink from your glass not from the bottle.”
The populous is healthy, beautiful and bountiful. The city jail is very often
empty. At Christmas, the jailer, when he has prisoners, gives them a small family
banquet. Local architecture has fantastic tenancies; and the town of Saint-Pierre-Port is
faithful to the queen, the
Bible, and guillotine windows; the boys of summer bathe blighted; their knickers are
indicted; they remark.
The excellent mothers vest their descendants, nothing is prettier than this variety
of petite perfumes, coquettishly imagined. Children brazen through the streets, touching
and gentile in confidence. These marionettes were once babies.
In making modes, Guernesey copies Paris. Not always though. Sometimes
regal red or bally blue reveal the English alliance. Still, we have heard a modest local,
profligate for an elegant inviolet, protesting against the indigo and scarlet, and add this
observation that is delicate: “I find a colour well dame and well as having a beautiful
thought.”
Maritime carpentry in Guernesey is renowned; cartage full of buildings in repair.
It toes the boats onto land to the sound of the flute. The flute player, says the master
carpenters, does more work than they do.
Saint Pierre Port has a Pollet like Dieppe, and a Strand like London. A man of
the world does not show up in the street with a brief case or wallet under his arms, but
farms work in a Saturday market while carrying a basket. The passage of a royal person
was flayed as a pretext to turn. Some are interred in the village. The street where the
middle school is, is long and narrow between the right and the left of the cemeteries. A
tomb dated February 1610 is an estuary of a wall.
The Hyvreuse is a square of grass and trees comparable to the sinews of the
carriages on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, with the seas over all. Seen through the
screens of an elegant bazaar said the Arcadian posters like these: “He’s selling perfume
recommended by the sixth regiment of artillery.”
The village is crossed in all ways by the drays loaded with barrels of beer or bags
of coal. The stroller may read more here and there authorized advertisements such as
this: “Here, we continue to taunt a sheen bull as those from the past. Here, are given the
most high price for squids, lead, glass, and bones. For sale, choice kidney potatoes. For
sale, oar peas, tonnage of chaff oats, complete service for English doors of living rooms,
all the same we have fat pigs. Agriculture of my pleasure and Saint James. For sale,
great vegetables recently picked, yellow carrots by the hundreds, and a good French
syringe. Contact: Mill Scale of Saint-Andre. Fish dressing and depositions of those
encumbered. For sale, [literally] a milking ass. Etcetera, etcetera…
 IX

JERSEY, AURIGNY, SERK

The Channel Islands near Manche are morsels of France fallen into the sea and
received by England with complex nationalities. The Jerseyans and Guerneseyans are
certainly not English unintentionally, but they are French without knowing it. If they
know, they want to forget. There one can see how little French they speak.
The archipelago is made of a grade of four islands; two great islands, Jersey and
Guernesey, and other two small islands, Alderney and Sark; without counting the islets,
Ortach, the Casques, Herm, Jet-Hou etc.. The islets and reefs in ancient Gaul are readily
qualified as HouHanShu1. Alderney has Bur-Hou, Sark has Breqhou Hou, Guernesey:
Lihou and Jet Hou, Jersey has the Lobster Hou, Granville has the Pir-Hou. There’s cape
Hogue, sister Hougue-bye, Apples Hougue, the Houmets, etc.. There Chousy the island,
the reef cabbage, etc.. This remarkable radical language of primitive hu, is a fever
(Houle, booed, brawn, hourque, hours [scaffold, old word], holly, houperon [shark],
howl, owl, owl, or to Chouan, etc..) and it pierces the two words that express the
indefinite, unda et unde [profound and under]. It is in the two words which express
doubt, ou and ou. [or and where].
Sark is half the size of Alderney in the fouth line from Guernesey, Guernesey is
two thirds of Jersey. The entire island of Jersey is exactly like the great city of London.
That would make France two thousand seven hundred less than Jersey. Storms on the
islands of the Channel we have said, are terrible. The archipelagos are wind country.
Upon entering every isle, they have wind tunnels who max back drafting. Toil is bad for
the sea and good for the land. The wind winds away the money stealers and wrecks
ships. This toil applies to the Channel Islands as the French Archipelagos. Cholera
broke out on Jersey and Guernesey. There was however another outbreak on Guernesey
in the middle ages, so furious an epidemic that the records keeper burned the archives
with the rest of everything else touched by the pestilence.
We call these happy islands in France: British isles, and in England they are
called Norman isles. The Islands of Manche mount money; copper only though. A
Roman road, still visible, has led to Coutances in Jersey.
Then in 709, we said that the ocean has hardened Jersey to France. Twelve
1
The Galois etymology here is from Chinese. Houhanshu is one of the official
Chinese historical works compiled by Fan Ye around the fifth century A.D. It is an
history of Eastern Han from 25 to 220 A.D.
parishes were furiously engulfed by war and high water. Families actually living in
Normandy were still the signatures of these parishes and their divine right is under the
walrus and the carpenter; from which there comes divine rights.

HISTORY, LEGENDE, RELIGION

The six original parishes of Guernesey belonged to a single lord, Neel, Visacount
of Cotentin, marooned at the battle of Dunes in 1047. In the meantime it, says
Dumaresq, there have been them isles of Manche with volcanos. The date of the twelve
parishes of Jersey is listed in the Black Book of the cathedral in Coutances. The sire of
Briquebec installed as Baron of Guernesey. Alderney was home to Henry the Artisan.
Jersey has been subjected by two thieves, Cesar and Rollon.
Haro is a cry for Duke (ha! Rollo!) unless it comes from the Saxon haran,
screaming. The cry should be harrowed until justice has been done. Before Rollo,
Duke of Normandy, there were, on the arcchipelago, Solomon, King of Brittany. For
much of Normandy at Jersey and much of Britain at Guernesey; nature there is
re-procured history, Jersey has more grasslands and Guernesey more rocky roads; Jersey
is more green then Guernesey a little after.
Country manners cover the isles. The Earl of Essex has left a ruin in Alderney,
known as Essex Castle. Jersey has Montorgueil, Guernesey has le Chateau Cornet. The
Chateau Cornet contends construction on a foundation who’s been a Holm, or Helm; this
metaphor is retrieved in casqettes, Casques. The Chateau Cornet has been sieged by the
Picardy pirate Eustache, and Montorgueil by Duguesclin; the bulwarks like the broads
boast of their besiegers when they are famous.
A pope, in the fifteenth century, declared Jersey and Guernesey neutral islands.
They gravitated to war and not to schism. Calvin, preached at Jersey for Father Morice
and at Guernesey for Nicolas Baudoin, and made his entrance onto the Normand
archipelago in 1563. He had prospered there, until Luther, carried the gentry to this day
in Wesleyanism, extrapolated from Protestantism who’s countenance has England’s
future in it.
Churches abound on the archipelago. The details measure its cost upon its
insistent tone; dominated by temples. Catholic devotion has diminished; a plug nickel of
Jersey or of
Guernesey more port of chapels than importers of plug pickles, Spanish or Italian, in the
same grandeur. Methodists properly denounced, primitive Methodists, related
Methodists, independent Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Millenaries, Quakers,
Bible-Christians, Brethren (Brothers of Plymouth), non-sectarians, etc.; stirring the
Episcopal Anglican Church, stirring the Roman Pontifical Church. There can be seen in
Jersey one Mormon Chapel. With recognition of the orthodox bibles where Satan is
written here without Capitol : satan. It is well said.
 If you want to propose Satan, then hate Voltaire. The word Voltaire is, it would
seem, one of the pronunciations for the word Satan. When he is summoned by Voltaire,
all these dissidence begin rallying, the Mormons coincide with the Anglican, their accord
is made in choler, and all the sects are no longer hatful. The anthem of Voltaire is the
intersecting point of all the varieties of Protestantism. It’s mated remarkably, for
Catholicism detests Voltaire, which is what the Protestants use to execrate with. Geneve
bids on Rome. They crescendo in backbiting. Calas, Sirven, so many pages eloquently
against the Dragonnades who are doing nothing. Voltaire fathered the dogma, there is
sufficient. He has defended the Protestants, but he has injured Protestantism. The
Protestants are the continued ingratitude of the Orthodox. Someone who has had pulic
speaking in St. Helier for a quest, was warned that if he named Voltaire in his speech, the
quest would abort. As long as the word passed will have enough wind for making a
word, Voltaire will be rejected. Listen to all the voice of the people: “He has neither
genius, nor talent, nor spirit. Unflattering age, prognosis death. It is eternally “argued.”
That is its glory. Speak of Voltaire with quiescence and justice, if that were possible?!
When a man dominates a century and incarnates progress, he has no more actions to
critique, but only to hate.

XI

OLD PENITENCE AND OLD SAINTS

The Cyclades make a circle, the Channel Islands make a triangle. When looking
on a map, which is seen as the crow flies to humans, the Channel Islands, a segment of
the sea of tranquility is divided between those three culminant points, Alderney, which
marks the north point, Guernesey, which marks the west point, Jersey, which marks the
south point. Each of these three mother isles have authored them with the name chicklet
islands. Alderney has Bur-Hou, Ortach and Caskets, Guernesey has Herm, Jet-Hou and
Li-Hou; Jersey open to the cote of arms from France at its centre being the bay of Saint
Aubin, to which these two groups, sparse but distinct, the Grelets and Minquiers amass in
the deep blue, which, like an air, or an aroma, precipitates all the same two masses snug
into one port of a hive. At the centre of the archipelago, Sark, to which are attached
Brecq-Hou and the goat isles, is the link between Guernesey and Jersey. The
comparison of the Cyclades to the Channel Islands certainly remade the schools of
mystical and mythical which, under restoration, has rejoined to the Master of Eckstein,
and he had provided material form to a symbol: the archipelago of Hellas being rounded,
[round opening], the archipelago of the angular Manche, bristling, snarling, angular, the
one almost harmonious, the other chicaned, it is not for nothing that one is Greek and the
other is Norman.
Formerly, before recorded history, these isles of Manche were ferocious. The
first islands were probably inhabited by primitive men, the type found in
Moulin-Guignon, and who apparently are of the race from the Cro-Magnon. They lived
half the year on fish and shellfish, and the other half, on shipwrecks. Their pillaging was
aside from their resource. They knew only two seasons, the fishing season and the
shipwreck season; thus the Greenlanders Flanders are the summer hunt for reindeer and
the winter hunt for seal. All these isles, later on known as Normand, were filled with
canaries, brambles, animal holes, and lodgings for Fabian Pirates. The voice of a local
historian said energetically: Cove of Rats and “Pirat[e]s.” The Romans veered there, and
had not made a mediocre outpost; they crucified the pirates and celebrated the Vandals,
i.e. the feast of pickpockets. This feast is celebrated more by some of our neighbors on
the 25th of July, and in this particular town all year round. Jersey, Sark, and Guernesey
were once called “Angel,” “Sarge“, and “Twice-Sarge.” Alderney is “Redanae,” less
than what should be of Thanet. A legend affirms that on the isle of “Rats,” insula
rattorum [island of rats], the promiscuity of male rabbits and female rats, born on the bed
of a Turkey coined “Turkey cony.” According to Furetiere, abbot of Chalivoy, all the
same La Fontaine is accused of ignoring the difference between logs and wood-shavings,
France for a long time has not perceived Alderney as rolled over. Alderney, in effect,
neither respects the history of Normandy as a stronghold. Still, Rabelais knew the
Norman archipelago; he named Herm, and Sark, which he called Cerq. “I assure you
that this is Ice land, other times I have seen the islands of Herm and Cerq vexed between
Britain and England.” (Edition of 1558, Lyon, p. 423)
The Caskets are an indubitable place of refuse. The English, there two hundred
years, had for industry repairing the guns. One of the guns covered with oysters and
mussels, is the museum Valognes.
Herm is a sea of tranquility. Saint Tugdual, friend of Saint Sampson, has been in
prayer to Hermes, as St. Magloire in Sark. There were hermits who’s Baltimore
Aureoles covered all the pivots and pitfalls. Helier preys closely to Jersey, and
Marcouf in the clefs of Calvados. It was the time where the hermit Eparchias sanctified
Saint Cybard in the caves of Angouleme and where of the anabasis of Cresentius,
descended into the forests of Treve, made craved a temple for Diana, in the looking glass,
fast, a-gassed for five seasons. It was Sark, which was his sanctuary, his “Jonas
Hammock,” that Maggloir had composed the hymn of All Saints, was rebuilt by Santeuil,
Caelo quos eadem gloria Consecrata [the Heavens extol the glory of the Consecrated].
It’s more from them who throw stones at the Saxon sackers whose fleets came plundering
on two occasions his prayer. The archipelago was all the same somewhat incapacitated
at that time by amwarydour, cassocks of the Celtic settlement.
From time to time Maggloir crossed the water, and would consort with Mactierne
of Guernesey, Nivou, who profited as a prophet. Maggloire one day, having made a
miracle, made also a show not to eat fish. For another thing, preserving the morals of
dogs and not to give a guilty sith this monk, he banished from the island of Sark the dogs,
legislation that still subsists. Saint Maggloir has made the archipelago into a number of
other services. He went to Jersey to reason that the mob had on Christmas Day, a bad
habit of changing into all kinds of beasts, in honor of Mithras. St. Maggloir put an end
to this abuse. His relics were stolen, in the reign of Nominoe, vassal of Charles the Bald,
by the monks of Lehon-lez-Dinan. All these facts are proved by Bollandists, such as in
Acta Sancti Marcuphi [Holy Actions of Marcuphi] etc., and the Ecclesiastical History of
the Abbey Trigan. Victorice Rouen, friend of Martin de Tours, had his grotto in Sark,
who, in the eleventh century, savvy to the Abbey of Montebourg. In the hour when we
speak, Sark is a stronghold immobilized to forty residence.

XII

LOCAL PECULIARITIES

Each island has its share of money in part, his slang in part, his government in
part, his prejudices in part. Jersey’s concern for a French owner. If he was going to
buy for a song the whole island! In Jersey, they defend against strangers staking land; in
Guernesey, its all free. In contrast, religious austerity is lower in the first island than in
the second, on Sunday, Jerseyians have the key fields while they don’t have the spot on
Sunday Guernesyians. The Bible is executional at Saint Pierre Port more than Saint
Helier. To buy a property in Guernesey is complex, particularly for the ignorant
stranger, of a singular peril; buys votes, on the arm, spoke for twenty years, of the
commercial and financial situation of sellers there they would have been in the precise
moment when the sale had sold them.
Other tangles are born from the diversity of currencies and measures. The
shilling, our former ascalin or shelin, worth twenty and five farthings in England,
twenty-six farthings in Jersey, and twenty-four in Guernesey. The British “Crown” has,
themselves the same caprice; a bill from Guernesey isn’t the same as one from Jersey,
which isn’t the same as the English bill. In Guernesey they count the hook of the field
and the hook on the poles. This is the exchange rate in Jersey. In Guernesey they use
only French money, and use the English names for money. One franc is called a “ten
pence.” The lack of symmetry goes back there would the islands had more women than
men; six women for five men.
Guernesey has had many nicknames, some archeological and is for scholars of
Granosia, and fro the loyal little England. It resembles, in effect, by its geometrical
shape like England; Sark would resemble Ireland, except Ireland is east. Guernesey has
in its waters two hundred varieties crayfish and forty species of sponges. It was
dedicated by the Romans to Saturn, but the Celts had given it to Gwyn, she did not earn
much, Gwyn is, like Saturn; a devourer of children.
Blue Christmas
By Joseph Markenstein

Christmas is here! Come let us adore Him!

The bells are ringing, the people are singing,
All, in every house, have blessed with Chrism
Every hall and door widely springing.

Paradise has been called in Jesus’ recall,

Of us all in His person, Holy Spirit in His breast,
Best two out of three is His Spirit in gala ball
Fall on your knees, O hear the Angels Voices

O Night Divine! Sublime live in Blue,

I can only think of Hue this Christmas tide,
Abide with each other for our together: Salut!
Pius the ninth for us into His Side.

And with John the twenty third is absurd

Back to Accord, I’m not really board
At any of these Divine Dialogues like dessert
Though to be final still in God’s will here and abroad.

Thank you in advance for this favor that you bestow

I have only to know how to be still anew in You.
All through the desert of this life I’ve walked here below,
I’m sure You already know my hearts boo-boo.

All through the night I’ve taken You twice as nice

In my Dreams, Jesus, than whenever awake.
Bake my heart into Yours so gentle as a Dove of mice,
And once or thrice reprove me if I be a cake.

So to burn and turn in You around the stroke of twelve

Is what we shall do in those dreams of mine out of time
Either awake or asleep I know not but only God’s Breath
Knows a day dream from a night in flight through that field sublime.