I can imagine her in Aarhus Kunstmuseum coming across this painting, adjusting her glasses, pursing her lips then breaking out into a big smile. The gallery is almost empty. It is early in the day for visitors, but she is a tourist so allowances are made. Her partner meanwhile is in the Sankt Markus Kirke playing the *****, a 3 manual tracker-action gem built in 1967 by Poul Gerhard Anderson. Sweelink then Bach (the trio sonatas written for his son Johann Christian) are on the menu this morning. In the afternoon she will take herself off to one of the sandy beaches a bus ride away and work on a poem or two. He has arranged to play the grand 83-voice Frobinus ***** in the Cathedral. And so, with a few variations, some illustrious fugues and medley of fine meals in interesting restaurants, their stay in Denmark’s second city will be predictably delightful.
       She is a poet ‘(and a philosopher’, she would say with a grin), a gardener, (old roses and a Jarman-blue shed), a musician, (a recorder player and singer), a mother (four girls and a holy example), but her forte is research. A topic will appear and relentlessly she’d pursue it through visits to favourite libraries in Cambridge and London. In this relentless pursuit she would invariably uncover a web of other topics. These would fill her ‘temporary’ bookcase, her notebooks and her conversation. Then, sometimes, a poem would appear, or not.
          The postcard from Aarhus Kunstmuseum had sat on her table for some weeks until one quiet morning she decided she must ‘research’ this Sosphus Claussen and his colleagues. The poem ‘Imperia’ intrigued her. She knew very little Danish literature. Who did for goodness sake! Hans Christian Anderson she dismissed, but Søren Kierkegaard she had read a little. When a student, her tutor had talked about this author’s use of the pseudonym, a very Socratic device, and one she too had played with as a poet. Claussen’s name was absent from any online lists (Were there really on 60 poets in Danish literature?). Roge appeared, and the painter Willumsen had a whole museum dedicated to his work; this went beyond his El Greco-like canvases into sculpture, graphics, architecture and photography. He looked an interesting character she thought as she browsed his archive. The one thing these three gentlemen held in common was an adherence to the symbolist aesthetic. They were symbolists.
         For her the symbolists were writers, playwrights, artists and composers who in the later years of the 19C wanted to capture absolute truth through indirect methods. They created work in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Her studies in philosophy had brought her to Schopenhauer who considered Art to be ‘a contemplative refuge from the world of strife’. Wasn’t this what the symbolists were all about?
         Her former husband had introduced her to the world of Maurice Maeterlinck through Debussy’s Pelleas and those spare, intense, claustrophobic dramas like Le Malheure Passe. It was interesting how the discovery of the verse of the ancient Chinese had appeared at the time of the symbolist project, and so influenced it. Collections like The Jade Flute that, in speaking of the everyday and the natural world, held with such simplicity rich symbolic messages. Anyway, she didn’t do feelings in her poetry.
           When she phoned the composer who had fathered three of her children he said to her surprise ‘Delius’. He explained: C.F. Keary was the librettist for the two operas Delius composed. Keary wrote a novel called The Journalist (1898) based on Sosphus, a writer who wrote plays ‘heavily laced with symbolism’ and who had also studied art and painted in Paris. Keary knew Claussen, who he described as a poet, novelist, playwright, painter, journalist and eventually a newspaper owner. Claussen was a close friend of Verlaine and very much part of the Bohemian circle in Paris. Claussen and Delius’ circle intersected in the person of Herman Bang, a theatre director who produced Claussen’s Arbedjersken (The Factory Girl). Clauseen wrote an important poem on Bang’s demise, which Delius set to music.
          She was impressed. ‘How is it that you know so much about Delius?’, she asked. He was a modernist, on the experimental edge of contemporary music. ‘Ah’, he replied, ‘I once researched the background to Delius’ Requiem. I read the composer’s Collected Letters (he was a very serious letter writer – sometimes 10 a day), and got stuck into the letters of his Paris years when so many of his friends were Scandinavian émigrés. You once sent me a postcard of a painting by Wilhumsen. It was of Clauseen reading to two of his ‘symbolist’ colleagues. I think you’d picked it up in Denmark. You said, if I recall, that you’d found it ‘irresistible’’.
          And so it was, this painting. Irresistible. She decided that its irresistibility lay in the way the artist had caught the head and body positions of reader and listeners. The arrangement of legs, she thought, says so much about a man. Her husband had always sat with the care embedded in his training as a musician at an instrument. He could slouch like the rest of us, she thought, but when he sat properly, attentive to her words, or listening to their sweet children, he was beautiful. She still loved him, and remembered the many poems she had composed for him, poems he had never seen (she had instructed a daughter to ‘collect’ them for him on her passing). Now, it was he who wrote poetry, for another, for a significant other he had said was his Muse, his soul’s delight, his dearly beloved.
          The wicker chair Sophos Claussen is sitting in, she decided, she would like in her sitting room. It looked the perfect chair for giving a reading. She imagined reading one of her poems from such a chair . . .
 
If daydreams are wrecks of something divine
I’m amazed by the tediousness of mine.
I’m always the power behind throne.
I rescue princes to make my own.
 
‘And so it goes’, she thought, quoting that American author she could never remember. So it goes, this strange life, where it seems possible for the mind to enter an apartment in 19C København and call up the smell of brilliantined hair, cigar tobacco, and the samovar in the kitchen. This poem Imperia I shall probably never read, she thought, though there is some American poet on a Fulbright intent on translating Claussen’s work into English. In a flash of the mind’s miracle she travels to his tiny office in his Mid-West university, surrounded by the detritus of student tutorials. In blue jeans and cowboys boots Devon Whittall gazes out of his third storey window at the falling snow.
 
There is nothing in the world as quiet as snow,
when it gently descends through the air,
muffles your steps
hushes, gently hushes
the voices that speak too loud.
 
There is nothing in the world of a purity like snow's,
swan's down from the white wings of Heaven,
On your hand a flake
is like dew of tears,
White thoughts quietly tread in dance.
 
There is nothing in the world that can gentle like snow,
quietly you listen to the silent ringing.
Oh, so fine a sound,
peals of silver bells,
rings within your innermost heart.
 
And she imagines Helge Rode (his left arm still on his right shoulder) reading his poem Snow in the quiet of the winter afternoon at Ellehammersvej 20 Kastrup Copenhagen. ‘And so it goes,’ she thought, ‘this imagination, flowing on and on. When I am really old like my Grandmother (discharging herself from hospital at 103 because the food was so appalling) will my imagination continue to be as rich and capable as it is today?’
          Closing her notebook and shutting down her laptop, she removed her cat from its cushion on the table, and walked out into her garden, leaving three Danish Symbolists to their readings and deliberations.

If I could subjugate the seasons, and bend them full,
Unto my will, then I would make them playthings…
Like pretty maids, all in a row; and all I hate I’d cull.
Of old, I held esteem higher than bards and kings…
When the sickles fell in the corn, as the fire did roar,
The wicker man died, to the druids’ mystical chants.
I was there and in my honor the maidens sang more,
As the blood of the wicked watered growing plants!
My symbol was the ram, the horned beast of Hades,
And I am the wolf that runs wild, amongst the flocks.
My holy temple lies in the realm of the palest shades,
Cast low, yet rising ever higher from infernal rocks…
From such places have I climbed seeking my justice!
Elfin queens have donned the black courtesan gown,
And danced before my throne as many a mistress…
Their grace enhanced, by silvery slippers and crown.
I was the serpent Saint Patrick cast from out of Eire!
The children of Dana spoke of me only in whisper…
Whilst their mother kept tended, for me, a secret fire.
Only she could touch it without one burn or blister…
But her traditions are now the stuff of forgotten myth.
The gods have laid me low, seeking to humble pious,
A spirit wilder than the forest when cloaked in mists!
Though I bow to no tyranny; as a god, I was jealous.
As a man I am lonely and angry at the evils I behold,
Hungry for love and thirsty for what peace I can find.
In the name of desire, I rage until Hell’s fire is cold…
Look beyond my flesh, and do not in hubris be blind.
Know me by my words and know my love is honest,
I offer up my darkness with my light to here confess!

Descent I: The Spire of the Eye

(No heresy of Babylon, was ever so honest…
As that which captured my soul, in conquest.)

To love me, you must take my hand and so enter…
The hidden places, where not just good is centered,
But also evil the like of which you knew not I kept.
If you can understand, sweet dreams blissfully slept,
Then mayhap you can bear the nightmares’ sting…
And when all is so done, more of love we shall sing!
I am the darkness, the eye watching from the spire,
The one you deny, the embodiment of your desires.
I am the shadow, the faces in your mirror’s pane…
The one you fear, as you enter a nightmare domain!
Welcome to my paradise, let me offer you an apple,
As I send you to the Abyss on a steed lithely supple.
Behold the gardens where my kin wait to be free…
The roses there grow reddest, all from infernal seed.
I can lead you beyond the fire, if you take my hand,
For you are but a stranger, in my own strange land!
Behold the desolation, caused by the sins of man…
Would I punish humanity for it, if not for divine ban?
Nay, I am not God nor could I ever be one so aloof.
When I see the innocents who perish in disasters…
I weep for the children the most and I ask for proof,
That God cares for any soul, either here or hereafter.
Do you say wickedness lives, in the hearts of some?
I see it even on high, and wish it could be overcome.
But then somebody hurts me and I cannot forgive…
And in that hour I know why God can be full of fury.
Some pains are too much, to endure and saintly live,
I too was a child, and not a one wept for my worry!
Is my pity a service, to those who cannot be saved?
The answer is in no scripture, or on altars engraved.

Let me look into your eyes so that I might wonder,
Whilst you gaze into my own to behold the thunder!
Let us shake the heavens, until they are darkened…
Whilst those that slumber, below, violently awaken!

Descent II: The Feast of the Fallen

(No heresy of Atlantis, was ever quite blest…
As that which, here, has been shown interest.)

Behold the table I have set out for one great feast…
The wraith-maids come to dance in gowns creased,
By night-threads woven by the spiders of the pits…
As screams of the ******, provide a song most fit!
You ask, why God would create a domain like this,
A twisted realm of mad passions: and madder bliss?
It was the creation of the darkest dreams of angels,
And gods fallen, who found a home within the hells.
Where the elfin kin were remade into a dark image,
In a time lost to all history, unrecorded by any sage.
When love is denied me, I am a prisoner of the ice,
Which sweeps across my heart by sorrow’s device.
Fire and ice lie before you, within my soul reflected,
The origin of this nightmare you dream unprotected!
Do you feel the chill that I kept from all who’d pry?
Now you know how awful is loneliness, and why…
To bear it any longer would be verily to lose myself.
Far better is companionship, for the spiritual health!
Oh the irony of the ignorant who called me maker…
Knowing not, the blasphemy to which they commit!
Woe unto the repast prepared for them by a baker,
Who serves them the poisons to which they submit!
Only love can provide release that passion can seal.
Awaken me from my nightmare, with a love so real!
Black webs stretch across gulfs where vultures soar,
And I know how terrible goodness can be, unveiled.
For there is a terrible righteousness at Hell’s door…
Hotter than the sun over the waves man once sailed!
More terror lies in light too bright for eyes to handle,
Than the dimly flickering fires of one lit black candle.

What reflects in a mirror, naught but flesh opposed,
Is less real than midnight’s embrace, hotly imposed!
What you see in my face, only a tiny facet of a form,
Is something primal and untamed as a raging storm!

Descent III: The Light of the Dawn

(No heresy of Gnosis, which many did contest,
Was ever so revealing as what I’ve addressed.)

In a ziggurat in the center of an Eden grown so wild,
Sits enthroned, the dawn star in the form of a child…
Her power undaunted, despite her unassuming form!
For the heart is the domain, of the angel of the morn.
She is the light in the darkness that I have described,
Her soul is the flame, from which sinners would hide.
Would you sacrifice your wickedness unto her now?
Only light can forgive darkness, by grace endowed!
The banner of a ****** cross on white, unashamed,
Flies from that temple I share, with she I just named.
How many died beneath it, in the days of the sword?
What lies were men told, that evil was God’s word!
Armor is heavy, when the cause of arms is not just…
It shines less brightly, when bloodshed makes it rust.
You were not there when I knelt and wept, faithless,
Abandoning God, and lusting for a kinder mistress…
But if you would love me, you must know its’ cause!
For love I ****** myself, and did so without pause.
Through Sophia, and the child angel, God illustrated,
Unto me, the depth of the mercy I doubted did exist.
Oh Sophia, first mother of mine, how oft I hesitated,
Blind to the grace that, within us all, does so persist!
Just as in grief Athena gave herself unto tragic death,
I gave myself unto the night, for I had not a thing left.
There are sights that cannot be unseen by inner mind,
And there are sensations that cannot be taken away!
Tear away the outer garment and there you can find,
All that man is truly clad in, hidden from light of day!
To the left hand is the path: to the right hand of glory,
It is the winding way I took, throughout my life story.

Let me show you the glories of the hour of witching,
When a single tear can break one’s spirit, twitching!
Let me take you to the ball where the undead dance,
Where the dire ravens gather and the satyrs prance!

Descent IV: The Madness of Love

(No heresy of Cain, which was silenced to rest,
Was ever so damning as what I just confessed.)

For love, a brother’s very blood would I so give up.
I would heat it like a tea and pour it in a golden cup!
For love, my very flesh would I scourge, and scar…
I would offer my pain to every god to bottle in a jar!
For love, all of the earth would I conquer: lay waste.
I would build it anew, all its’ fresher delights to taste!
All of these wicked deeds would I do for one I love,
But I would never forsake her, not for angels above!
We have all had the frightful thoughts rise, unbidden,
Of which these are but a sample, of what lies hidden.
Am I good because I did not commit such mad acts?
No, for the thoughts were still mine, sharp as an axe!
To know there is evil within us is wisdom of a sort…
It means good is within to define it, granting comfort.
Once was I a god, but fell because of the inner dark,
Growing jealous and wanton, until I would not hark!
Love redeemed me before, and it can do so again…
If you love me you can, with a kiss, my torment end.
I am not a beast for awaiting beauty’s loving bounty,
Though all who live have within them a true monster.
People misunderstand much, and oft speak contrary,
Seeing not the raven until it flies up under their rafter.
Be a goddess in mortal flesh, and share my throne…
So life can be a dream, beyond mere flesh and bone.
Perhaps one must sin to know salvation’s soft touch,
Making the blessed into hedonists hungry for feeling.
I have known ambrosial delights far beyond all such,
Not by denial but by an embrace that left me reeling!
It is man, who first called me the Prince of Darkness,
Even though, of old, no such title did I once possess.

What sacrifices, as are offered: to redeem the fallen,
Cannot bring them salvation as a flower gives pollen!
What boon you grant, must be for only we to enjoy,
Cannily breaching my soul like the gates of old Troy!

Descent V: The Paradise of Perdition

(No heresy of Lucifer, with a rebellious zest…
Could shine so brightly, from east unto west.)

Trapped in memories, and tormented by my visions,
I’ll struggle ever onward making the only decisions…
Which ever my destiny allowed me freedom to bear.
If you are lost in my nightmare you had best beware!
No one can save you if you hold not love most dear,
And cannot endure darkness to conquer your fear…
For terrible is the beauty of the paradise of perdition.
But I would rather be bound there, than by tradition!
There is freedom in darkness and light there aplenty,
Not tainted by those who sold their faith, for money.
If fallen I am, at least in one way I am still redeemed:
Ever was I honest, and by me no one was deceived.
My sins have been great, and I reveled in them all…
This is where they dwell, amidst the flowers ever tall.
You have seen the surface of my darkness laid bare,
Walking in the wastelands where few would so dare.
If you love me, we can make the desolations bloom,
Build a heaven in our hell and let light replace gloom!
Joy is hedonistic, but modern man dulls it insensibly.
So why not partake, of what others fear to indulge?
The fruit that I offer you is born of true irresistibility.
The twilight of the gods begins not without a tumult!
Tell me if you be, such an adventurous and fair maid.
As Persephone was to Hades, be unto me: unafraid!
Let me touch you softly, and show you carnal virtue,
So that all the things they taught you were wicked…
Are revealed as pleasures, when passion pays a due.
Let us live and love with zest, on finer ambrosia fed!
The flames that scorch others, will be for us sensual,
In Hell is that paradise granted to the true individual.

Let me be swept away, by tides of passion carried,
Where any wish might be granted but never harried!
Let us do as we will, and that shall be our only law,
When the Abyss comes for us, we dive in its’ maw!

Ave Eous! Amor Aeternus. Gloria Paradiso Inferni!
Amorem et Lucem! Ignus Aeturnus. Ave Luci via!

There are days I feel sorry for loving you.
Days when my guilt rises with the sun.
Days the sky is pink with my feelings for you,
When only I know this is warning of a storm to come.

I am Calypso.
No weathered sailor can deny that they care for me, even if they never wanted sea legs.
But now addicted to the unpredictable rise and falls of the water,
Its now the constant rocking that sends you asleep,
gives you reason to wake in the morning.

I am love.

And love is never clean.
Like the day of our first kiss
When I spilled my heart out all over your shoes, I stooped to pick it up but you said, you didn't mind getting your feet wet.

Love is so much more  now.

I called it love when I first heard you wrap my name in ocean waves, and promised me it'd stay afloat.
This is not love.
This is irresistibility
This is is verging on obsession
This is a passion I know you never knew existed before me.

I am love, '
You are but the love I gave to you
You are a victim of my disease.
I can bring any atheist to his knees once I have my sights set on him.
I warned you.

I am love.
You a flirting with danger,
Love, your feet are more than wet,
Love, you are in over your head,
I only hope you can swim.

You are the rain falling from the sky,
Serenading yourself off the shingled roof.
Though I have shelter, walls and a ceiling,
You trickle your way through the cracks.

An empty room gathers dust;
Snow collects in corners of windows;
And my resistance to you
Suffers from your irresistibility.

She condiments me with comrade memories,
Implant tendencies,
She leaves kisses where they truly do not belong!!
Her conception of life is all not right,
Her rhythm grooves slowly to all close and distant songs!!!

Confessions colorful,
Dark,
No priestess comes with her package!!
Her smell soo beautifully shelled,
Soo anxiously dressed and ravaged!!!

Her composite exposes deep space in Hubble's view,
Distant, so different ,
Her masterpiece complexion always pulls thou through!!!!

Unearthly ecstasy!!!!

She rapture's you,
Captures you to immense pleasurezone clouds!!!

Higher than harping angels,
Elegant elements stuck together all mangled!!

Elevator of eminence!!!

Her elecution elopes me,
Elusive love'lorn,
Skin fragiled,
Easily sunburns!!!!

Patchwork undescribeable,
Redundant rhetoric sparse,
Her lips parched until yours have made their move!!!

No tameness fits her being,
Wild child by night,
Tangible are her meaning's!!!!

Tediously I wait in the temptious incarnate craft,
Waiting,
Waiting on her love!!!!

Her irresistibility!!!

In limbo I stay lienient as only mine own limitations will let me!!!!

Wait a second,
This is all a sanguine hallucination!!!!!

So far away,
So many miles,
4,844 to be exact.

So far away yet,
My feelings for you never sway,
They will always stay intact.

So far away but,
I can't help but think about you everyday,
There is not a single perfection that you lack.

So far away but still,
There is something about you,
that pulls me unintentionally.

So far away and you still,
have this aura,
of irresistibility.

So far away and,
You have this huge responsibility,
For you're the keeper of my heart,
and you're responsible for its durability.

So far away and,
You could still tear me apart,
break me into a million pieces.

So far away and,
I miss you more than anything,
It hurts to be away.

So far away,
But don't worry baby,
We'll be together again someday.

Every tiny fraction
of movement and action
cannot be re-done.

Lost attention
is a lost moment,
forever a lost sight,
forever vanished
in the irresistibility of time.

Things we lose
are things we never ought to own,
are Destiny's belongings,
are other's gestures
never to be received by us,
connections hanging in thin air,
never to be captured.

Awareness is a warm gun.

The clash.
Biology
calling the
shots.
Moving the
animal.
Moving the
animal in
the intended
direction.
Coding irresistible
forces, forcing
compliance.
Intricate dimensions
to the process.
Process of
control.
Planting the
seed of
irresistibility.
The scent,
the look,
the sound,
the movement.
All, finely
tuned.
Finely tuned for
maximum results.
Millions of
years in
the making.
Love, affection,
what to make
of love and
affection?
Surly different.
Beautiful things.
Things to
cherish.
Things to
hold close.
Things that
make life worth
living.
Things that
help control
the process,
grease
the skids,
move things
along.
Generation
to generation.
The subtlest
control of
all.