gregory
While working on my annual quotation Identification Competition, I came across a VERY fine poem by Ian Duhig that I wanted to share with you all. Best tarot poem I have ever seen.
Rider
You like poetry? I’m not reading your mind,
just your diary, where I note you’ve put me down
as ‘Sosostris’. Bit of a card yourself, sir.
Oh: so this appointment’s just research?
Then let’s see what I can conjure up
by way of facts. Our oldest surviving tarot
is the quattrocento Visconti—Sforza deck -
from Prospero’s court, sir, if that helps.
Though the Church banned cards for gambling,
she recommended tarot for moral instruction,
as Calvino would again for plotting novels,
calling it ‘a machine for telling stories’.
Check out his The Castle of Crossed Destinies
with Crowley’s Little, Big and King’s Dark Tower
where his Man in Black reads Roland’s future.
This Rider deck’s the product of adepts
of Yeats’s Golden Dawn, but coloured later,
tailoring its suits to Querents’ skin-types -
you’re Swords, also for the element of air.
First you must shuffle. Slowly. Four times.
No: nothing to do with Templars, anagrams
of ROTA, TORA, Sephirothic Trees of Life
or ‘tar-ro’, supposed Egyptian for ‘royal road’.
The drawn blank: your Significator card. We turn
the Chariot drawn by one black and one white sphinx.
Some see here Cathar dualism, Descartes des cartes.
What do I think. Of course I think yes and no.
Wheel of Fortune: Douglas writes that this beast
was once equine, as if turning a gin-wheel.
The Magician (or the Cobbler in Italian packs)
reversed, suggesting mental illness, black bile;
this Ace, black gold and one-eyed merchants. Death,
a Yorkshire Rose with ‘XIII’ on his banner. Ends.
Beginnings. Depends. Nothing’s that black-and-white.
These tarot cards are mirrors, not windows.
Does my reading disappoint? You think me
a hypocrite lecteur. Forgive my little joke:
I can be a bit of a card too. As above,
so below. Or as the Sufi have it, sometimes
the man on the saddle: sometimes the saddle
on the man. This isn’t only research is it?
Mid-life crisis? You feel yourself trapped mid-
stream, with no sign of another horse
for that change which is as good as a rest.
And you want to know more about the rest?
The rest is . . . sorry, that’s your fifty minutes.
Shall I book you another disappointment?
Rider
You like poetry? I’m not reading your mind,
just your diary, where I note you’ve put me down
as ‘Sosostris’. Bit of a card yourself, sir.
Oh: so this appointment’s just research?
Then let’s see what I can conjure up
by way of facts. Our oldest surviving tarot
is the quattrocento Visconti—Sforza deck -
from Prospero’s court, sir, if that helps.
Though the Church banned cards for gambling,
she recommended tarot for moral instruction,
as Calvino would again for plotting novels,
calling it ‘a machine for telling stories’.
Check out his The Castle of Crossed Destinies
with Crowley’s Little, Big and King’s Dark Tower
where his Man in Black reads Roland’s future.
This Rider deck’s the product of adepts
of Yeats’s Golden Dawn, but coloured later,
tailoring its suits to Querents’ skin-types -
you’re Swords, also for the element of air.
First you must shuffle. Slowly. Four times.
No: nothing to do with Templars, anagrams
of ROTA, TORA, Sephirothic Trees of Life
or ‘tar-ro’, supposed Egyptian for ‘royal road’.
The drawn blank: your Significator card. We turn
the Chariot drawn by one black and one white sphinx.
Some see here Cathar dualism, Descartes des cartes.
What do I think. Of course I think yes and no.
Wheel of Fortune: Douglas writes that this beast
was once equine, as if turning a gin-wheel.
The Magician (or the Cobbler in Italian packs)
reversed, suggesting mental illness, black bile;
this Ace, black gold and one-eyed merchants. Death,
a Yorkshire Rose with ‘XIII’ on his banner. Ends.
Beginnings. Depends. Nothing’s that black-and-white.
These tarot cards are mirrors, not windows.
Does my reading disappoint? You think me
a hypocrite lecteur. Forgive my little joke:
I can be a bit of a card too. As above,
so below. Or as the Sufi have it, sometimes
the man on the saddle: sometimes the saddle
on the man. This isn’t only research is it?
Mid-life crisis? You feel yourself trapped mid-
stream, with no sign of another horse
for that change which is as good as a rest.
And you want to know more about the rest?
The rest is . . . sorry, that’s your fifty minutes.
Shall I book you another disappointment?
I wonder if he is - here....