The Book of Ephraim (A)

Admittedly I err by undertaking This in its present form. The baldest prose Reportage was called for, that would reach The widest public in the shortest time. Time, it had transpired, was of the essence. Time, the very attar of the Rose, Was running out. We, though, were ancient foes, I and the deadline. Also my subject matter Gave me pause--so intimate, so novel, Best after all to do it as a novel? Looking about me, I found characters Human and otherwise (if the distinction Meant anything in fiction). Saw my way To a plot, or as much of one as still allowed For surprise and pleasure in its working-out. Knew my setting; and had, from the start, a theme Whose steady light shone back, it seemed, from every Least detail exposed to it. I came To see it as an old, exalted one: The incarnation and withdrawal of A god. That last phrase is Northrop Frye's. I had stylistic hopes moreover. Fed Up so long and variously by Our age's fancy narrative concoctions I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean Over the centuries by mild old tongues, Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous. Lacking that voice, the in its fashion brilliant Nouveau roman (even the one I wrote) Struck me as an orphaned form, whose followers, Suckled by Woolf not Mann, had stories told them In childhood, if at all, by adults whom They could not love or honor. So my narrative Wanted to be limpid, unfragmented; My characters, conventional stock figures Afflicted to a minimal degree With personality and past experience-- A witch, a hermit, innocent young lovers, The kinds of being we recall from Grimm, Jung, Verdi, and the commedia dell' arte. That such a project was beyond me merely Incited further futile stabs at it. My downfall was "word-painting." Exquisite Peek-a-boo plumage, limbs aflush from sheer Bombast unfurling through the troposphere Whose earthward denizens' implosion startles Silly quite a little crowd of mortals --My readers, I presumed from where I sat In the angelic secretariat. The more I struggled to be plain, the more Mannerism hobbled me. What for? Since it had never truly fit, why wear The shoe of prose? In verse the feet went bare. Measures, furthermore, had been defined As what emergency required. Blind Promptings put at last the whole mistaken Enterprise to sleep in darkest Macon (Cf. "The Will"), and I alone was left To tell my story. For it seemed that Time-- The grizzled washer of his hands appearing To say so in a spectrum-bezeled space Above hot water--Time would not; Whether because it was running out like water Or because January draws this bright Line down the new page I take to write: The Book of a Thousand and One Evenings Spent With David Jackson at the Ouija Board In Touch with Ephraim Our Familiar Spirit.