Nothing by Nobody:
An Interrupted Reading of Burton’s Anatomy, 2011
by Alan Halsey
Feb 1
neminis nihil
imaginis imago
reading looking backwards
through the philter of cognitive theory
Hymenoptera Hypersensitivity
in an Imported Fire Ant Endemic Area
(sent to Anticyra they arrive by analogy
allergy or chance in Academe)
if as I have read
they were afternoon-men born of mushrooms
The Lord shall smite them with the botch of Egypt
(in a swarm of bees
President Obama backs President Mubarak)
Feb 2
fake hackers claiming
vigil coma & many hard words
philosophers explode
larvae, lawyers, lemures
tumults, combustions, uproars, Abaddon
ut in Ægypto
per iram et odium
The president’s plain-clothes devils let loose
a hyperpathic variety of February’s malady
wolf-madness
Feb 4
disorder of time and place
sudden death and what not
frothy spectrums and the like
for ‘bangle’ read ‘bungle’
Balance it O Lord You have an incoming payment
(Mubarak turns his back on Obama
for not backing him enough,
if he did)
contra gentes
contra Manichæos
‘their president Mercury had no better fortune’
inertia entertainment shared by noble gases
but whatever the younger Pliny said
Trajan
for all his wars
survives in no epos
but one stonker of a column
with St Peter on top
Feb 5
in the shop of humours:
fountains & furtherers
overmuch cockering
cases of conscience in
a case of leather
every word in its misconster
shoeing-horns of idleness
incondite voices
Middle East policies
spintriae aplenty
obsolete gestures
new coats for the moon
Feb 6
eyes in his throat and a library
printed in the roof of his mouth
Dear Sir I have 70kg of gold dust
I do not know much about
‘in his Anatomy of Melancholy Francis Bacon’
aka William Sheikh-Peer, The Ancient Sage
aka Elias Artifex,
Theophrastian master of the Rosie Cross
aka Kidhr, The Green One, patron of the Sufi orders
differing as an egg and a chestnut
a rash of stars like so many nails in a door
‘those two green children that fell from heaven’
or clambered up from St Martin’s Land
but I’d sooner believe William of Newburgh
than anything said
by our man in Cairo Mister Blair
Feb 7
when time was entertained by footnotes
1 Erycius Poteanus
in his Pietatis Thaumata (Antwerp: 1617)
published 1022 permutations in classical hexameter
of Bernard Bauhuis’ monostich
Tot tibi sunt dotes, Virgo, quot sidera cælo.
Why stop? We mustn’t suppose Poteanus
ran out of ideas and despaired.
There were 1022 visible stars in Ptolemy’s heaven
and the Virgin could have no more virtues than that.
2 To whom does Rainnerus of Luneburg
owe his immortality? Pace Burton
the Proteus Poeticus was the work of Gregor Kleppis
welcoming three noblemen to Dresden
in 1617. It contains 1617 permutations of
Dant tria jam Dresdæ, ceu sol dat, lumina lucem.
To whom the nobles owe
whatever remains of their sunlight
is an ordinary question. Rainnerus
has meanwhile been deprived of
2150 – 1617 = 533 permutations.
Feb 8
Dear Sir
Re yours of 6th inst.
I have digged out of that broody hill
a chaos of receipts
nonsense-confused compounds
indefensible much magnified enchantments
a gown of giants’ beards for austere times
tinfoiled happiness
(I quote, it was translated from the Latin)
as many tempests in tosspots as fatal engines
gripings expressed in most careful verse
& last but not least
several nonentities of potable gold
Do not be transposed
Dear Sir
Let experience determine
Alan Halsey is online at westhousebooks.co.uk. An interview with Alan Halsey appears in E·ratio Issue 13.
