Unde Lux est orta Salus invenitur.

New obsessions come and they go – Saint Catherine made to stand up against the men, dressed like a multi-coloured soldier, robed to the point of perfection, up there with Beatrice as bypassing purgatory, and straight into paradise. She has silver mantles, she comes down the stairs by the light of them, teaching us all how to be good. All this technology has issues with this foreign language, a burst of incorrectness in the true and smooth path to the future. And one day we will look on all this stuff, and shrug at it. New things every nine months just to keep up with people, the blank stares when we tell our children about all the black and silver boxes we used to keep around. They will look outside at the flowers and the computers all around them will hum to themselves, giving them what they want and all they want is a quiet life and a house away from it all, hidden from the paddling of industry which fills the rest of the planet.

The black crosses, the bombers buzz deeply, engines deep and satisfying, as they throw speeding shadows across the fields this dawn. All back today, all intact and all empty, beautiful things doing terrible things, no one missing at breakfast and all quiet, taking down the last letters from the dresser as they throw themselves into sleep. I thought they were leaving in my head, but the night seems to have vanished in a flash, a whole set of hours gone and never to be seen again. All that time, they sat up there reading their cowboy novels, staring at the dark channel and then the dark cities occasionally sparked into moonlit jewels. Catherine, invoked by some last night, has flown with them and the enemy, no word from her on whose side she is on. The pilot at the altar kneels and does not analyse the rightness of his actions; he loves simply and does the job. These days we may question the orders, get prosecuted for following them and then for not following them. A pipe in the head and all we want to do is dance. Here we are at some dark wedding, a dance and drinking long into the night, candles spitting and setting fire to the wood of this hall and put out by casually thrown drinks. Gisto Madja, Blanka blanka, sol veyan, via ey blanka blanka.

Poem for Saint Catherine of Alexandria

An event for celebration is the life of Dark Age saints,
Calling for the rights of man these days,
A risk of execution no deterrent to them
Where they stand against the fire of vandals,
Goths and other blanks, a woman lighted from within,
And gold and walking over ground untouched
With tribute to the crystal sphere of earth and all creation,
Converts and fights without that sword she totes,
But glassy in the army, waits with threat of heaven
Heavy in the air between her king and God.