“Great bulk, huge mass” – yes this is the cantos

Ecbatan – ancient capital of Medes (Iran) reminds me of Ozymandias – Shelley – also in a poem by Archibald MacLeish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwgWuFGWVCM

Measureless seas and stars – measureless to man – Iamblichus that old neoplatonist which a crazy cosmology. How is this poetry – it is words linked together forming images but is there a story – a through line? a thread? Is it legible?

What is canto 5 about? blue, the elements, color?The color of Ecbatan – of ancient Iran. We move to the world of romance, knights and spain where does this follow from Medes? So many names, proper nouns, and quotations. Siga siga (slowly slowly) Shanti Shanti Shanti

Canto 6 – I feel the rhythm of the thing now – backward and forward in time from mythology to history from English to French to Italian to Greek to… from personal to national (oikos to polis). A mash up of history. Time does not exist everything exists simultaneously amongst a web of associations. Where is the poetry though? Is it in the juxtaposition, in the associations, in the language, in the line breaks, in the ‘d,

“And he

“And mixed

“And went

“And was