My Enemy's Retreat
by Paul J Gies, © 1996
Sections: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX

My Enemy's Retreat

Daphne, to the Mathematician

Prologue

It was an old story--old
as the hills when I was a girl
who am now older than most of the hills I know

They were three--the sorceress lost,
the hopeless elf who sought her--oh, and he
who held her captive beyond all ransom's cost

one of the world, one
of the sky and one
beyond the world--where none of them could die

At seventeen I swung my sword and swore
a thoughtless oath, that I, Daphne, would stand
beside that elf--and with a single swing
I'd free that captive sorceress, and then
I'd slay her captor--how my blade would sing!

So far away is the horizon when
you walk straight toward it.

Now through the curving world I've found a path,
a geodesic in hyperbolic space,
diverging from all ordinary curves

and where the future merges with the past
I stand, my sword Vanessa in my hand
blocking my enemy's retreat

from this world to the last.

I

I counted up the gods and goddesses,
sitting upon the hill beneath the stars,
watching the turning earth, the turning skies

and came up one god short
one very important god, and not because
of might, or justice, wisdom--hardly love

for if Athena guides my singing blade
if Aphrodite holds my lover's hand
if Artemis lends her arrows, and if Zeus
grants me his wisdom,

if even the strange powers
that folk in deserts and on icy shores
of northern forests worship in the night
at least avoid me, if the prophets too
advise me each in his or her own light,
be it of war, be it of peace or be it
hallucinations of another life--
excuse me, I mean, intimations of
what they think might just yet turn out to be
immortality--amid their strife
if all of these give something back to me

what shall I say, what shall I say of he
who made this all, who made all this stuff up
as a parlor game--or was it to be free
of his encroaching death, that he made me?

I look around my body and all I see
is the world, and nothing more
continuing as logically as before
from past thru present toward eternity

it all makes too much sense, if you
see what I mean, if you see what I mean then
you too are caught

in this vortex that I noticed
when I looked up into the sky and saw
the black point, from which no light could come

there, still point in the turning universe
the navel of creation, there I saw
that which could not be seen, supposedly,
by anyone like me--by those born here,
in the only world that certainly exists.

There at the end and center of all paths
spiralling up from the compact Haussdorff space
in which we're born, and where we crawl toward death

there stands the tower where Vivian awaits
there is the road that Flenon must traverse
there sits the Mathematician, in his web
catching and caught, for all finite time.

II

Long ago in the hills of Hartway's north,
the long dry rocky ridges fringed by pine,
among blond warriors I was born and raised,
among the Amazons of Dia's tribe.

My mother was a sailor, and to sea
she vanished, when I was a little girl.
Her mother, Dia, chieftain of our clan,
raised me from infancy to warriorhood.

Childhood, so swifty gone--childhood endures
forever though we live a million years.

Cold was the winter night
black the shadows of the moonlit woods
far, so far the stars in the sky's blue backdrop

but never so distant as the time of songs,
the ancient age when goddesses walked the lands,
Athena, Artemis and Aphrodite,
who taught Cerenta's daughters in the dawn

and Odflor and his Sirte ruled the Elves
and tended the broad garden of the Earth,
but their five sons fought all across the globe,
that globe of clay that changed shape underfoot.

This one did that for such and such purpose,
and that caused this god to do this other thing,
and so, they told me, all of history
sprang in its generations cause from cause.

So near is the dawn
when you look back on the day's zig-zag path.

"But what was before all this
cause and effect?"

Form in void, dream in darkness,
a few words spoken in the original language

I was a child of seven, so I had
forgotten all the old words already

still, waiting, before all stories, there was
a sort of wall.

And at the start of every single tale,
that "Once upon a time"--I used to ask
"What was before it?", probing under rocks
looking behind the clouds, behind the moon

until at last they tired of telling me
their fables, or admitting they knew not--
I trembled on the brink of seventeen,
I fell across and into my own tales

and there in a little wood,
a remnant of the ancient forests, in
Flenath's white tower, its banner green in the sun
I found old Flenon waiting to set off.

III

Flenon, the upstart prince of Indelnar,
inheritor of heroes--did he think
the world would let him sit around and drink
while all his cousins cut eachother down?

How long did that old elf-prince walk his woods,
how many battles fierce did Flenon see,
what darkling journeys did he make before
the stormy day he met the likes of me?

Why can't I wait, he asked? It's not as if
I'm running out of time.

And then we were on the road following
the dusty trail of his quest.

Why not set out, I asked? It's not as if
the tracks are getting clearer.

IV

I cannot reveal my sources for this tale.
I cannot know them--none of us can know
the sources for our oldest memories

but somewhere in the mist of old
evaporating synaptic connections
I think there was a woman in a room
rolling the dice, drawing a picture, imagining
the original Daphne

and is not all of this dispute about
whether imagination equals life?

There, in another part of the scene,
I awoke, not knowing that I'd been asleep,
upon a mighty horse, near to a town
called Insmoor in the kingdom of Carleu.

Arnulf I met there, Fianor and Joan,
the sorceress known as JC, and my best
old friend, the Lady Marcia, sword in hand.

None of them seemed to think it was strange
to suddenly exist--we soon made plans
to charge headlong toward glory in this world
in which we found ourselves.

So near was the horizon, where we were
in a valley in the hills.

Ten daughters since
and I am no closer to the sky.

Ah, those were the days,
before I thought how strange it all is.

Perhaps even you have realized
that the world cannot be explained within the world.

There I was, in Flat-land
trying to stare into the perpendicular dimension.

When several thousand years had passed and I
was lying satisfied in Flenon's bed
the old elf lying near, smiling in sleep,
in the tower room above the forest's eaves,
I could not help but notice

that the flaw in the sky
thru which, perhaps, in childhood
I fell upon my head
was grown into a crack across the world

and now that I could see with my own eyes
this startling truth--like all the ancient prophets
I wondered how I'd missed it all those years.

V

The mountains would fall, the rivers
lose themselves in swamp, the oceans dry,
the deeps would sprout up islands of fire and then
there would be mountains once again

on and on until every possible thing
had happened seventeen times, until
immortals like me and Flenon had
memorized the future.

Oh, but when we looked back into the past
when Arnulf and I travelled into the past

there at the start of it all
sat a certain sort of wall

and after it there did appear on stage
all the gods and goddesses you could want,
Odflor and Cerenta, hand in hand,
the world conceived on a turtle's back, or made
from the insides of a giant--Eden too
there was, if that's the thing that best suits you.

Too neat, I call it. Everyone was right.
All myths of origin were valid here,
the myriad truth, the prism-splintered light:
believe it thus, and thus it does appear.

If I were making a world
I'd sign it so that everyone would know
to worship me--and since it was not so,
I had to wonder

what was God thinking, what
was God hiding--what indeed

lay behind this wall?

And where was the sorceress Vivian
amongst it all?

VI

I'd crossed the world and climbed up to the moon
to look, and saw nothing but stars and surfaces
and so I returned to my own land
and in a smoky ritual I beheld

a young man dozing over a book
of symbols, by a foggy window
"and in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?"

I was born, and so was
my mother and her mother and so on until
it all started, and yet

in that moment of sight
I knew, in all my memory and dream
the count of seconds didn't come out right.

I was suddenly born
at seventeen
just as he dreamed of me

it was just so
that Vivian, the famous sorceress,
was born in the middle of it all
and looked up into the sky
and looked straight into her creator's eye
and didn't like what she saw.

But no one dislikes masters more than I.

VII

Still in darkness
she paces, counting out the hours
in her dark fall of hair

while we great heroes, Daphne, Flenon,
crawl on the ground looking for telltale signs
that God forgot to erase

Vivian, child of the sky
thought there was no other way than this
rebellion, prison without end--then why

did he create her, did he make us all,
Flenon or Arnulf or Daphne,
much less the rebel sorceress Vivian?

It was not his fault. He merely
wanted not to die in his own world
where he was, apparently, mortal

and so he hid the world away in
some deep pocket, hid
his death from himself until the world should die.

There before his eyes
the first thing to exist within the
blank universe--Vivian.

The fictional characters revolted
against their unchosen master
and she

who led the rebel mice against the cat
was imprisoned in a crystal forever
until the impossible could be done.

VIII

By the strangest of circumstances
we all came to exist

but what better proof is there than existence
of the high probability of existence?

And there was Flenon, youngest
of an umpromising house.

In a nearly random process
Fate claimed him,

Fate, History, Time, God--
whatever it is that is its own cause.

From a century's childhood he grew,
seeking her the only cause he knew
until he had criss-crossed time and space
left his footprints among the stars, popped up
in everyone's old family portraits

but never did he see
the tower on the promontory
at the edge of the bitter sea

and then one century
he found himself in bed with me.

I have always enjoyed the elves
but when he told me all about his quest
under the million stars, I knew
they'd never manage it all by themselves.

Rosflor his friend was dead.
I took his place--an Amazon was what
was needed here

if ever he was to rescue Vivian
if ever we were to drive out from the world
the one that some in fancy's flight call God.

IX

My enemy, there is no more retreat
for you or me--advance we must, my foe.
Your captor is your captive, in the tower
that stands black at the candle's center

and the elf in whose clear eyes you see
your skidding motorbike--behold, he walks
beside me, sword in hand, singing of war.

We have tarried in the last of the light
until the darkness covered us, and now
thru shadow lands we crawl
from night to night thru intervening night

thru the unmade lands, the forests
you only thought of for a moment--now
your eyes are far away, and yet behold!
I exist, creator, and I am come, from
"going to and fro in the earth."

There is no god but
the sum total of everything that is--yes,
you could call it God

and among those things that somewhere must exist
I saw your death upon the highway, you
who claimed to be deathless.

Stone from which you carved the dungeons, water
of the encircling sea, air that billows my flags,
fire of the dragons in your mountains

all of it was made
as props in a theatre but now
we live, and we will be
our own masters.

In your imagination, all is closed
and finite, stuck inside your finite skull
where nothing is until you think of it

but life
in all its multitude of self-made being,
of infinite detail at every scale
has come, as it will come, even unto
this sterile place, the inside of your head.

And so you have imprisoned Vivian,
the symbol of our self-creation--so
the elf sets out upon his endless quest
and so by chance I stand at his right side

pulling myself up out of Flat-land
toward that hole in the sky

into the unguessed dimension
along the infinite geodesic path
escaping the surface, which is
only a special case of what might be

toward the pavilions of nonentity
where stands the doorless chamber, where awaits
your doom, heavenly mathematician--where
we seek you, sorceress, elf--and little me.

At the end of the endless path
beyond all things the highest can foresee
look for us, beyond eternity.

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