Texts: The Crossing – 4 October 2026
Part 1 Garden of Thornless Roses
The Roads 1
I am walking on this road to the end of the world
Along the waters that twist and turn in every direction where they take me step by step.
The ground next to water brings solace. The reflections in the stream embrace the heavens.
They are glass-like and shiny, glistening veins strewn across the landscape quietly drifting.
Without warning they slowly rise to the brink, and overflow with power beyond control.
Could this happen now as I speak?
I lose my footing and float away sinking deeper below the surface, the whole world above me
weighing down, filling my lungs.
I become a fish and watch the world above through ripples and currents that change the view.
The transformation is a prism into rainbows of air and light.
Gold wings turn to colours: jasper, ruby, emerald aquamarine.
Translucent light through transparent skin, metamorphoses into vapour.
Through the currents, the chirp of a body resonant and clear can be heard far away.
A voice resounds in the mist, a song from a harp pure and clean, gentle as the air.
And then a gasp out of water; born anew and ringing with a choir of millions.
The bell chambers of the living unite in one defiant act.
Deafening sound pierces the air.
The patterns of the dance are fleeting, captured
by the ephemeral surface tensions
of sympathetic resonance.
They echo against the faces of unseen cliffs.
The last light grows cold.
An unexpected gust poses unprepared threats
upon exposure to a northerly facing hill.
Shadows stretch.
Silence sweeps across the valley once more.
A gentle howl bemoans the slopes.
Pebbles and stones begin to roll against each other
forming a race in one direction marked by the
pummelling clicks, tacks and cracks of uneven surfaces.
Minerals collapse against each other tumbling uncontrollably over the edge.
The Roads 2
That which is left once morning light first emerges,
when all is dissolved after the fire burned every stem to a cinder,
The song of a tiny bird in the hollow of a tree stump,
singing the first words anew.
Round with the horizon in grey shadow,
floods of golden light stream across the valley,
twinkling with miniature sounds near and far,
a carpet of unseen signs of the living.
Tear drops of rain turn into the eyes of every sentient being,
diamonds in the heart of the landscape revealed for the first time.
Black Water
Landscapes of imaginary contours,
Places that exist only in the cracks of one’s inner fantasies,
Places that drift like plywood in a river current.
We grasp for the safety of the river bank as we are taken along in the stream.
The course, carved by forces of nature,
Those from which we ourselves are moulded,
Clay from the river’s estuary
Shaped by the tide’s steel light
broken into prismatic reflections,
Pathways upon which we step,
light as a feather.
Nature is not skin deep. Nature will swallow you whole with gluttonous fervour,
reclaiming your body as its own; Your body, lent to you for a moment only to see, sense, smell, hear, taste, touch the scintillating fiery existence of all the spirals spinning together in unison and out of phase in polyrhythmic syncopation.
There is music in the landscape. The soft hues in combination are pleasing to see, colour coordinated, in dialogue with the seasons. Not one thing is amiss. I am filled with the electrical charge of ecstatic energy that is poised ready to be transformed into a dreamworld of imagining and magic. The coming together of frequencies where strings are aligned with overtones adding to the emanating force of crystals in the ether. Fronds like ferns and snowdrops in the air, beating and pulsating, synchronising in symmetries, each one the same but different forming the One amidst the Many.
Let me crawl through mud to feel all the senses.
Let the walls of me be not stifled.
Let my eyes and ears be not closed.
I touch grass and stone and feel damp residue on my fingers.
Water and Stone
SPOKEN WORD
The thistles are dancing.
Their movements form strange characters in a mysterious alphabet spelling out secret messages on the ground. They dance with delight, jumping up and down like children at a birthday party. I watch them knowing something is up.
There is a cool breeze at my back.
I stand up upon the ground, beneath which is an aquifer deep under the stony surface, resounding with subsonic frequencies. I imagine swimming in the depths of the deep water’s basilar canals sending waves to the surface converting electrical energy to musical tones through the nerve endings I sense with my feet. The ground is a tympanic membrane that sends strange vibrations through my senses. The ground is a skin, taut over a bass drum too low to be heard but felt as liquid plays to the earthen symphony. The ground is a surface for mysterious processes that happen at the core of the earth, violent, relentless, uncompromising.
Cold water seeps into my boots. The elements seek refuge in the shelters of my clothes.
They touch me, embrace me, reclaim me. I succumb to the expansion of air.
There is no barrier left between me and my surroundings. My cells reach out and grab the wind in the grasses.
Wild, wild winds wary of the shadows cracking in the corners;
Ghostly murmurs of the shudders of my own soul, of coldness,
of that emptiness unveiled where sunless days encroach upon a sense of inevitability.
Those wild days, exhilarating and relentless:
Irresistible battles against a force too great to be reckoned with.
The birds lie low today and so do I.
I hide in a crack, in a nook, under covers, between the pages;
An awkward moment of unprepared sabbatical, plans flustering in the dramatic currents with autumn leaves, away in the race against the grasses in the field.
I feel alive.
I am alive wherever you find me.
Dark Night 1
The road is narrow, windy, hilly and dramatic, passing stony hamlets, haphazard along the tumbling landscape dotted with streams and springs from craggy nooks. They slither towards the perfectly straight blue horizon of the expanding sealine hovering between the gently undulating sea and infinite sky. White froth of tidal foam seen from afar seems to stand still, poised in motion. Sand is sweeping across the dunes, where the sea cannot be seen, as if the dunes were in a desert. Their outer limit is reminiscent of the limbs of tentacles of a mythical creature that shifts against the lime washed walls of stone cottages. These cottages skirt the border between road and sand. Hidden ruins of haphazard enclosures lie behind overgrown grasses that tumble in the slowly unfolding tides of time. These dilapidated walls once concealed a garden. The garden continues to grow, tearing down its boundaries as if to declare its independence. No building can contain its fury, its desire to thrive at all costs, a catalyst for the explosion of life inside, weaving thickets of dark greenery, emerald passages, vines with fingers scouring the vertical step, skilled at navigating the crumbling bricks. Glass, shattered from windowpanes in an abandoned outhouse, is piled upon rusting debris. Broken shards of mysteries are embedded in the skin of timeless accounts of unrecorded history contained amidst archways and entrances of ruined architecture. A musty broken pane frames the memory of candles and oil lamps radiating from the hearth within, the dim light of bygone eras from the shadows: the forgotten worlds of others. Through these portals the worlds of past and present collide at a glimpse.
Dark Night 2
There is a hum across the twilight scape of sands and grasses, calm, peaceful in the gentle blanket of air caressing the tactile willowing textures saturated by the breaking waves of the unseen coastline, fizzing and sparking, hissing effervescent synthesis: water, salt, air, the broken remains of sea creatures washed ashore eroding, weathering, becoming polished and refined until they become microscopic particles, miniscule crystals of silicon and calcium carbonate, glistening jewels of perfectly formed geometric shapes capturing sunlight from different angles unseen by eyes. It is a song through time, eternal, immortal, gentle, alive. The measure is a steady rhythm of ebb and flow. The duration is marked by cycles of infinite repetitions breathing beyond the barrier of dimensions as the wind begins to pick up speed. The sea grows rough with the foam of wrath, shimmering and simmering at a distance, illuminated by the faint barking of hounds and nearby crisp chirps of grasshoppers and crickets. The sea is held at bay by proximity, the same proximity that binds the force of flocking birds and the seals wall of safe distances.
The sound of the sea is far away, disappearing again into the distortion of fractured shimmering light and sensory movements, minute fluctuations, a sonic tapestry carefully sewn together, animated by the connecting forces of inner streams and channels, energy encapsulated in minute rivulets of silken threads of colour reflecting the sinking westerly sun. There is an apple tree growing here, on a patch of turf carefully kept, an oasis in the desert. It is tiny with youth, maybe a year from its germination from seed to sapling, but it is already laden with fruit, bountiful, perfect, enticing, a folk design woven in cloth detailed with the bright colours of hand dyed silk pulsating with life.
Dark Night 4
The dark night emerges here by the sea as the green light of the sinking sun retreats into its horizontal evening lair. Stars break the surface tension of the firmament, observed climbing the trajectory of its vertex. Luminescence splinters underfoot and lingers, exploring the body’s form. A nebulous ball of unexplained light in a charged atmosphere shimmers like a word spoken from lips in ice-cold air, taking shape, becoming a sentient being, independent, autonomous.
The Swimmer
SPOKEN WORD
A swimmer, navigating unknown waters of unfamiliar places, is skirting the irregular edges of dreams lurking below the surface of the breaking waves. Wary of what will be found there under the water, the swimmer cautiously stealthily wades into the darkness, liquid hushing whispers around limbs, thrusting forth through the surf, beginning to swim, disturbing what was still like glass but fluid as clouds. The swimmer tries not to look down, afraid of the suspension between darkness and air but blissful at the sensation of submersion. Swirling waves grow in audacity as the silhouette of this figure rises and falls feeling the ground fall away into the deep abyss of forgetting, between dreaming and waking, furtive, fugitive, falling victim to the vastness of the growing syrup of sea with no horizon, no sense of direction, no baring, indistinguishable, unfathomable, primordial atmosphere suspending the buoyant shadow of a being held afloat by the push and pull between the inward compulsion of circulation against the outward expansion of infinity, the friction between veins, arteries, lungs and the dimly glowing branches of the nervous system against darkness, stretched outwards, palms towards the sky. Ultra-violet light hums slightly, almost audible, an x-ray of the secret inner world of the floating body, a confession to the sensibilities of deep-sea creatures as they begin to emerge surrounding the swimmer like stars from beneath. They gather around the glowing leaflike silhouette, cradling the outline as though listening to music, moving closer to hear better, quietly attentive.
Part 2 The Crossing: Nehalennia Suite
Text for part 2 in Latin text with English Translation
The Crossing: Nehalennia Suite
Fantasmi 1
(Latin text)
Nehalennia
Ea quae saxa colit
Filia maris
Ianua viarum
Duxtrix Animarum
Custos Orbis Alterius
Praesidium mortuorum
Proles Maris
Custos Orbis Occulti
Nehalennia
Ee quae saxa colit
Nehalennia
Ea quae saxa colit
Nehalennia,
Nehalennia
Nehalennia
Filia maris
Custos Orbis Alterius
Ea quae saxa colit
Ianua viarum
Custos Orbis Occultis
Nehalennia
Filia maris
Ea quae saxa colit
Proles maris
Praesidium mortuorum
Duxtrix animarum
Custos Orbis Alterius
Ianua viarum
Proles maris
A mari atque sale nos protégé
Nehalennia
Filia maris
Custos Orbis Alterius
A mari atque sale nos protégé
Ultra ad terram duc nos
Ad extremum litus dirige nos
Protégé nos a mari a sale,
Ultra ad terram duc nos
Ad extremum litus dirige nos
Serva nos a vento
Serva nos a sale
Ultra ad terram duc nos
Ad extremum litus dirige nos
Ultra ad terram duc nos
Extremum litus dirige nos
A vento salva nos
A harena salva nos
A sale salva nos
…
“Deae Nehalennia
pro mercibus et viatoribus
Conservatis,
Votum nostrum
sponte ac merito
Per solvimus
Deae Nehalennia”
….
(English Translation)
Nehalennia
She who dwells among the rocks
Daughter of the sea
Gateway of the paths
Guide of souls
Guardian of the Otherworld
Protector of the dead
Offspring of the sea
Guardian of the hidden realm
Nehalennia
She who dwells among the rocks
Nehalennia
She who dwells among the rocks
Nehalennia,
Nehalennia
Nehalennia
Daughter of the sea
Guardian of the Otherworld
She who dwells among the rocks
Gateway of the paths
Guardian of the hidden realm
Nehalennia,
daughter of the sea
She who dwells among the rocks
Offspring of the sea
Protector of the dead
Guide of souls
Guardian of the Otherworld
Gateway of the paths
Offspring of the sea
Protect us from the sea and the salt
Nehalennia
Daughter of the sea
Guardian of the Otherworld
Protect us from the sea and the salt
Lead us onward to the land
Guide us to the farthest shore
Protect us from the sea, from the salt,
Lead us onward to the land
Guide us to the farthest shore
Save us from the wind
Save us from the salt
Lead us onward to the land
Guide us to the farthest shore
Lead us onward to the land
Guide us to the farthest shore
Save us from the wind
Save us from the sands
Save us from the salt
…
“To the Goddess Nehalennia,
for the preservation
of goods and travelers,
We willingly and deservedly
fulfill our vow
to the Goddess Nehalennia”
Fantasmi 3
(Latin text)
Sothis Regina Caeli
Regina Noctis
Sothis, Stallar Clara
Stellar, Lucida Lumens
Sothis, Lumens Ducens
Sothis, Stellar
(English Translation)
Sothis, Queen of Heaven
Queen of the Night
Sothis, Bright Star
Star, Radiant Light
Sothis, Guiding Light
Sothis, Star
Fantasmi 4
(Latin text)
Lupi Ululantes
In furore
Canicularum dierum
In fervore aestus
Avelite corpus
In salitatione fervida
Lupi Ululantes
Lupi Ululantes
In furore
Canicularum Dierum
In furore aestus
Avelite corpus
In salitatione fervida
In furore
Canicularum dierum
In fervore
Lupi ululantes
Lupi ululantes
Lupi ululantes
…
(English Translation)
Howling wolves
In the frenzy
Of the Dog Days
In the heat of summer
Tear the body apart
In a feverish dance
Howling wolves
Howling wolves
In the frenzy
Of the Dog Days
In the frenzy of summer heat
Tear the body apart
In a feverish dance
In the frenzy of the Dog Days
In the heat
Howling wolves
Howling wolves
Howling wolves
…
