Gravity's Rainbow//Stars

If this is the serial number of a rocket, as its form indicates, it must be a special model-Slothrop hasn't heard of any with four zeroes, let alone five...

So, yes yes this is scholasticism here, Rocket state–cosmology . . . the Rocket does lead that way—among others—past these visible serpent coils that lash up above the surface of Earth in rainbow light, in steel tetany . . . these storms, these things of Earth’s deep breast we were never told . . . past them, through the violence, to a numbered cosmos, a quaint brownwood–paneled, Victorian kind of Brain War, as between quaternions and vector analysis in the 1880s—the nostalgia of Aether, the silver, pendulumed, stone–anchored, knurled–brass, filigreed elegantly functional shapes of your grandfathers. These sepia tones are here, certainly. But the Rocket has to be many things, it must answer to a number of different shapes in the dreams of those who touch it—in combat, in tunnel, on paper—it must survive heresies shining, unconfoundable . . . and heretics there will be: Gnostics who have been taken in a rush of wind and fire to chambers of the Rocket-throne . . . Kabbalists who study the Rocket as Thorah, letter by letter—rivets, burner cup and brass rose, its text is theirs to permute and combine into new revelations, always unfolding . . . Manichaenas who see two Rockets, good and evil, who speak together in the sacred idiolalia of the Primal Twins (some say their names are Enzian and Blicero) of a good Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil Rocket for the World’s suicide, the two perpetually in struggle. But these heretics will be sought out and the dominion of silence will enlarge as each one goes down . . . they will all be sought out. Each will have his personal Rocket (…) each Rocket will know its intended and hunt him (…) through our World, shining and pointed in the sky at his back, his guardian executioner rushing in, rushing closer. . . .



Trapped on the terraces, I looked at you and knew
You were the only thing that mattered
There was no one for me but you
In Harmony Street we beat a man
Just for standing there
I held my breath as I watched you swing
Then run your fingers through your hair

Oh, how could anyone not love the terrible things you do?
Oh, how could anyone not want to try and help you?

In Bermondsey, in Burberry
You held me at the barricade
The pigs arrived with tear gas
And I wept at the mistakes we made
We stalked the streets like animals
And danced as windows shattered
For the island, for the thrill of it
For everything that mattered

Oh, how could anyone not want to rip it all apart?
Oh, how could anyone not love your cold, black heart?

Meet me at the barricade
I'll be at the barricade

Done at twelve 28 in Brooklyn, NY.