A piece bitten off from wood struck by lightning by a person with hands thrown behind his back, if it is applied to an aching tooth, is a remedy we are told for the pain. Some prescribe fumigation of the tooth with a human tooth from one of the same sex, and to use as an amulet a dog-tooth taken from an unburied corpse. Earth taken out of a skull acts, it is said, as a depilatory for the eye-lashes, while any plant that has grown in the skull makes, when chewed, the teeth fall out, and ulcers marked round with a human bone do not spread.

Some mix in equal quantities water from three wells, pour a libation from new earthenware, and give the rest to be drunk, at the rise of temperature, by sufferers from tertian ague. These also wrap up in wool and tie round the neck of quartan patients a piece of a nail taken from a cross, or else a cord taken from a crucifixion, and after the patient's neck has been freed they hide it in a hole where the sunlight cannot reach.

VARIOUS UNLUCKY AND LUCKY ACTS
To sit in the presence of pregnant women, or when medicine is being given to patients, with the fingers interlaced comb-wise, is to be guilty of sorcery, a discovery made, it is said, when Alcmena was giving birth to Hercules. The sorcery is worse if the hands are clasped round one knee or both, and also to cross the knees first in one way and then in the other. For this reason our ancestors forbade such postures at councils of war or of officials, on the ground that they were an obstacle to the transaction of all business.

They also forbade them, indeed, to those attending sacred rites and prayers; but to uncover the head at the sight of magistrates they ordered, not as a mark of respect, but (our authority is Varro) for the sake of health, for the habit of baring the head gives it greater strength.

When something has fallen into the eye, it does good to press down the other; when water gets into the right ear, to jump with the left leg, leaning the head towards the right shoulder; if into the left ear, to jump in the contrary way; if saliva provokes a cough, for another person to blow on the forehead; if the uvula is relaxed, for another to hold up the top of the head with his teeth; if there is pain in the neck, to rub the back of the knees, and to rub the neck for pain in the back of the knees; to plant the feet on the ground for cramp in feet or legs when in bed; or if the cramp is on the left side to seize with the right hand the big toe of the left foot and vice versa; to rub the extremities with pieces of fleece to stop shivers or violent nose-bleeding; . . . with linen or papyrus the tip of the genitals and the middle of the thigh to check incontinence of urine; for weakness of the stomach to press together the feet or dip the hands into very hot water. Moreover, to refrain from talking is healthful for many reasons. Maecenas Melissus, we are told, imposed a three-year silence on himself because of spitting of blood after convulsions.

But if any danger threatens those thrown down, climbing, or prostrate, and as a guard against blows, to hold the breath is an excellent protection, a discovery which, I have stated, we owe to an animal. To drive an iron nail into the place first struck by the head of an epileptic in his fall is said to be deliverance from that malady.

For severe pain in the kidneys, loins or bladder, it is supposed to be soothing if the patient voids his urine while lying on his face in the tub of the bath. To tie up wounds with the Hercules knot makes the healing wonderfully more rapid, and even to tie daily the girdle with this knot is said to have a certain usefulness, for Demetrius wrote a treatise in which he states that the number four is one of the prerogatives of Hercules, giving reasons why four cyathi or sextarii at a time should not be drunk. For ophthalmia it is good to rub behind the ears, and for watery eyes the forehead. From the patient himself it is a reliable omen that, as long as the pupils of his eyes reflect an image, a fatal end to an illness is not to be feared.

MEDICAL USES OF URINE
Our authorities attribute to urine also great power, not only natural but supernatural; they divide it into kinds, using even that of eunuchs to counteract the sorcery that prevents fertility. But of the properties it would be proper to speak of I may mention the following: the urine of children not yet arrived at puberty is used to counteract the spittle of the ptyas, an asp so called because it spits venom into men's eyes; for albugo, dimness, scars, argema, and affections of the eyelids; with flour of vetch for burns; and for pus or worms in the ear if boiled down to one half with a headed leek in new earthenware.

Its steam too is an emmenagogue. Salpe would foment the eyes with urine to strengthen them, and would apply it for two hours at a time to sun-burn, adding the white of an egg, by preference that of an ostrich. Urine also takes out ink blots. Men's urine relieves gout, as is shown by the testimony of fullers, who for that reason never, they say, suffer from this malady. Old urine is added to the ash of burnt oyster-shells to treat rashes on the bodies of babies, and for all running ulcers. Pitted sores, burns, affections of the anus, chaps, and scorpion stings, are treated by applications of urine.

The most celebrated midwives have declared that no other lotion is better treatment for irritation of the skin, and with soda added for sores on the head, dandruff, and spreading ulcers, especially on the genitals. Each person's own urine, if it be proper for me to say so, does him the most good, if a dog-bite is immediately bathed in it, if it is applied on a sponge or wool to the quills of an urchin that are sticking in the flesh, or if ash kneaded with it is used to treat the bite of a mad dog, or a serpent's bite. Moreover, for scolopendra bite a wonderful remedy is said to be for the wounded person to touch the top of his head with a drop of his own urine, when his wound is at once healed.

SALIVA
The saliva too of a fasting woman is judged to be powerful medicine for bloodshot eyes and fluxes, if the inflamed corners are occasionally moistened with it, the efficacy being greater if she has fasted from food and wine the day before. I find that a woman's breast-band tied round the head relieves headache.

REMEDIES FROM THE LION
Lion fat with rose oil preserves fairness of complexion and keeps the face free from spots; it also cures frost-bite and swollen joints. The lying Magi promise those rubbed with this fat a readier popularity with peoples and with kings, especially when the fat is that between the brows, where no fat can be. Similar promises are made about the possession of a tooth, especially one from the right side, and of the tuft beneath the muzzle. The fall, used with the addition of water as a salve, improves vision, and if lion fat is added a slight taste cures epilepsy, provided that those who have taken it at once aid its digestion by running. The heart taken as a food cures quartans; the fat with rose oil cures quotidians. Wild beasts run away from those smeared with it, and it is supposed to protect even from treachery.

REMEDIES FROM THE CAMEL
They say that a camel's brain, dried and taken in vinegar, cures epilepsy, as does the gall taken with honey, this being also a remedy for quinsy; that the tail when dried is laxative, and that the ash of the burnt dung makes the hair curl. This ash applied with oil is also good for dysentery, as is a three-finger pinch taken in drink, and also for epilepsy. They say that the urine is very useful to the fullers, and for running ulcers – it is a fact that foreigners keep it for five years, and use heminadoses as a purgative - and that the tail hairs plaited into an amulet for the left arm cure quartan fevers.

HIPPOPOTAMUS
There is a kind of relationship between the crocodile and the hippopotamus, for they both live in the same river and both are amphibious. The hippopotamus, as I have related, was the discoverer of bleeding, and is most numerous above the prefecture of Sais. His hide, reduced to ash and applied with water, cures superfi cial abscesses; the fat and likewise the dung chilly agues by fumigation, and the teeth on the left side, if the gums are scraped with them, aching teeth. The hide from the left side of his forehead, worn as an amulet on the groin, is an antaphrodisiac; the same reduced to ash restores hair lost through mange. A drachma of a testicle is taken in water for snake bite. The blood is used by painters.

FOR THE TEETH
Loose teeth are made tight by the ash of deer's horn, which relieves their pain, whether used as dentifrice or in a mouth wash. Some consider more efficacious for all the same purposes the unburnt horn ground to powder. Dentifrices are made in either way. A grand remedy too is a wolf's head reduced to ash.

It is certain that bones are generally found in the excrements of wolves. Used as an amulet these have the same effect, and hare's rennet relieves toothache if poured through the ear. Hare's head reduced to ash makes a dentifrice, and with nard added corrects a bad odour from the mouth. Some prefer to add as well ash from the burnt heads of mice. There is found in the flank of a hare a bone like a needle, with which they recommend aching teeth to be scraped. The ignited pastern bone of an ox, applied to teeth that are loose and aching, tighten them; the ash of the same with myrrh makes a dentifrice.

The bones also of pigs' feet, when burnt, have the same effect, as have the bones from the sockets round which the hip-bones move. It is well known that by these, when inserted into the throat of draught cattle, worms are cured, that by them, when burnt, teeth are tightened, as they are, when loosened through a blow, by ass's milk, by the ash of an ass's teeth, or by the lichen of a horse poured with oil through the ear. Th is lichen is not the same as hippomanes, which being pernicious on several grounds I omit, but an excrescence on the knees of horses and above their hoofs. Moreover, in the heart of horses is found a bone like very large canine teeth; with this they prescribe the painful tooth to be scraped, or with the tooth, corresponding to the place of the aching tooth, extracted from the jawbone of a dead horse.

Anaxilaus has informed us that the fluid coming from mares when covered, if ignited on lamp wicks, shows weird appearances of horses' heads, and similarly with asses. But hippomanes has such virulent and magical properties that, added to the molten bronze for a figure of an Olympian mare, it maddens any stallions brought near with a raving sexual lust. Teeth are also healed by workman's glue boiled down in the water, applied, and shortly after taken off, the teeth immediately to be rinsed in wine in which the rind of sweet pomegranates has been boiled.

It is also thought efficacious to rinse the teeth in goat's milk or bull's gall.The ash from a freshly-killed she-goat's pastern bones makes a popular dentifrice, and so that I need not repeat myself, the same is true of nearly all female farm quadrupeds.

TREATMENT FOR BABIES
For babies nothing is more beneficial than butter, either by itself or with honey, especially when they are troubled with teething, sore gums, or ulcerated mouth. The tooth of a wolf tied on as an amulet keeps away childish terrors and ailments due to teething, as does also a piece of wolf's skin. Indeed the largest teeth of wolves tied as an amulet even on horses are said to give them unwearied power of speed.

Hare's rennet applied to the mothers' breasts checks the diarrhea of babies. Ass's liver mixed with a moderate amount of panaces and let drip into the mouth protects babies from epilepsy and other diseases; the treatment, it is prescribed, should continue for forty days. Ass's hide laid on babies keeps them free from fears. The first teeth of horses to fall out make the cutting of teeth easy for babies who wear them as an amulet, a more efficacious one if the teeth have not touched the ground. Ox spleen in honey is administered internally and externally for painful spleen; for running sores with honey . . . a calf's spleen boiled in wine, beaten up, and applied to little sores in the mouth. The brain of a she-goat, passed through a golden ring, is given drop by drop by the Magi to babies, before they are fed with milk, to guard them from epilepsy and other diseases of babies. Restless babies, especially girls, are quietened by an amulet of goat's dung wrapped in a piece of cloth. Rubbing the gums with goat's milk or hares' brains makes easy the cutting of teeth.

BELIEFS ABOUT ANIMALS
In addition, wonderful things are reported of the same animals: that if a horse casts his shoe, as often happened, and some one picks it up and puts it away, it is a cure of hiccoughs in those who remember where they have put it; that a wolf's liver is like a horse's hoof; that horses burst themselves which, carrying a rider, follow the tracks of wolves; that there is a kind of quarrelsome force in the pastern bones of pigs; that if, in case of fire, a little dung is brought out of the stables, sheep and oxen are more easily pulled out and do not run back; that the flesh of he-goats does not taste strong if on the day they are killed they have eaten barley bread or drunk diluted laser; that no meat, salted when the moon is on the wane, is eaten by maggots. So much care has been taken to leave nothing out, that I find that a deaf hare fattens more quickly, and that there are also medicines made for animals: it is prescribed that if draught cattle suffer from hemorrhage, there should be injected pig's dung in wine; and that for the diseases of oxen suet, native sulphur, and a decoction of wild garlic, should all be pounded and given in wine, or else fox fat; that horse flesh thoroughly boiled and taken in drink cures the diseases of pigs, while those of all quadrupeds are cured by a she-goat boiled whole with the hide and a bramble toad; that chickens are not touched by foxes if they have eaten dried fox-liver, or if the cocks have trodden the hens wearing a piece of fox skin round their necks; similarly with a weasel's gall; that the oxen in Cyprus eat human excrement to cure themselves of colic; that the hooves of oxen are not chafed underneath if the bases of their horns are first rubbed with liquid pitch; that wolves do not enter a field if one is caught, his legs broken, a knife driven into the body, the blood sprinkled a little at a time around the boundaries of that field, and the body itself buried in that place at which the dragging of it began; or if the share, with which that year the first furrow of that field was cut, is knocked from the plough and burnt on the hearth of the Lares where the family assemble, a wolf will harm no animal in that field so long as the custom is kept up. We will now turn to animals in a peculiar class by themselves, which are not either tame or wild.

REMEDIES: FROM BIRDS
A help against snake-bite is also flesh of doves or swallows freshly torn away, and the feet of a horned owl burnt with the herb plumbago. Speaking of this bird I will not omit a specimen of Magian fraud, for besides their other monstrous lies they declare that an horned owl's heart, placed on the left breast of a sleeping woman, makes her tell all her secrets, and that men carrying it into battle are made braver by it.

From the horned owl's egg they prescribe recipes for the hair. Now who, I ask, could have ever looked at a horned owl's egg, when it is portent to have seen the bird itself? Who in any case could have tried it, particularly on the hair? The blood, indeed of a horned owl's chick is guaranteed even to curl the hair. Of much the same kind would seem to be also their stories about the bat: that if carried alive three times round the house and then fastened head downwards through the window, it acts as a talisman, and is specifically such to sheepfolds if carried round them three times and hung up by the feet over the threshold. Its blood also with thistle the Magi praise as one of the sovereign remedies for snake-bite.

MAD DOGS AND HYDROPHOBIA
If a person has been bitten by a mad dog, protection from hydrophobia is given by an application to the wound of ash from the burnt head of a dog. Now all reduction to ash (that I may describe it once for all) should be carried out in the following way: a new earthen vessel is covered all over with clay and so put into a furnace. The same method is also good when the ash is to be taken in drink. Some have prescribed as a cure eating a dog's head. Others too have used as an amulet a worm from a dead dog, or placed in a cloth under the cup the sexual fluid of a bitch, or have rubbed into the wound the ash from the hair under the tail of the mad dog itself. Dogs run away from one who carries a dog's heart, and indeed do not bark if a dog's tongue is placed in the shoe under the big toe, or at those who carry the severed tail of a weasel which has afterwards been set free. Under the tongue of a mad dog is a slimy saliva, which given in drink prevents hydrophobia, but much the most useful remedy is the liver of the dog that bit in his madness to be eaten raw, if that can be done, if it cannot, cooked in any way, or a broth must be made from the boiled flesh. There is a little worm on the tongue of dogs which the Greeks call lytta (madness), and if this is taken away when they are baby puppies they neither go mad nor lose their appetite. It is also carried three times round fire and given to those bitten by a mad dog to prevent their going mad. The brains of poultry are an antidote, but to swallow them gives protection for that year only.

They say that it is also efficacious to apply to the wound a cock's comb pounded up, or goose grease with honey. The flesh of dogs that have gone mad is also preserved in salt to be used for the same purposes given in food. Puppies too of the same sex as the bitten patient are immediately drowned and their livers swallowed raw. An application in vinegar of poultry dung, if it is red, is also of advantage, or the ash of a shrew-mouse's tail (but the mutilated animal must be set free alive), an application in vinegar of a bit of earth from a swallow's nest, of the chicks of a swallow reduced to ash, or the skin or cast slough of snakes, pounded in wine with a male crab; for by it even when put away by itself in chests and cupboards they kill moths. So great is the virulence of this plague that even the urine of a mad dog does harm if trodden on, especially to those who are suffering from sores. A remedy is an application of horse dung sprinkled with vinegar and warmed in a fig. Less surprised

at all this will be one who remembers that "a dog will bite a stone thrown at him" has become a proverb to describe quarrelsomeness. It is said that he who voids his own urine on that of a dog will suffer numbness in his loins. The lizard called seps by some and chalcis by others, if taken in wine is a cure for its own bites.

EYELASHES
A crow's brain taken in food is said to make eyelashes grow, and also wool grease and myrrh applied with a warmed probe. We are assured that the same result is obtained by taking the ash of flies and of mouse dung in equal quantities, so that the weight of the whole amounts to half a denarius, then adding two-sixths of a denarius of antimony and applying all with wool grease; or one may use baby mice beaten up in old wine to the consistency of an anodyne salve. When inconvenient hairs in the eyelashes have been plucked out they are prevented from growing again by the gall of a hedgehog, the fluid part of a spotted lizard's eggs, the ash of a salamander, the gall of a green lizard in white wine condensed by sunshine to the consistency of honey in a copper vessel, the ash of a swallow's young added to the milky juice of tithymallus and the slime of snails.

REMEDIES FOR THE TEETH
Toothache is also cured, the Magi tell us, by the ash of the burnt heads without any flesh of dogs that have died of madness, which must be dropped in cypress oil through the ear on the side where the pain is; also by the left eye-tooth of a dog, the aching tooth being scraped round with
it; by one of the vertebrae of the draco or of the enhydris, the serpent being a white male. With this eye-tooth they scrape all round the painful one, or they make an amulet of two upper teeth, when the pain is in the upper jaw, using lower teeth for the lower jaw. With its fat they rub hunters of the crocodile. They also scrape teeth with bones extracted from the forehead of a lizard at a full moon, without their touching the earth. They rinse the mouth with a decoction of dog's teeth in wine, boiled down to one-half. The ash of these teeth with honey helps children who are slow in teething. A dentifrice also is made with the same ingredients. Hollow teeth are stuffed with the ash of mouse dung or with dried lizard's liver. A snake's heart, eaten or worn as an amulet, is considered efficacious. There are among them some who recommend a mouse to be chewed up twice a month to prevent aches. Earthworms, boiled down in oil and poured into the ear on the side where there is pain, afford relief. These also, reduced to ash and plugged into decayed teeth, force them to fall out easily, and applied to sound teeth relieve any pain in them. They should be burnt, however, in an earthen pot. They also benefit if boiled down in squill vinegar with the root of a mulberry tree, so as to make a wash for the teeth. The maggot also, which is found on the plant called Venus'

Bath, plugged into hollow teeth, is wonderfully good. But they fall out at the touch of the cabbage caterpillar, and the bugs from the mallow are poured into the ears with rose oil. The little grains of sand, that are found in the horns of snails, if put into hollow teeth, free them at once from pain. Empty snail shells, reduced to ash and myrrh added, are good for the gums, as is the ash of a serpent burnt with salt in an earthen pot, poured with rose oil into the opposite ear, or the slough of a snake with oil and pitch-pine resin warmed and poured into either ear - some add frankincense and rose oil-and if put into hollow teeth it also makes them fall out without trouble. I think it an idle tale that white snakes cast their slough about the rising of the Dog Star, since the casting has been seen in Italy before the rising, and in warm regions it is much less probable for sloughing to be so late. But they say that this slough, even when dry, combined with wax forces out teeth very quickly.

A snake's tooth also, worn as an amulet, relieves toothache. There are some who think that a spider also is beneficial, the animal itself, caught with the left hand, beaten up in rose oil, and poured into the ear on the side of the pain. The little bones of hens have been kept hanging on the wall of a room with the gullet intact; if a tooth is touched, or the gum scraped, and the bone thrown away, they assure us that the pain at once disappears, as it does if a raven's dung, wrapped in wool, is worn as an amulet, or if sparrows' dung is warmed with oil and poured into the ear nearer the pain. This however causes unbearable itching, and so it is better to rub the part with vinegar and the ash of a sparrow's nestlings burnt on twigs.

COLDS, ETC.
I find that a heavy cold clears up if the sufferer kisses a mule's muzzle. Pain in the uvula and in the throat is relieved by the dung, dried in shade, of lambs that have not yet eaten grass, uvula pain by applying the juice of a snail transfixed by a needle, so that the snail itself may be hung up in the smoke, and by the ash of swallows with honey. This also gives relief to affections of the tonsils. Gargling with ewe's milk is a help to tonsils and throat, as is a multipede beaten up, gargling with pigeon's dung and raisin wine, and also an external application of it with dried fig and soda. Sore throat and a running cold are relieved by snails-they should be boiled unwashed, and with only the earth taken off crushed and givento drink in raisin wine; some hold that the snails of Astypalaea are the most efficacious-by their ash, and also by rubbing with a cricket or if anybody touches the tonsils with hands that have crushed a cricket.

MAGICAL CURES
For brain-fever appears to be beneficial a sheep's lung wrapped warm round the patient's head. But who could give to one delirious the brain of a mouse to be taken in water, or the ash of a weasel, or even the dried flesh of a hedgehog, even if the treatment were bound to be successful?

As for the eyes of the horned owl reduced to ash, I should be inclined to count this remedy as one of the frauds with which magicians mock mankind, and it is especially in fevers that true medicine is opposed to the doctrines of the quacks. For they have actually divided the art according to the passing of the sun, and also that of the moon, through the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

That the whole theory should be rejected I will show by a few examples. If the sun is passing through Gemini, they recommend the sick to be rubbed with the combs, ears, and claws of cocks, burnt and pounded with oil; if it is the moon, the cocks' spurs and wattles must be used. If either sun or moon is passing through Virgo, grains of barley must be used; if through Sagittarius, a bat's wing; if the moon is passing through Leo, leaves of tamarisk, and they add that it must be the cultivated shrub; if through Aquarius, boxwood charcoal, pounded. Of these remedies I shall include only those recognized, or at least thought probable: for example, to rouse the victims of lethargus by pungent smells, among which perhaps I would put the dried testicles of a weasel or the fumes of his burnt liver. For these patients also they consider it useful to wrap round the head the warm lung of a sheep.

BURNS
Burns are treated with ash of a dog's head, the ash of dormice and oil, sheep dung and wax, the ash of mice; with the ash of snails so well that not even a scar is to be seen, with viper fat, and with the ash of pigeon's dung applied in oil.

FRACTURES
For fractures of the joints a specific is the ash of a sheep's thighs with wax - this medicament is more efficacious if there are burnt with the thighs the sheep's jawbones and a deer's horn, and the wax is softened with rose oil - specific for broken bones is a dog's brain, spread on a linen cloth, over which is placed wool, occasionally moistened underneath (with oil). In about fourteen days it unites the broken parts, as does quite as quickly the ash of a field-mouse with honey, or that of earth-worms, which also extracts fragments of bone.

SCARS AND SKIN DISEASES
Scars are restored to the natural colour by the lungs of sheep, particularly of rams, by their suet in soda, by the ash of a green lizard, by a snake's slough boiled down in wine, and by pigeon's dung with honey; the last in wine does the same for both kinds of white vitiligo; for vitiligo cantharides also with two parts of rue leaves. These must be kept on in the sun until the skin is violently irritated; then there must be fomentation and rubbing with oil, followed by another application. This treatment should be repeated for several days, but deep ulceration must be guarded against. For vitiligo of all kinds they also recommend the application of flies with root of eupatoria, or the white part of hens' dung kept in old oil in a horn box, or bat's blood, or hedgehog's gall in water. Itch scab however is relieved by the brain of a horned owl with saltpeter, but best of all by dog's blood, and pruritus by the small, broad, kind of snail, crushed and applied.

REMEDIES FOR SLEEP
Sleep is induced by wool grease with a morsel of myrrh diluted in two cyathi of wine, or else with goose grease and myrtle wine, by the cuckoo bird in a piece of hare's fur worn as an amulet, or by a heron's beak worn as an amulet on the forehead in a piece of ass's hide. It is thought too that the beak of the heron by itself rinsed in wine has the same effect. Sleep is kept away, on the contrary, by a dried bat's head worn as an amulet.

APHRODISIACS, ETC.
A lizard drowned in a man's urine is antaphrodisiac to him who passed it, but the Magi claim that it is a love-philtre. Antaphrodisiac too are snails, and pigeon's dung taken with oil and wine. Aphrodisiac for men are the right parts of a vulture's lung, worn as an amulet in a piece of crane's skin; aphrodisiac also are the yolks of five pigeons' eggs mixed with a denarius by weight of pig fat and swallowed in honey, sparrows or their eggs in food, or the right testicle of a cock worn as an amulet in a piece of ram's-skin.

They say that rubbing with ibis ash, goose grease and iris oil prevent miscarriage when there has been conception; that desire on the contrary is inhibited if a fighting cock's testicles are rubbed with goose grease and worn as an amulet in a ram's skin, as it also is if with a cock's blood any cock's testicles are placed under the bed. Women unwilling to conceive are forced to do so by hairs from the tail of a she-mule, pulled out during the animal copulation and entwined during the human. A man who passes his urine on a dog's is said to become less sexually active. A wonderful thing again (if it is true) is told about the ash of the spotted lizard: if wrapped in a linen cloth and held in the left hand it is aphrodisiac; if transferred to the right hand it is antaphrodisiac. Another wonder: the blood of a bat, collected on a flock of wool and placed under the heads of women, moves them to lust, as does the tongue of a goose, taken either in food or in drink.

⁽⁰⁾

At the lower registers lie nodes of lice and carp, silk and blood, the owl, and the human groin. In the middling scaffolding reside ears and bees, the moon, the color green, the tongue, the human torso (by way of "chest" and "breast"), eggs and eels and salt and seed. Cascading over everything, hair: sometimes shaved, sometimes growing, sometimes braided; sometimes the speaker's, sometimes another's. At the very top, crowning Kalamaras's vision of the world, glitter spine and vowel and sparrow.

Kalamaras works conscientiously in both the traditions he has chosen to inherit. His newest book, Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair—beautifully produced by Gian Lombardo's Quale Press—claims the Surrealist painter Paul Delvaux (whose 1937 painting The Call of the Night appears on the book's cover) is its tutelary muse; Max Ernst also appears, briefly if memorably, as a sort of doting uncle. The book's compositional strategies hew close to Surrealist practice, but the book's philosophical frame of reference comes from various Eastern spiritual traditions; Kalamaras dedicates the volume, in part, to "the beloved Yogis of India." The result is a synthetic discourse that moves easily back and forth between Western modes of juxtaposition and surprise and Eastern postures of phenomenological concern.

Kalamaras's previous book, Borders My Bent Toward, prosecuted his particular (and particularly erotic) vision primarily through traditional free verse lines and stanzas. The major exception to this rule was the playfully exuberant series of epistolary prose poems he called "Births Incurred" (Kalamaras's half of a long-standing correspondence with Eric Baus; the other half appears in print in Baus's The To Sound). Nearly all of the poems in Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair are prose poems, but the shift is more than a formal one.

For starters, the poems in Java Sparrows seem more relaxed than their predecessors. In Borders Kalamaras displayed an insistent emotional earnestness that crosscut, and sometimes undercut, the affective power of Surrealist play. In Java Sparrows that earnestness has receded; the result is often a less coercive experience for the reader, though also at times a less exigent one. It's as if Kalamaras had channeled Russell Edson by way of his own erotic fever dream and a renewed acquaintance with Breton. Here are three prose stanzas from "A History of Sleep":

Animal skins from the time of Eden. Hunters with boils, appearing from Emmaus, believing in inverted stars. Eating locusts. A nipping in your half-sleep when you turn over the day's plague as hair crowding the pillow.

We were inmates of the dark kitchen. Given crusts. Told never to believe a lay person or a monk. The window, the size of those in Flemish paintings. The cup of boiled milk had a skin of cinnamon, was smaller and larger than your only mother.

Most of the poems in Java Sparrows rely more on narrative than "A History of Sleep," which conveys Kalamaras's associational poetics in condensed form. Kalamaras's Eros is less an Eros of encounter than an Eros of condition: everything has sensual valence, starting with sound and proceeding through the human body to language and other furnitures of daily life.

What sets Java Sparrows apart from other contemporary Surrealist poetries, and from Kalamaras's earlier books, is a sense of community that not only informs his process but also infuses the work. Rarely have I read a book of poems so affectionately aware of its own primary audience. Two of the longer poems in Java Sparrows are addressed to poet John Bradley; others appear to be later entries in his correspondence with Baus. The flip side of human community, of course, is loss, and Java Sparrows contains more than its share of elegies. Maybe it's this sense of the fragility of community that makes Java Sparrows read more soberly than Borders My Bent Toward. There were moments when I longed for the manic wordplay of "Births Incurred," but they were matched by the moments in which I, reading from outside the charmed circle, nevertheless felt the pathos that lies at the heart of Kalamaras's project, the sweetness of each inevitable goodbye.

For me, the most powerful poem in Java Sparrows is the longest poem, "Wang Wei Board Game." Positioned as the second of four sections in the book, "Wang Wei Board Game" invents itself through nine pages of instructions for prospective players. The instructions alternate between moments of pathos, humor, technical language, wry humor, and high camp. The poem's appropriation of the ancient Chinese poets is indiscriminat­ing, irreverent, and thorough. Here is the stanza describing the gamepieces:

Select board token as your principal participant 'identity.' Choose among the following, one for each player: wandering monk, Chinese timber wolf, panda chewing bamboo, lute, Mongolian pony, emperor's fingernail (pointed, curved token), Tu Fu's ragged overcoat (token with holes), amorous palace peacock, courtesan, Yangtze ferry boat (without ferryman), River Han ferry boat (with ferryman), panda without bamboo (sad-looking token), full moonlight (elongated, translucent piece), Tartar warrior, blood pheasant (red-tipped winged token), apricot grove moth, river wave Li Po drowned in (token marked luminous with dissolving star), Subprefect Chang (government official token), court poet, yarrow stalk, bamboo rain forest (large, slightly damp token), and conscription officer.

The poem, of course, is a game, not unlike the game it describes. Who wouldn't want to play? As the poem progresses, however, it becomes clear that we are all already playing. "Place poem on depiction of one stream or the other, and sprinkle water," the instructions at one point read, "...until brush stroke of calligraphy dissolves, joining the 'world of me' with the world of the eternal river of either life or death." "Is there a way out of one's soul?" Kalamaras asked in his previous book. In Java Sparrows, the soul finds its way back in.

Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair
By GEORGE KALAMARAS.
Quale Press. 2004. $14

Originally published on Octopus Magazine. Reproduced here with permission.

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I have noticed that some of these souls write poetry with such abandon, quantity and quality it sometimes makes me wish I was compulsive "in that way". Every art form has its wounded, brilliant practitioners. But it seems to me that "creation" springs more abundantly, and often more beautifully from those who suffer mental, physical and spiritual hurdles. The poet, Spiel seems to be such a poet. He made the transition from visual art to word art just eight years ago. It is quite evident that in poetry he has found a medium big enough for his ideas, his anger and his sorrow.

In a recent interview with Tom Conroy of The League of Laboring Poets Spiel describes himself as "a perilously crusty provocateur who steps on cracks to break the backs of sacred cows." And one aspect of Spiel is indeed as provocateur – a role he seems to enjoy. Again from the Conroy interview, Spiel says, "And for all of those who believe I read (or write) for shock, well,...there is an imperative sensibility to much of what I build in my pieces; its intent is to plant deeply what I hope to inform: this is what I believe is mistaken by some as the shock factor." But when Spiel is shocking it is not just for its own sake, but because it is catharsis for him and for those whose silence he gives words to. Spiel's audience will not be mainstream, but he doesn't care. As he says in the interview, "I can't say that I intentionally write for a particular audience. But I'm certain my audience is limited somewhat by my language: i.e., those who abhor the word fuck, for example. Those who hold their sacred cows above reason." There are very few poets who write about personal horror and pain; and even fewer who do it well. Spiel willingly puts his head into the black hole of his past, and then writes about it. In a small press populated with fascinating personalities, Spiel was one I wanted to know better. He graciously agreed to lay it on me.

CPR: What is your real name?
SPIEL: My real name is the name I allow you to know me by. My real name is my enormous bank of artistic invention during more than sixty-six years in this declining body--my real name in the "making pictures" poem in my chap "it breathes on its own" which speaks of an extensive series of casein paintings done in the early 60s: children--without faces..."without mouths / to speak / to tell of all their needs / to tell their stories / where they'd been / why they stood before the houses / without doors / without windows / "

CPR: For having started writing poetry just eight years ago, your work is very developed. Can you tell me about your publication credits?
SPIEL: Look...I've got a serious issue with this sort of question. Must poetry fall into the category of a race? Like a 100K run? I wig out when poetry is thought of quantitatively. I could flash you good numbers. But it's the relative value of each of those publications that matters.

CPR: I agree that at a certain level of quality (and persistence) it is not hard to amass lots of writing credits, but a body of work is exactly that, and I want to know about your body of work. I see your poetry all over the small press. So getting placed must matter to you. Let's keep it simple. How many books have you published?

SPIEL: You're not hearing me, man. I'm taking this opportunity to say I don't dig it when writers start throwing their numbers around. Thanks to Kinkos, just about anyone can publish dozens of chaps that'd make for a real hotshit bio. What difference does it make that, in fact, I've published a dozen? I'd hope we're not talking Wal-Mart versus Target when we talk poetry. Yeah, if I were just writing this stuff for myself, I'd put it down in soft pencil on toilet paper, then flush it; so for me, chapbooks actually do serve a purpose; a sort of archiving. And they do have a certain degree of staying power. But to achieve just ONE really meaningful chap in a lifetime...ahhh, now that might be a worthwhile aim--when in truth, for the dedicated poet, it's difficult to achieve that with just one truly great poem.

CPR: In the latest issue of Blind Man's Rainbow, its editor, Melody Sherosky says about your recent book of poetry, "come here cowboy: poems of war": "...these poems reinforce my own feelings that he is one of the best independent press poets currently producing new work." That's pretty high praise from a very astute reader of poetry. Tell me about your training as a writer?
SPIEL: Until '96 when I became deathly ill, I'd spent my first fifty-five years as a visual artist; from there, three years of reticence--not at all resilient about recognizing I had not died. Since spring of '99, I've been re-inventing myself as a writer. I took a couple of lit classes in university over forty years ago but all I remember is a knockdown with an obsessive old professor, an Englishman, who wouldn't allow me to write "pregnant silence." I dropped college twice. Did not understand that the psych disorders which've messed with my life were probably the reason I was unable to handle the disciplines of education. My "writing training" is in the daily doing of it.

CPR: Tell me about your process. Do you rewrite extensively?
SPIEL: It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say writing is all I do--typically putting in a solid 60 hours weekly at the keys. As for process, more often than not comprehensive--rare is the poem which just falls how I want it published. My studio has stretched onto the kitchen table, into my car, next to my bed (writing by feel in total darkness), the TV, any place I can grab a scrap of paper to jot the flash of a moment. Then, from those scraps, I begin development on screen where the piece may go through several lives. First print-out is then hand-writ into my "archive/journal" where, in ink, I may recognize new issues I want to work over. So, it's back to the computer...

CPR: In your book, "it breathes on its own" your art braids itself into and around the poems. On one level this creates a union of visual art and reading, but I sometimes found the art made it difficult to read the poems. For example in the poems "andy" and "lye" the font size made it hard to actually read the work.
SPIEL:This is evidence the painter in me did not fully die when I "died" in '96. "andy" and "lye" reveal dark secrets which were agonizing to access; so I present them as a guarded secret you must ache your ear to hear..."/ pleeze daddy / the arm for her shot / that's the arm / when she scrubs me with lye / and won't let me go /". The visual encounter you speak of is not incidental to the words. It's a piece of each word. Each of my chaps is a new experience. In my "church floor," pages of those oblique poems appear to have been writ in different languages, then ripped apart, then pasted together again--not unlike the chaotic process of my mind. I want you to experience it with me, be dragged into it, troubled: "/sleep thought out / but ne'er possessed / as nightly suicides / by rubber daggers". Good grief, man, this is the revelation of the Grim Fairy Tale of my real life; and decidedly the most challenging of my collections.

CPR: In "making picture without words" you say, "& at that time I changed my name / to hide my blackened tongue / so blackened then / by griefs of secrets hidden there / behind my face / without a place to speak". Many of your poems are dark and filled with sadness.
SPIEL: True. So true. The absolute recognition of the effect of generations of psych-illness preceding me--then in me--my past inability to touch my fundamental base: the frightened precociously creative homosexual child given to manic depression, born at the outset of WWII to common white farmers in a small out-west town, my mother's blood the pathway to a madness it would take these sixty-six years to lead to this earthquake of the psyche--and in this watered-down culture: locally, globally.

CPR: You often weave this darkness and suffering in your themes with a musicality; you use repetition of words to deepen meaning, through sound. For example in "knots & ribbons" you repeat the words nipples and ribbons a number of times. This musical aspect of your writing works to great effect in your wonderful poem, "chair". It's brilliant.
SPIEL: Thanks. You got it right about the music. Nothing is finished until the music is there. "knots & ribbons" is a true story of an acquaintance whose husband ritually abused her, then hanged himself to be discovered in front of her child's bedroom door. Odd isn't it, the music of words came to relate this hideous story--perhaps make it palpable. "chair" is a rare piece which fell into place first stroke. "I wish you" poems are a kick to write but they're a challenge cuz they can easy end up as crap. Recording "chair" for my new album--mmm, the sexiest! Those words are so intimate, dude, and doing it live with a mike against my lips proved their worth.

CPR: In some of your poems you relate incidents very graphically, in some cases the language boarders on lurid and/or pornographic in tone –
SPIEL: Well, Charles, your choice of words may say more about you than about my intent. Any number of pieces in my books might be interpreted as graphic "this" or "that"--all in the mind's eye, isn't it. An old friend interprets my incest piece as a beautiful revelation of flesh between mother and child. For me, it's one of my most horrifying poems. I'm an adventurous writer who takes the stance that there're no limits to what good poetry can be about, nor how it can be expressed. I tackle all sacred cows with the same gusto--they fall under the same category: the beastiness of humankind. I dig beneath that hirsute surface, little old churchy ladies included, to write about why people suffer so, why they treat each other the way they do, why..."/ it's a good thing / to die / at least once / in a lifetime / unearth a new baseline / with your head bent / the way your neck / was set to turn //"

CPR: In some of your poems, you seem comfortable using what you've called street words (in your Laboring Poets interview). I read poets who think using the "F-bomb" somehow elevates the visceral quality of their work when it actually diminishes it, distracts from it. Don't you think you stand the same risk in using fuck or other street words in your poetry?
SPIEL: I wonder if you recognize the depth of passion beneath my drive to keep all channels open for a language which is unrestrained--and to stave off those who would attempt limitations on it because it offends their sense of right and wrong. As a gay child in the 40s, then into the 50s, I was called every name you'd care to imagine, but I weathered those tags and I've come out the stronger man for it: whatever I was tagged was what those creeps believed and had they called me something more "correct," their hatred would not have been any less poisonous. Good art, historically, resonates the times in which it is made. Given that the fuck word is plentifully used today, then there should be a solid reflection of its usage in the poetry of today. The most significant of the Beat Poets were not the product of decorum and protocol when they turned the lit world upside down. Throughout history, the mind of the enduring artist/explorer has never been driven by protocol, nor decorum.

CPR: The liner note from one of your books says, "Without your ear, I have no voice." Surely you know that some of your language may be hard for many ears to hear.
SPIEL: Again...I see poetry as advocacy. I speak out for the disadvantaged and against those thugs who are inappropriately advantaged. I may be an acquired taste--perhaps to my disadvantage. But for those who want "easy to hear," let them eat Maya Angelou's Hallmark collection for which she was rewarded gazillions.

CPR: I love many of your poems: "deceit" "revelation" "marilyn" "closed open" and "touch". You write soft lyrical poems and head bangers equally well. I found this a surprising aspect of you and your writing. It suggests to me that anger, yearning and sadness sit side by side in your writer's mind. Does one style call to you more strongly the other?
SPIEL: I have no need, no sense, for "style" when I begin to write. Every piece is Spielspeak to me. Why you draw style lines is weird to me. "closed" was a rare "blind poem" where I sat at the keyboard, then let my fingers fly--"automatic writing." When finished, I removed one unruly word, then shaped the piece. About "marilyn," an established feminist poet sent an email saying, "the last lines are some of the most original & poignant words ever written about (marilyn)." "/ aloof / wanting / already contemplating / the abandon / of / what men desire / wanting out //" When I wrote that poem, I recall thinking it was about me.

CPR: What is your greatest joy?
SPIEL: Birthing words which work.

Spiel writes with great range and passion. So much so that it is easy to hear and remember only his loudest shouts - those poems in which he pounds the door and cries out for the injustice, the inequality and sorrow of this life. But flip these poems over and you find a poet equally equipped to write soft, spare, musical poems filled with sentiment and yearning. None of us can remove ourselves from the themes of our writing. Each line and stanza says something about us and perhaps, as Spiel suggests, offers a mirror up for others to see themselves more clearly. Spiel holds his mirror with uncommon intensity. He can be loud and shrill, but he can also be soft, silent, beauty. He's a mind bender for sure.

You may order Spiel's three most recent books of poetry: it breathes on its own ($10), come here cowboy: poems of war ($10), and church floor ($6) by contacting him at:

Spiel
89 W. Linden Ave
Pueblo West CO 81007
tomtomrep@hotmail.com

SPIEL REFERENCE NOTES AND REVIEWER'S BIO:
For samples of Spiel visual art go to:

Cover art, etc. Skidrow Penthouse, Issue #8, 2007, $15. 300+ pages. Poetry. 44 Four Corners Rd. Blairstown N.J. 07825.

Spiel art in: Nerve Cowboy, Issues 1-15, 17 & 18
& Bathtub Gin, front cover, Issue 11, 2002

Also Spiel art as 2 signed limited edition broadsides: www.puddinghouse.com & within it breathes on its own chapbook

For samples of Spiel's poetry & short stories online please click these links:

www.theleagueoflaboringpoets.com seek interviews, reviews, poems
www.ascentaspirations.ca seek "contributors" "short stories"
www.four-sep.com seek "chapbooks"
www.laurahird.com seek "featured poets"
www.laurahird.com/bestrecords/ironbutterfly (seek In A Gadda Da Vidda)
www.muse-apprentice-guild.com seek archives/ spiel
http://newversenews.blogspot.com seek archives/ spiel poems
www.marchstreetpress.com (parting gifts magazine) seek spiel poems
www.poetsagainstthewar.org seek spiel poem
www.puddinghouse.com 3 chapbooks by spiel, poetry
www.saintvituspress.com seek poems & essay
www.strangeroad.com seek poetry
www.thundersandwich.com seek poems
www.unlikelystories.org/art/spiel "cross-media" art
www.unlikelystories.org/spiel seek "poetry," seek "short stories"
www.unlikelystories.org./spiel "spiel jack moss" download of voice-on
www.wordriot.org seek poems
www.zafusy.com seek archives
www.zygoteinmycoffee.com seek "back issues" for spiel poems

About the author: Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and sixty print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing, and most recently read his poetry on National Public Radio's Theme and Variations, a program that is broadcast over seventy NPR affiliates. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory. Ries is also the author of five books of poetry -- the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! (www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most recently he has been appointed to the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

Originally published on Word Riot. Reproduced here with permission.

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That's why I volunteered for an energy-conservation ad campaign for Powerwise, a partnership between local Ontario electrical utilities and the Government of Ontario. We've completed two television commercials and some print and outdoor advertising, all of which folks in Ontario can expect to see plenty of this summer.

For the local electrical utilities, their main goal is to reduce electrical consumption and avoid brownouts, where demand for power outstrips supply. California used similar public-awareness campaigns to successfully reduce its electricity consumption. I hope Powerwise has a similar effect in Ontario.

While avoiding brownouts is an obvious benefit, reducing our electricity consumption is also extremely important from a public and environmental health perspective. Generating electricity can have significant environmental and social costs, depending on the source of the power. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, for example, generate the majority of their power from coal, which has a large air pollution and global warming footprint.

Other provinces use combinations of hydroelectricity, oil, natural gas, diesel and other fuels to generate electricity. Ontario is blessed with a huge land base and obtains a quarter of its electricity from large-scale hydroelectric dams. Although dams don't burn fossil fuels, they do flood vast areas of land. And the decomposition of organic matter under that water can release substantial amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

More than half of Ontario's power actually comes from nuclear energy, which is generally perceived as having a smaller carbon footprint than fossil fuels. But nuclear power plants are enormously complex and expensive, and they still suffer from waste storage and safety concerns. And although they don't release greenhouse gases when generating electricity, they certainly do "upstream," since mining the fuels, building the power plants and disposing of the waste are all tremendously energy intensive. Another 18 per cent of Ontario's power comes from fossil fuels - largely coal.

Low-impact renewable energy, like wind power, has only recently started making inroads into Ontario. These energy sources emit very little in the way of air pollutants or greenhouse gases. In theory, most new electricity demand in the province could be met through the use of low-impact renewables, but only if we get serious about energy conservation - hence, the ads. My hope is that Ontario doesn't have to build expensive and unreliable nuclear power plants, or polluting coal-fired generators. We can accomplish that, and put that money into renewable energy instead, but only if we develop a culture of energy conservation in Ontario.

That won't happen overnight. In fact, at first glance, the focus of the ads may seem like pretty small potatoes - changing lightbulbs and getting rid of old beer fridges, for example. But we have to start somewhere and, when millions of people make small changes, they really add up. That's why I, and my foundation, volunteered to help with the ads. We want to help people in Ontario, and ultimately the entire country, to start down a road to conservation.

Really, the ads are just a beginning. But the small steps they represent will start a new way of looking at things and a new way of thinking about electricity. We certainly can't stop at these small steps. But even small steps can take you a great distance if you make enough of them.

Originally published on March 23, 2007

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

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