Nithraid Poetry – Page 2 – The Stove Network

From Mark Zygadlo

Vacca! The strange case of the lost locative. The Cow, subject and object as symbol. After Bonum, and Beckett (ablative, or is it genitive?)

Vacca, (the)Cow nominative,
Vacca, Oh, Cow, vocative,
Vaccam, you cow, accusative,
Vaccae, of (the)cow, genitive,
Vaccae, to or for (the)cow, dative,
Vacca, by, with, from, or in (the) cow, ablative

Remember that? Of course, it would have been Mensa, table, when we of a certain generation of the modern era were learning the first declensions; female gender singular. The Latin primer, being an expression of the late classical form, omitted the locative case of colloquial or early Latin. Ah, that hushed and subtle tongue.

Oh, the locative, (vocative case, denoted by Oh… as in: Oh, Caesar… or an exclamation mark, as in: Christ! Look at the time…) the locative! It must not be forgotten for it describes the rightness of place and the infinite distance of one location from another. It was reserved for speaking of small islands alone in the Mediterranean; no archipelagoes here, no chains of thought, no Peloponnese or Balearics, no reefs, no connections to the mainland by causeways impassable at high tide, or bridges or small ferry boats. No, and no barren rocks.

The locative speaks of being separate, of being appropriately self-contained, and it can refer to being in the earth, to death and burial, that is, to humiliation. Or, to being at home, at the hearth, focum, foc, and being in the field or fields, when that had some meaning. Specific, you see, to a state of being in place, self-sufficient, separate, discrete. If they had thought of it then, on line, on the net, would be a perfect locative; in a state of separateness described by the place—the net.

Being in a State of Grace? The Cow’s case: (genitive surely; the case of the Salted Cow, but…) Our cow’s argument is locative.

Oh, Locative, (vocative) You obsolete case; you last fragile threads of pre-classical illumination, Be exhumed in this ritual

And roar your bovine craving at us for the case we are losing from the locative field. But, pitiless grammar will not bring the bull. You shall die fallow, unfertilized In the shallows.

Cleave then, oh beast, With your split hoof and state your case, Standing up to your classical canons in it. After all, This is the sharp season of your atomized shit. Homunculus eyes focus on a darker green field. Yes, pump it out, boys. More shit, more grass, more beef, more milk, more shit, more grass, More gas, yes. More, more, more. That is our locus, our focum vivendi, our domicile, And we are such classical agrarians. It is the locative case of Shit.

Cow! (Vocative) You are sacrificial, you see? To the modus, (modo, to or for the way, dative case) to the modus, While the grammar of thought, the rules of understanding Are wiping this island from the charts. But some pre-classical urge, some visceral memory knows An identical ritual killing takes me too. Letting go so much for the sake of so it is a sacrifice alright, And we, in our improved datives, are sensible of thy gift, oh Cow, And preserve thee, black and leathery, from a hook somewhere We can no longer quite describe.

Salt beef, my life. Oh, holy shit.

Salt beef at Blum’s on the Whitechapel Road, And the long walk home through the pre-classical period When we were emergent, Or what passed for young, and understood where we were. But Blum’s, oh my dears, is gone. It was, not is And in its place, I leave my dybbuk. For we too are ephemera, Singing our hearts out In the locative case.

Nithraid was conceived as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries during the summer of 2013, bringing new focus and drawing people down to celebrate the River Nith. Now in its third year, Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors upriver to the heart of the town as Nithraid 2015 sails into town on Sunday, 2nd August. Nithraid is free and open to all, and last year saw crowds of 4,000 lining the banks to watch the winning boats cross the finish line. Find out more about this year’s Nithraid here.

The discussion is open, and we invite contributions to our artistic conversations. Whether you have been involved in Nithraid in previous years, are interested in the changing face of public art, or are curious about how a sailing race can also be an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below. Alternatively, to send your contribution, please email [email protected].

Poem Thing.

Here it is—informal, but from the heart of me.

This is what I’m thinking: we must not lose the deep meaning of Nithraid. After all, we sweated blood to get this far. We must affirm Nithraid in the flow of world art with every action. That is our responsibility to art and to people.

The main point, of course, is to show Dumfries to the wide world as a place where things are happening. But if we are to show the art world that socially engaged public art is the way to go, then we must show them that we have resolved the problem of the redundant art object.

Here it is: the cow, the cow delivery system, the Nith, the we the people, the thing of things!

What are we saying?

We are saying that this cow thing is alive and well and living in Dumfries!

It was once a linguistic object, but here and now, it is a liberated thing.

The reason it’s liberated is because we gave the art object the voice of a thing, and that thing is everything!

The Dumfries Nithraid cow is the thing of our imagining.

It is what we are and always were.

We are the Nithraid thing.

Nithraid is the liberation of the object once known as ‘cow’.

First, we cover it in salt because salt imbues and confirms the cow as a once-object standing in reserve of our existence (for our use as required).

But then, as the cow sinks into the River Nith, we, the people, sing a mooing song... moo... moo... moo...

The salt is washed away to reveal the new, precious thing in the context of things. And this act deconstructs and disrupts the limitations of our own object-centric thinking.

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