Children Of Legend

This is a painting called “Ulysses and the Sirens” by Herbert James Draper. Draper was English and painted this around 1909. When this was first exhibited it caused a bit of fuss, because Draper personified the voices of the Sirens as beautiful women actually coming aboard the boat of Ulysses. Traditionally the Sirens of Homer were not depicted in such a realistic way becoming so directly involved with humans. The Sirens were typically regarded as distant creatures tempting humans away from our world. There is more about this painting at Margaret’s blog, The Earthly Paradise.






Children Of Legend
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I hear engineers and other people
put together giant welding machines
to speed the production of steel ship hulls
during World War Two.

The welding machines created huge sparks
using immense capacitors to store
electric energy.

The heat from the sparks melted metal squares
that sealed the hulls of ships to carry freight
across the Atlantic.

The process of storing and discharging
vast amounts of electric energy
ripped apart our space-time and stabbed a hole
through the fabric of our reality.

Attempting to automate production
of ship hulls with high-tech industry tools
I hear is the simple reality
at the heart, at the start—at the real start—
of the legends, myths, even fairy tales
people nowadays still talk about as
the Philadelphia Experiment
and the Montauk Project and other things.

I don’t know if anyone ever built
any ship hulls using those welding tools.

I don’t know if those ships shuttled cargo
across the Atlantic.

But I am quite persuaded however
that the reality around us now—
the ripples and folds, the ripped apart seams
and stitched together seams in the fabric
of our space-time—came to life in the sparks,
man-made lightning, of an experiment
in industrial production techniques
conducted sometime during World War Two.

Reality then—ripped and stabbed, folded
and stitched, sparked to life—
became lonely and demanded a bride.

Their children now rip and stab, fold and stitch,
carrying on the craft their parents taught.

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Philadelphia Experiment

Montauk Project


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