CINDERELLA OF THE WASTELANDS: A POEM BY MARJORIE CAMERON

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome - The Marjorie Cameron Parsons Foundation
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome - The Marjorie Cameron Parsons Foundation

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is a short 38-minute film by Kenneth Anger, filmed in 1954. Anger created two other versions of this film in 1966 and the late 1970s. According to Anger, the film takes the name "pleasure dome" from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's atmospheric poem Kubla Khan. Anger was inspired to make the film after attending a Halloween party called "Come as your Madness."

 

Seven times I rap upon the mighty door of the subterranean vault - open - open
I stand without in the drafty and bent corridor that approaches thy lair.
Seven times resound my summons on the stony door and the dead stern caves and cursed the midnight hour
come thou forth,I bear a lamp for this terrible darkness, thou shall behold the face known in dreams.

Mine eyes are terrible and strange, but thou knowest me, behold my garments are of a rich cloth 
and i bear the air of a land of bounty beyond the sea, come forth.

Thou are in the shadow of the light i bear, and thy garments reek of the dead and the sun misplaced.

We shall ascend the stair which is fraught with unwholesome things, the stone rolls before me
and into the blazing vault of the night of nights, we go forth as light.
Dark star i seek you in all the endless rooms of the universe.

i have entered the maze of chaos and searched the promises, no end and no fulfillment,
but i have seen your helmeted head flashing gold from all the bloody triumphs and sunsets of the world.

I have heard your voice singing lonely songs of desire in the wild wind, i remember the artistry of fingers that held the rose in wonder
your musical throat sounding the hymn of love, seeking since the birth and the crashing star nebula.

Kingdoms of muscle and star foam, pursued and pursuing, radiant warrior, how long my beloved god, how long, how long, how long

 

 

MARJORIE CAMERON (1922-1995)

 

 

 

 

 

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