June Month of Poetry #6: The Voynich manuscipt

Today in mysteries of history: the Voynich manuscript.

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese. We know it dates from the early 15th century (thanks carbon dating!) but know little else definitive about it.  Who wrote it, what it means, why it was written, what it's about, are all still mysteries: as Wikipedia puts it, "currently scholars lack the translation(s) and context needed to both properly entertain or eliminate any of the possibilities". The manuscript consists of around 240 pages, but there is evidence that some pages are missing. The text is written from left to right, and some pages are foldable sheets of varying sizes. 

Some of the main theories for what it is include:

• a script for a made-up language
• a code that hasn't been broken yet (maybe used for espionage)
• a cypher or cryptogram
• a hoax
• a work of fiction

As to what it is about, there's no really plausible guesses on that either. There are a lot of illustrations in it and some diagrams, a few of which are recognisable as astrological symbols but many of which appear to be some strange kinds of plants that cannot be matched to anything in the real botanical world. 

Better minds than mine have grappled with the Voynich manuscript to no avail, which lends some credence to the made-up language part of the theory at least, but I decided to go full flight of fancy on this one and marry it up with the myth of Atlantis, despite the timeframe being utterly wrong and there being no connection whatever between the two, because I felt like it and if I can't have a bit of fun with these, what's the point? I wrote it as a stream of consciousness prose poem because that seemed to fit the mad mood too.

The Codex of the Drowned

lying on the bottom of the sea it lies the sea covering the salt crust the vasty deep the whales cry hollow above and the palace broken in the deepest dark and the gold-stone houses like jewels in the morning sun all waste all homes for the monsters of the trenches the market square once scarletted with ribbon-light reeking with spices with sweat with the dung of the beasts that were not like the other beasts on the earth 

the gardens oh the many many gardens behind silver gates and in meadows under forest canopy in secret courtyards flaring with flower all vermillion-fandango dripping with herbs sending their pepper tendrils into noses into eyes into sense thought feeling the herbs that open the soul and the herbs that heal and the herbs that send the unwary down to death the plants that are no more and will never be on this earth again

and the last remnant of the high hill where the stars could all be seen so clear so clear the pavillion curved carved following the guardians in their fiery progress through the year's night tracing out the fat and lean of the pale sweet moon reading tides and times and scrying for the future and searching for the paths

and the people

the people oh the people 

the women and men and children and others skin like copper polished in the sun tall and laughing and cruel and not-cruel and wise and stupid and alive alive alive firing forges and cooking stews and communing with gods and mapping stars and beating their slaves and embracing each other and casting magic and casting beauty and learning secrets and washing clothes and lying together and birthing babes and committing the dead to the waves and cutting the throats of yearling calves in the dark-door temples writing writing writing in their beautiful awful awe-born city delving too deep too deep into the mystery never thinking of a day when the mystery would snarl back the centre would fold and the bright would darken and the city would fall fall fall

my father's manyagofathers fleeing the city turning faces away afraid that the salt of the sea would consume them if they turned back if they watched if they chose to see the city as it fell and was lost and was no more and was forgotten but for strange stories but we did not forget we the children's manymorechildren we did not forget we did not forget to write write write as the people in the city wrote a tongue no one now can speak or understand a tongue soaked in the mystery in the otherlands beyond the veil

we did not forget although soon we will forget the hour is growing late the lights are burning down to fragments the memories become stories become legends and then silence

like the city the beautiful city the terrible city the city lost and gone the city in the dawn dreaming shot with treacle light the city doomed the city eternal the city buried in the deepest places of the waters the city that was the only city the city

that I write I write I write