In the same way that Mandelstam/Aristotle's "law of identity" (A = A) marks the tautology of a universe in which Word=Love=Cosmos, the "Orpheus/Eurydice" romance adumbrates or narrates a reality brought back to life by song (Orpheus' lyre caused stones & lambs & lions etc. to sing together) : just as poetry invites its listener into a "Now" of loving creative play. So for the infinitely hungry "Henry" of Forth of July, Mandelstamian Russia is reborn, re-incarnated in the Petersburg (city of the "Midnight Sun") poet Elena Shvarts (etymologically, "shining black") - the heiress of Russia's "black sun" (cf. Mandelstam), Pushkin. The hunt for "Pushkin the black cat" leads through Bluejay back to Petersburg (by a roundabout route).

from the 2nd chapter of Grassblade Light, "Letters to Elena":

         10


  
         Pushkin's catgut stretches taut
 across the wood.  From here to there
 it's a walking game (your
 move, Beatrice).  Astigmatism taught

  
         you better than they knew : Jerusalem
 both here and there.  Many thousand gone,
         one just begun, my Lord.  Is just begun.
 Body and soul, tourist-pilgrim,

  
         heart-mind, lover-beloved,
 promise-desire, shroud-ark...
 Elena, nightmares of the shark
 will never shake your silhouetted

  
         chariot's erratic circuits over Venice
 (like a spiral J at sunset).  East
 to west.  Human-beast,
 animal-flower, water-stone.  Finis.

  
         And a wave-curve emerges
 continuously out of these
 reflections as
 the blurred eye sees

  
         and the blind eyes feel
 and in the adjacent niche
 the icon's eyes reach
 forward toward you... seal

  
         that endless enigma of longing
 sin remorse and imperfection.
 All is resurrection now – and
 a slow walk toward spring.


      
                                    1.25.99

[note: human-beast, animal-flower, etc., and the "circuits over Venice", refer to 3 famous Shvarts poems, "Elegy on the Cardinal Points", "Animal-Flower", and "The Virgin Rides on Venice, and I on Her Back", available in English in the Bloodaxe selection of her work, Paradise.)