This is from Blackstone's Day-Book, the last book of Forth of July (published in The Rose, and also in Island Road). It's about what I've been talking about today; it's also about the poet Edwin Honig (Honig, Tom Epstein & I had dinner one night with Elena Shvarts in Providence. I think it was around my birthday. I'll post a section of the poem I read for them, which I had written for ES the night before).

 5


  
 You remember the stooped man from Brooklyn,
 Elena – limping (wounded) through cedars.
 The man with elephantine features,
 a crown of white hair, scarred... a nobleman,

  
 the only knight we knew.  Out of the black-ink
 melting pot of Septimania (marches of Spain
 tattooed with strange lettering – a written,
 walking tome or tomb).  We drink

  
 the black milk of these scored hoofprints,
 a bread of pain – we scourge the scriptures'
 breathless Word – of heaving sighs
 only (and faded into sand long since).

  
 The icon floats through a crane bone
 flute, and is only image or memento,
 crumb of madeleine... a slow tempo
 memorized long before music began –

  
 in the foam of stars, seeded through night
 like Abraham's offspring, or light manna
 slipped from pigeons' wings – lemony
 taste and flower-scent – white

  
 snow in the depths of blue taiga.
 Was with us for a while, a recapitulation
 of a capitan, a Makhir from Narbonne,
 or Barcelona – Kyot or Flegetanis – troubadour,

  
 star-gazer, man of letters.  Was profiled
 in the ink-black night, still shining bright
 beneath a long-gone W – his delicate
 Sabean bride... (Cassiopeia – distant, mild).

       
                         4.29.2000