some old weird poetry-history, from toward the end of Forth of July. W. Blackstone places his "W" over a map of the Mediterranean:

 2


  
 It was Good Friday (raining) in Lima, Peru;
 it was a rainy April day in Washington.
 It was November 22 in Avignon
 (a lucky day in Paris – Dallas too).

  
 Blackstone lay half-sleeping in a meadow
 underneath an oak – his white bull
 grazing drowsily (slow, calm) downhill.
 And half-dreaming, saw (in the shadow

  
 of his hat) strange visions.  On a wide
 and blue-green map (where a playful whale
 dove deep toward shore) a serpent curled
 (all blue) from hidden mountains northward,

  
 and, at a bulrush delta, zigzagged right;
 then wheeled again (upon a huge, rugged
 stone) into an island labyrinth,  caved
 inward by the sea – while from a root

  
 in Aquitaine, or Septimania, a dragon
 like a red thread spun straight forward
 into Constantinople, and there turned
 likewise back to sea – and wound

  
 itself, entwined, with the Southern serpent
 (tightly, lovingly as any Solomon enfolds
 his Sheba – one, unfathomable, sealed –
 one purple veil-knot).  Out of his own entrails,

  
 then, strangely, this woven Minotaur emerged...
 til Blackstone woke with a start (the weird
 hex going, the map dissolving, merely muttered
 into his own fuzzy beard)... and spring surged on.

       
                                     4.15.2000