6 To drift on a raft, in the cold Gulf your mother drowned and gone to the bottom, your no-go father waiting, wanting to lug you back to Cuba. Elián González, refugee. Half-orphan, political racquetball. On elliptical orbit... to please the ghost of his mother, or follow his father’s voice? A listening crane on a listing splinter under unknown stars (willful beasts beneath transparencies, emergencies – self-righteous crowds of kinfolk tyrannies – calculated raptures, seizures). And Henry trying to right the boat from a Babylonian mess, a mes- tree, a mystery–semblance muttered by tabulator- oracles, never getting blind. All out of fo’csle fire, folks – star-speech of sophic sophisticates in dabble- science. Dark mutter beneath the beautiful city of colored stars (drunk on illicit l-Iku cubes, original razzmatazz of paradise). Tom Thumb (vain little man to the finish line) hefting his axe to shadows, Nile- willows, round oak boles... mythed again. It was the voice of Persephone brought Kore to the well-stone, sent Gilgamesh nose-tossing downward toward the Scorpion or Mother Sun or Dead Zone south of Canopus and the big muddy vermin-mouthed gibbous Nile-thermousine nose-diviner raft of pap set loose there; was Sarah Wilds for truth, hung swinging for it between Hale Oannos and Oannos Golden (Rhea’s Salem shulamite for real) and all the other saints (from Jeannie arcing east to Mary Easty, swinging west) fled to our island Rhodes, colossal Roger Wilco’s will (his palm of stone extended over the Terrace of soul freedom, calm, certain) for every ignited fire-lamb of foolishness or wisdom (children circling around a christmas tree all lit with stars gold-wrought and silver-shimmering for their delight: some happy pappy’s saintly clause exuded from the fireplace or through the cedar boughs: some wraith of presence through chalk- white blindness: deepening snow of winter night, adrift... a raft from the serpentine and far Antipodes). And snow it was – since the blizzard of the galaxies unfolds in chaos, and the choppy seas avoid the careful, coppery seasons of Assyrian seizures, accidental Babylons, and the dismal dizzy darkness bears, it seems, the single inkspot of a measly thumbprint (on a live-oak dreidle backspun against gravity) – your will, old Roger’s Will, old Roger Williams’ will – the will to rage against stars, for heaven’s vague unvarying stake – rage like a lion against cruel stars, their stories and their cold indifference – muttered spider tales, nails in the coffin of each living soul (nursery rhymes, cribbed around your eyes – the bier, creaking at the vile Nile mouth). Ah... but your rage will turn to wonder and your Martian heart dissolve upon the hearth, when the love-star climbs from the depths – the red one, turning violet and green - the star that fell into the well in Bethlehem, the star that guided Balthasar from the heart of Ethiopia to the rafters sheltering a refugee bringing his single gift - an emerald jewel-ship (tender shell, immured in his palm... a gleaming nef). * Yesterday 200 years ago a humble father of his country set sail with Utnapishtim, for the terraces of Ocean-Sky, in far Ogygia (where all the rivers meet). O you who love the land from the bare cradle of the zu-bird to Arabian phoenix (Jeannes at the teller teamed with arching armored Johns adorned with eddying maelstroms, gunslung tattooed catch-22s) listen: alpha beta gamma Pegasus at the Florentine font, 529, sidereal, intones: go out to the Exalted Courtyard, Iku-Star – where truth grows saltier, more regal. Light along an axe-blade travels upstream (pennyroyal mint) to Blackstone’s font. 12.15.99
7.01.2005
Going to post a couple of oddities from Forth of July for the 4th of July. This one was written on the 200th anniversary of the death of George Washington:
Labels:
Forth of July5
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