Heading out of town for a few days - be back on Wed. July 2.

A new (& final) edition of Rest Note is now available. This includes the complete Fontegaia.

& so concludes Fontegaia.

27

 
So Frisbee sets off   into the stream again
rainwater overflow down   Arthur Street
little Tom Thumb fellow   in my mother's fleet
fable   what is he?   Not quite a man?

 
One of the Little People, I guess   adrift on the easy
rush of Irish gab, my fancy O   Farewell, my little
fancy-man, now!   O   goodby, goodby!   & he sails
off   across the soothing mutter of her breezy

 
dream (for entertaining anxious irritable boys)   So
this is where my own lips take the wind   grow
silver, inching   navigating choppy water   some cello
accompaniment for an aria   (keening Hero

 
on the Hellespont, maybe)   remembering
that golden eye   a look through the   still oil
framed on the wall   that held me   tremulous (all
out of time)   an almond from Byzantium   in a ring

 
of dancing fillies   (Sienese)   & the eye of memory
wells with a single tear   where streams begin   &
rivers flow   an eye behind the eye   from the bottom-
most well of clay   looks out   gently, steadily

 
the eye   curtained in the wings   like a hovering
Frisbee-disk   whose story is   Now and Providence
& you catch only   a glint of it   in the raven's
deep glance   there   in the black steppe   & the ring

 
of far-off iron, the   steadfast drone of its distant
harmonies   over the flood   of the horses' tumbling
hoofbeats   shouts of the riders   nearing their wedding   in
a meadow   quiet   vast   Oblomov pausing now   almost (silent)

                        
                                            6.21.08

O Fontegaia... the long goodby (one more to go).

26

 
Cousin Juliet threw a spanner   in the Works of Time
waving goodby   from the Golden Gate (her father's
birthday) long time gone   & left me dangling here
between earth & heaven   like a sulky Absalom

 
That was 37 years ago   my son, my son
crossing the J-sign   slow jaywalk (against
traffic)   on a unicycle   there she goes again
amusing, she   dove   in a spiral   a stealthy unison

 
near middle C (B-flt w/suspended chord) curls
(fetal, fatal)   toward Cirque,   the grainy source
(only a mummery)   coos, cooing   & the curse
(curving, along a   consolation course)   unfurls

 
her flagging route   through 50 stars   toward Jubilee
&   a cardinal-red wolf-whistle signals   car alarms, or
carillons   over   beseeching flowers,   where
these final notes   coming winging   down   to me :

 
& so   the news leaks out   like milk from the breast
at the rim   of a constellation   &   mumbling lips
try to trace   those lucid   lineaments,   slip
from wet clay curve   to a bend in the poetry, a

 
bow   at rest   in the sky   (like an eyebrow
over the   blue,   a   smile   spanning   from earth
to epicentered   mile-long bridge   (near Bloomington)
like   half an almond, handed   to the other half now

 
(eye-in-hand, Eurydice... from long ago)   only
the drone of cicada-love, the restoration oil poured
out (O longest day)   a chrysm   over the chasm   my
sweet oeuil, my   all-monde   toot-suite   (signet, Julie)

          
                                              6.20.08

Fontegaia, unraveling (3,2,1)

25

 
My father had a silver wrench he tossed   to lift
the rope-line of the tire swing up   around the oak-
limb   steel, it must have been   but it's black
& gold in the early photograph (my nifty

 
Brownie snapshot)  Quiet Sunrise in a Green
Backyard   it was a long time ago   the images
detach from   mental frescoes   occasional collages
random, incidental seemingly   coalesce around mean

 
or mediate sort of   circular logic   (donut-
hole universe?)   & now   tiny birds are busy in
another backyard (far from   Hopkins   Mendelssohn)
interrogative goldfinch   definite chickadee   that

 
plaintive you-know-who (odd dish   pining, spinning
(rubato) his cloying clay, his   urn of yearning)
O   my Honey-Milk, my Sun, my   Morning
Ring   on the Telephone   of the Horizon   Wing

 
of (W-ing) Wings   & it's this well   of absolute
longing   will meet   the infinite   unfathomable, &
irrational   diagonal   square root   in Trebizond
where   a little tree (almond?  tamarind?  chestnut?)

 
on the edge of a cliff   whispered   once   long ago
to me   & (with clay rim   of earth   growing so
slowly   OK) held out   the rope-line   of the foot-
bridge (O   be careful, son!)   like a lifesaver   (Mkl

 
row   the boat ashore)   &   the long (feathering)
paddle   in the stream   churned   purling water
there (sword held aloft   on lion's back   by sculpted
angel in   black clay)...   O   my anxious,   kindly father

[note : last lines refer to this great statue, outside entry to Minneapolis Institute of Arts, by Ernst Barlach, titled "The Fighter of the Spirit" (photo by A.M. Kuchling). & p.s. re "lifesaver" in penultimate stanza : I've never forgotten the ironic fact that Hart Crane's father's candy company produced the "Lifesaver".]

I'm almost done with the long poem Fontegaia. It's in 5 chapters, roughly 28 poems each. It gets more structured (numerically) starting around chapt. 3.

I see it as the caboose of the ol' Quatrain Line. That is, a sequel to Forth of July. There were some sequel-like things in the book Dove Street (the longer sequences there). But Fontegaia is more clearly a companion poem.

Some things are re-appearing here, toward the end, more or less unexpectedly, which rhyme with the beginning sections of Stubborn Grew (1st bk in Forth of July). It's nice if you think so, as Hemingway said, I think (about something or other).

*

What am I about? My self-image or ambition as a poet has not been ratified by the Grand Concourse of the Literary World. Not yet, anyway, if ever. Who is my gosh-best reader? Not for me to say. Maybe people will find things in my poems that I don't see, for better & worse.

You may want to know that I think of poetry as a pretty high-falutin' project, & that I think there's some pretty Great Examples out there - since Homer, maybe before. Dante, Shakespeare, them guys. Top of the crop. Not to mention Chaucer, Ariosto, Milton, Whitman, Dickinson... you know, the list goes on.

You might want to know that I think every poet shows, obviously or implicitly, who is or is not important to them, as models & competitors (& the blind spots may be the most telling). & in that regard, the game I think I'm playing is specifically an American game, in poetry in English, specifically - & still rooted back in the rivalry between the expats (Pound, Eliot, etc.) & the Americanists (WCW, Crane, Stevens, etc.).

That is, my writing shows implicitly that I'm not as interested in the poetry of the generations coming after Eliot-Crane-Stevens-Pound, as I am in that crux of the early 20th-cent itself. (Though I have my scattered heros - Berryman, for one.)

Now whether this focus is an unmistakable sign of literary over-reaching on my part... well, it's definitely a gamble. Time will tell. Have I merely chosen anachronism? An inauthentic, bookish, archaizing style?

I would like my gosh-best reader, before making that judgement call, to be sure to read all my books... not just the quatrain-train. I mean the short poems; In RI; the unpublished poems... you have your assignment! - because the short poems in Way Stations & Dove Street & elsewhere can possibly help to ground, contextualize, acclimatize the long poems. (The books are (almost) all here.)

& why the focus on that early modernist group? Well, I'm fascinated both with Eliot's efforts to transplant contemporary (& American) poetry back into a Renaissance/English/medieval culture & context - and with the counter-effort (by Crane, especially) to ground poetic vision and cultural authority in "New World" materials & themes. & I'm too interested in history to stay in a more purely Romantic or personal strain (a la Stevens & many others) - much as I love & admire Stevens.

I see the 20th-cent. long-poem projects as a big game - played around the magnetic force fields of Homer, Milton, Dante especially... by Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Crane, WCW, Olson, David Jones, Zukofsky, Jay Wright, James Merrill, & others. I realize these are all men : but it should be kept in mind that there's another oblique feminine impulse in my work, coming especially from some Russian poets - Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva. & of course, the Bible was written by a woman (Book of J).

Not trying to be facetious : I know my limitations, including all the ones I don't know. There are a zillion contemporaries I haven't read. But I started writing in 1965 or so; &

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

(Frost, of course, beats them all - but that's another story.) I've been too busy writing my own limericks to pay too much attention to my contemporaries.

Yes, I know this sounds silly. & I have to be going, so may continue this thread later. The game is big because the longing & vision inscribed in human culture by poetry - well, it's one of the building blocks of civilization. Or, I should say, it's an expression of humanity's attempt to ground itself in a visionary or spiritual orientation. The stakes are high.

Fontegaia, scrabbling along the surface...

24

 
Clouds on the move, painted gray sky   wind
through the maple trees   a raw-boned old oak
almost broken by drought   a single raven, stuck
up there   croaking his heart   out   of his mind

 
Sometimes these dark spells   in the middle of June
presage a quick downpour   hailstorm, flood   tornado
when   out of a gilded gloaming   prairie pleroma   O
look   there's a handsome cloud   like a black doubloon

 
nailed to the writhing mass   of an Iowa twister
an emptiness   at zero hour   &   I guess
I think about Berryman   on the bridge in Minneapolis
in December   teetering, drunk   get along, Mister

 
a game of Bohemian Solitaire   in Lutheran precincts
Hobo Card   turns up   Queen of Spades in
Neverland   or   looking ice in the eye, wades
out   O Johnny-go-lightly   so many skating rinks

 
there   used to be   & skittering along the ice
like oak leaves in January   nervous, unable to grasp
the hand   of the arm   hooked around mine (gasp!)
to a sober nostos   in the detox tank  (Minnesota nice)

 
& the Mississippi   still moving along under
the snow   this is raven country   (stylish rake
with fishknife beak &   snow-bandage,   caked
over one eye)   who dives for the target : (rotund)

 
Rainbow King   swaying   at the bottom of a well
sunlit harbinger of oaken fleets   sunk to the ground
a choral   sepulchre   (1132   fathom)   sounded
still sound (unraveled   ravishment of   Russian bells)

[Typing this on my little Neo in backyard today, there was a sudden downpour, had to run inside...]

Hobo, the poet, the dreamer, the bohemian. Homesick bum. The impractical failure, strumming his geetar. The man of (non)action, (dis)organization man. Danger to big-hearted women. Pop idol for self-centered, disaffected youth. Too detached to be cool, too withdrawn to be famous. Completely useless.

Who's this "Hobo", lurks around here & there in Fontegaia?

Related to the hobos in the middle of Crane's Bridge. Diffidence, negative capability... "they touch a key, perhaps". What is this? Detachment from particulars, attachment to some apperception or instinct for life as Whole. (?)

This is a Russian thing, too. Oblomov's homesickness. Tolstoy's mysticism. Nabokovian nostalgia. Desire for summers long gone, for Life with capital L, for childhood... Yearning with a capital Y.

- can be a dangerous... Lots of writers insist on the need to avoid such. Enterprising Odysseus keeps the Lotus-Eaters at arms' length.

Hobo a liminal figure, I guess. Surrenders "living" for the sake of Life. Secret future of the Earth. Hidden zone where all things fuse in one...

Contemplation. Secret quest for answer to the Big Question. Much talk in poetry blogland lately about the "conceptual"... in my view there is just one royal road of "conception"... it is the capacity to conceive a question about the unity of nature, or reality.... the question of origin. & following that thought-trail, to postulate :

1. consciousness pervading nature & reality
2. some logos or order to universe as a whole
3. human consciousness as a sign or representative of this cosmic consciousness
4. human destiny to achieve (after long struggle) union, order, equilibrium & peace within earth, nature, cosmos
5. this destiny represented long ago as return to Paradise or Garden
6. prophetic writings & acts point the way in this direction (I have my own personal beliefs & allegiances in that regard, which I am loath to describe or impose here)

One of the things poetry tries to do is synthesize and vitalize certain conceptual or experiential universals (cf. Aristotle). It may be simply the recounting of a dream. This is what my "Hobo" represents. Among other things. From Way Stations :

7

 
Not the flower, but the whistling stem,
the stump still sprouting
desire from pain, pain from desire -
a homeless voice, roadside day-
lily in rearview mirrors,
unstemmed longing, infinite,
to the barren node of the
horizon.         
          Not for itself,
but in response, a choral thorn-
crown for harvest of black-
eyed Susans tempered
by drought - the keening
proud repentance
of Appalachian eyes.

 
From the fissure, a breath
of warm air - the frozen flower (touched
by a human hum) blooms.

 
In cliffside cave or hermitage,
a prehistorian, unfrozen now, draws
out Nativity from spring charcoal:
under the modal drone of mountain
banjo, streambed clay (glance
of a goldfinch) rose infant lips
are moving (do, re, mi...)

Pound, Eliot - two great toy-grabbers ("fighting in the captain's tower" - over their toys). & thus between them establishing the tone of Professional Seriousness in modern poetry... Stevens, Crane at the other end of the toy-grabbing scale - different characters - the one too disinterested, the other too bohemian (which comes to the same thing, just about). WC Williams maybe around the midpoint on this toy-grab scale...

The grabbing-of-the-toys, of course, is the betrayal of art, the self-betrayal of the artist - since (according to Schopenhauer, Simone Weil, et al.) art is the release from, the suspension of, acquisitive desire... Yet this betrayal is forgiveable, due to art's doubleness : both desirable object & the (contemplative) quenching of desire...

Magazines, anthologies being essentially toy collections... Pound & Harriet Monroe (according to Peter O'Leary's recent article) instigated the diffident Zukofsky to grab for the toys (by way of branding them : mine, ours)... thus we have "Objectivism" : which is an aesthetics of the poem as perfect toy ("object", "rested totality", etc.)... & so the Langpos & the Conceptuals, in turn, learned from this model how to brand & grab...

I reflected on these things a little bit in an old poem called "My Byzantium" (in Way Stations). Here's an excerpt :

2

 
I wanted the toy bird,
I wanted to be the bird,
I wanted to sing like him,
I wanted to turn my back and
return to the womb -

 
the apple of her eye,
the only one, the pure one.
And after the long siren wail
and the freeway lotus
comes nostalgia's
D.O.A.

 
In the beginning
I wanted Jamie Freeman's agate,
the one he found in the dirt, glinting
like the color of light in earth caverns, threaded
with spirals, like a map.  Envy
burned - until I conceived
a ruse: he could play with my fire
truck in exchange.  I relished
his innocence, I gloated over my prize,
I despised myself.

 
He could never pronounce his "Ys" - yellow
was "lello".  We laughed.  We called him
mudpie - he was a molder of clay,
always caked in black dirt.

Berryman hit the nail (about poetry, & Henry) : His Toy, His Dream, His Rest.

... & part of the fun of these long poems (for the writer, anyway) is that you are playing with many layers of meaning... successive strata of materials, paint, encaustic... cross-referencing & reflecting back & forth, like a pedal on a keyboard... & within a kind of fetish-structure, a gizmo-design. This is what I'm doing, anyway, with Fontegaia. The numerical business there is pretty complicated & arcane...

"Conceptual Poetry". Sounds, on the face of it, like the same kind of catachresis you get with "Language Poetry". Abuse of terminology. "Language Poetry" can be forgiven, as it's kind of a cute way of expressing that project's self-consciousness about the verbal "material". But "Conceptual Poetry"... - all poetry is conceptual. How about just calling it "Ersatz Poetry"?

I can understand, I think, one motivation for work like this : it's a reaction against the over-seriousness & professionalization in poetry. Not that poetry isn't sometimes a VERY serious activity; but I've been doing quite a bit of looking into & reading about Jasper Johns (a very serious artist) lately, & that's having an influence on my current view... the idea of "transitional objects", things upon which we project or re-project our original psychic bond with a parent... - toys, play objects... & how important this is, in art- & symbol-making...

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that poetry-making is similar to painting & art-making - it is the cherishing of play- or fetish-objects... the poem is fundamentally a toy or play-object : we love it for this fascination-aspect in itself, not simply for it's serious import or thematic messages about life-at-large...

- but how can we play with our toys if the whole milieu is so seriously vocational? A market, a school, a competition... (not that I'm against competition, really...)

Poems are toys, gizmos. Intellectual frisbees. Free-floating, free-standing. Paradoxically, they have to be real good toys before that can be taken seriously as "statements". I think the activity of visual artists (like Johns) provides examples of this. You have to be ravished by the thing itself, before you will expend time & energy to examine, reflect, extrapolate meanings from it...

Of course, poetry encompasses both, being made of words & ideas... & what I see in these catachrestic appropriations ("language", "conceptual") is a kind of grabbing-of-the-toys... (maybe this is another term for "branding")...

But to me, this branding activity is too much appropriation & not enough attention to the thing itself, the actual "fetish"... look at Jasper Johns & you see a master of the "thing"... (& the deep story of that thing)... branding is almost a way of short-cutting the process : it's fetishizing through branding, rather than making...

Maybe poets are continually trying to free themselves from ersatz or inauthentic appropriations... when the world is an inscrutable mix of play and work, pleasure and suffering, good & evil, just how the artist "plays" only grows more telling... & we can feel, in the art-expression, how play sometimes turns into heartless superficiality, & how seriousness turns into ponderous, life-killing hypocrisy... a human joy can grow cold & dehumanized in either of these directions... from illusion to delusion... a fine tightrope walk it is...

[We recognize the powerful magnetism of the fetish-object... I remember the sharp, voracious pleasure I felt, as a boy, just looking at a line of toy soldiers set up in the grass... this was the basis of a novella I wrote about growing up during the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill)...]

Happy Bloomsday

Fonte-fonte-fonte...

23
                           for my father

 
The still O of the tire swing   we helped Dad lift
up onto the high limb   of the backyard oak
stays with me   by way of a distant photo-
memory   (calm constancy   pendentive   gift)

 
It remained with us   beneath that neighborhood
suspense   local scenes   (where the two roads met
twin Mirror Lakes)   the plays for children (Kiss me,
Kate)   the chancy dramas   panoramic masquerades

 
village parades   mounted   for seasonal visits
of the moon   Oedipus   the steady B-flat drone,   a
foliate   prairie time   (mosquitoes, mostly)   alone
with lonesome,   ripening   Roman nights

 
Ah   all that labyrinth   of lost desire   (it seemed
infinite pain   heartrending fear)   in the garden
of drawn-out Mendelssohn delights   farm women
shouting "hay!"   vast raspberry fields (Eden

 
or Hopkins)   such homespun icons   branding
a speechless amplitude   (ungraspable)   my lips
cannot contain   & thus   the curious (quercus)
quatrains stretch   my longbow toward   a fingered

 
vortex of   vanishing flint   &   just so   Black Arrow
traces   a curved margin   beyond these eyes'
horizon line   the ravens' angle   from an oak-tree
bough   only   a father's meekness   bending low

 
whose power of the zero marks   the fingerprint of
Everyman   Yahweh bull's-eye   seraphim signal-
frame   (pared wings fletched for   downward
flight)   that  tired   swing   hangs plumb

 
                              6.15.08 (Father's Day)

I've put a link in the sidebar to Anny Ballardini's paper on In RI.

As I approach the caboose of my long qua-train, I'm quoting Hart Crane, but sounding somewhat like Ezra...

I realize that the 2nd half of today's entry grows a bit vague & cosmic, & this is a weakness... it does not exactly cohere.

The "tire swing" at the end refers to a photo of my parents' backyard, early in the morning, in Hopkins, Minnesota, where my father had suspended, from a tall oak tree, that particular tire swing. I took the photo when I was about 10 yrs old, with a Brownie automatic. The shadows were very long, & the swing dangled very far, & the light was, well, limpid.

Fontegaia, closing fast...

22

 
A quiet summer Saturday   only the rolling surf
of tires (on Hope St.) making noise   I mess
with the tesserae   of my familiar mosaic
shifting the icon-tokens here, there   (St. Olaf,

 
St. George)   as if   to make it all cohere
here   to frame a dome   out of pure foam &
filmy scurf   this is a job for St. Jerome, &
not some   gypsy fiddlehead or   balladeer

 
In the evening   taking out the garbage
among the cedars   behind the old church
the green dusk-light   a lichen-phosphorus
struck an opal match   from a distant age

 
some reconcilement   of remotest mind
he wrote   & so I remembered how   these
flaky photographs I try to fix   are emblems
only   of an inward lens (sometimes you find it,

 
opening)   Mnemosyne   mother of every memory
your almond ray   be with me now   while I recall
the whole consort dancing together   flickering
against the wall   out of penury   Oblomov's

 
burning heart   under the bridge   arching its back
& shimmering   as if to mimic that   far-off Sky-
Ocean-River   (milky spine, rim of   a panoply
of lights)   whose furnace molds a cataract

 
in limestone   vulcan flow   where the rubber tire
swings   motionless   in an early   stillness
quietude   pleroma   Diana's light sandal-
wing's whole world   come round   (suspended   lyre)

Anny Ballardini has transcribed a short interview she did with me, the night before she headed back to Italy. At the Poets' Corner, here. Straight from the old paint's mouth, not doctored up.

We were on this patio in the backyard, it was getting dark, & we were waiting for people to show up for the farewell party.

"The ant's a centaur in his dragon world."

more apocryphal Fontegaia.

21

 
Solomon (a sort of Orpheus) could talk to animals
called all the birds   to a Middle East conference
except disobedient Hoopoe   (with his impudent
crest) lit out for the territory   sent back signals

 
New-Founde Land   past Sabaday Lake   upstream
from Nile   & soon   elliptical (circumferential)
messages   began to emanate (confidential) from
there   rumors & telegrams   (Is Queen Bea On

 
the Make?)   Sol (looking for chess partner)
became intrigued & (in time) intrigue became him   
too   for the searchlight Queen   was like   a slim
flicker of sword-blade   ever on his tail (still master

 
of defense   & flighty game) she showed the moon
to his sunshine   until the day of the (unlooked-for)
eclipse   when she jumped him   like a sidewinder
(blindsided) black   to the whites of his eyes (one

 
blinkered mountain-cock   one shady   Lady Grey)
Only a wild goose chase   for the wisest man alive?
Well (spake Sun   in a Milky Way)  their beehive
was productive   Earth bore fruit thereof (away

 
downstream)   Honeychile   sunk the foundation
for a sweet return   & in that milky (mnemonic) haze
suffusing   all the suspiring trees   ringleted, maze-
feathered Hoopoe   looped-a-loop over his friend

 
Raven   & as light grew stronger   &   pervaded
everywhere   its gauzy lance (through magnifying
glass) tapped Leah's mane   Natasha's limping spring
tattooed the track (flagroot)   where they waded in

Fontegaia, still buzzing...

20

 
If there is to be   a Jubilee indeed
it will seep like sap   from the reign of Pax
at ease there   on her footrest (stacks
of worn-out shields)   recumbent on her seedy

 
couch   & it will be deep-lasting, steady-flowing
like an Amazon or Nile   carrying along all sorts
of vessels   large & small   freighted with quaint
& local cargo   with room in the hold   for going

 
far into the interior   of summer   & it will be
something like this   elusiveness   in the backyard
after work   the day's heat lifting   when the shade
of the maples (my vision focusing)   seems (faintly,

 
barely) to open   another eye   behind my eyes
something   dilates (almost)   an eye of memory
& this fragile overlay   of now & then   is sweet
to me   & slightly bitter too   (an almond joy

 
from Mendelssohn)   & Jubilee will not be solely
this or that   but the whole orchestra   in concert
we want no less   than childhood happiness   afloat
in the midst   of a gentle civilization   Heidi &

 
Henry   astride their   duelling pianos   practicing
for each other across   Arthur Street   & the hoopoe
(through a hula-hoop)   shuttling across their   purple
passages   love-sick like   Solomon & Sheba   testing

 
each other   with spelling bees &  hard questions
while the bees build archways   of paired eyebrows
sun & moon   silver & gold   blue & green &
rise overhead   in streams of   free B-flight formations

[note : Mendelssohn is a neighborhood in Hopkins, MN. Pax, here, refers to the figure in the Siena Town Hall fresco.]

Fontegaia jingle-jangles along...

19

 
I meant for Siena to be a sign, Julie   like the
miniature city   in the palm of the Emperor's hand
but there is no adequate sign   each one a dead end
compared to this   manifold Providence   the light air

 
shifts & manifests   both here & there   & the emblem
for justice done just right   no emblem but the thing
itself can stand   on that last bright day   burning
up the straw   in the denouement   of a smiling

 
stratagem   that clear intellectual thing   that seeps
(a mariner's dew)   from the eye   of the Old Man
in Concrete or   the plastered judge (in the western)
crying out   like a prophet   the milk of kindness keeps

 
on spreading   on its way   thicker than blood
so   it will be   when the sun cries out
you are the sun   your heart   reflecting the root
of itself   O   pigeon, home   in the neighborhood

 
steeped there   humble   as public servant,   or
copperhead dove   shy profile   etched in money
for a counterweight (In God We Trust)  one penny
balanced   even, equitable   as is   the blind goddess

 
figuring it forth   because (as Williams understood)
Providence will not be forced   since peace comes
climbing slow (take hold now, grasp   thy tendril sum
in pregnant shade   of vine & fig) as it always would

 
as it always would   come round   & spin
like a tip   on a piano top   where the Professor
skips along   some high-C melody   & so to soar
into the octave   waiting there   like a Carib djinn

another mysterioso etch-a-sketch for gaga Fontegaia...

18

 
Behind the mumble of these syllables   you note
my shadow   as beneath the horsehair color-swirls
a woman magnified   as Magdalen   one Sienese model
living, breathing, was   & these fumbling trumpet-

 
notes   at the end of my long Hiawatha-run
(Chicago to St. Paul)   only a rough analogy
for that recurrent, elusive Somebody (Big G
for Curious George?)   always trying to hide

 
behind   in the crowd   behind the arras
like not-so-shy Bernardino   with his borrowed
burro   burrowed into the misplaced shadow
of a corner niche   to follow a Franciscan pulse :

 
of fiery heart   for heart of fire   zeroing in on
the ozone   (old Indian Guide method,
spinning a pointed stake across a mound
of wood-dust)   until heart burns clear   refined

 
& simple   aimed so   like a magnifying glass
toward the summer sum's   enfolding arms
you remember   gathered up   for Joachim's
futurity   & my 8 cents' worth   for a flighty lass

 
alas   (held in my palm 33 yrs)   flung up at last
toward that echoing bridge   across the Bay
- one hobo's contribution   meted out for the Day
to come   O happy day   of Jubilee   & so forecast

 
the coin falls   with (at certain rate of speed)
specific gravity (outside the gate, at 7:15) where
one attentive student   (Poetry 1099)   pivots
on her heel   toward George   the gardener   indeed

a little more Fontegaia today...

17
              I had thought the affair of only local importance.  It did not
              occur to me that it had spread beyond the territory.
                              - Oakley Hall, Warlock

 
The plumbline   O my soul
troubled the water   O my soul
broken King Pharaoh   O my soul
limped by the pool   in the old photo

 
the days flit by   like a shadow
in a dream, he says   I am that shadow
slipping   by & by   in the lullaby, O
my soul   mn mn mn   the waters go

 
ha ha ha   the fountains flow   laughing
& falling   ha hee ho   strange blue J-milk
for manna-sip   in the old mosaic (Lake Mille Lacs)
chipped away   by its own stone stream (humming

 
just up ahead of me)  & so she heads   domewards
a little jellyfish   (my coracle &   blushing rose)
to the dancing source   & nobody knows her
like I do   the bubble I seen   float (Frisbee-

 
like) homewards   her 8 little bells on
8 little toes   in the Sparrow Hills or
Mendelssohn   flow, flow'r   Flor
for the gardener (him with the oaken iron

 
spade   & '52 speedboat) borne on a barge
upstream   at the end of May   (a cardinal card
upturned   a 9 of hearts   before the clobbered
Jack)   O my soul   a moth   at the margin

 
of the painted screen   at the edge of birth
where the long dream rounds   unties the knot-
torn heart beside   the plumbline,   Juliet (well-
sign,   jewel &   madeleine... my   muttered earth)

[p.s. note : the ancient Roman name for Siena was Saena Julia]

Fontegaia, slowly winding up/down...

16 
                     i.m. Sister Dorothy Stang (1930-2005)

 
Old Noah let fly the dove   across the shimmering
expanse   & she did not return   & so he knew
she was nesting somewhere   as doves will do
perhaps in the shelter   of a tamarind tree   (sing

 
so I do   woo   who)   or   in the Wild West
forest   of the Amazon   where the violent
greedy & arrogant   lawless   with impunity
lord it over the poor   but it will not always

 
be so (no    no)   it will not be so
when General Dove come   brooding, blooming
out of the treasure chest   of a looming, booming
General Dave   the planetary voice come   drooping

 
slow   wheeling in the shadow   of a condor overhead
the hovering pivot of the J   in Jubilee   your
heart's breakline   an inward   Inca   Cuzco lore
the iron-spurred spring   out of the sepulchre indeed

 
It grips the earth   with a raptor's rapture
Justice   all clear   through & through   because
it is a fateful swell   (like water in sunlight's haze-
shine rainbow)   early consciousness   born of desire

 
& ratified   refined by fire   to pure conscience
grown   free & sure   transparent measure
of the ninefold Law   out of a threefold choir
(3 rising triplets, folded   in glancing descent   or

 
swerve of   seraph wing)   O   I hear the ancient
potter's wheel   in the creak of an oaken rudder
aimed upstream, &   violin mosquito-whine   (horsehair
held taut   to celebrate   love's Oriental   fundament)

Reading (slowly) Jay Parini bio of Robert Frost (since I was up Franconia way a few weeks ago). His time at Harvard, classes with Santayana, interest in philosophy of W. James, others.

Got me thinking in desultory way today about how nations & cultures slowly work around (or don't work around) certain intellectual problems or impasses. U.S. philosophy seems mainly about achievement of inner freedom & realism (Emerson's self-reliance), large dose of scepticism about religion (James, Santayana, Royce, many others). Maybe kind of a cousin to British empiricism. (I'm no expert, that's for sure : not well-read at all... just speculatin' here.)

This modern philosophy (secular, pragmatic, humanist, sceptical) runs counter to the older American strain of Protestant religious piety & enthusiasm. & you can see poets like Stevens & Eliot & Frost wavering & pondering at the crossroads of this deep intellectual/spiritual divide - ambivalent, cautious, crafty... (Crane, on the other hand, boldly, brashly, perhaps naively, rashly...) trying to work things out for themselves. Same can be said for their great precursors (Emerson, Dickinson, Whitman, Melville).

I see in my own poetry an unresolved obsession with this problem of faith & scepticism as well. I'm always trying to "figure it out". The mystery of it all, that is. I've come to some provisional conclusions (oxymoron there, moron).

I think I float somewhere between Eliot & Crane. There's this medieval sense that there is something uncannily canonical & authoritative in the Judaeo-Christian prophetic scripture & religion(s). But there's a stance, with me, against Eliot's reactionary authoritarianism - in fact a strong swing in the direction of Crane's Blakean-antinomian-poetic-Romantic kind of originary vision.

I think for me the resolution comes by way of an idea about the nature of religious language. For me, the Biblical record is - underneath all the hard-to-identify-with cultural archaism (& primitivism : see the amazing "Song of Deborah", for ex.) - strangely factual & historical (& despite the layers & layers & layers of storytelling & thematic editing & manipulation). There has been some kind of prophetic intervention of a powerful divine Word, the nature of which we don't yet rightly understand.

But - & here is my humanistic caveat : this Word, from the beginning, has aimed toward universalism. It is a fundamentally dramatic presentation, of a representative reality. This is epitomized in the title Jesus applied to himself : "the Son of Man". He used it in a double sense, and interchangeably, to refer 1) to himself personally, and 2) to humanity in general. As I understand this, he was intentionally setting himself forward as a kind of "actor of a general sign". This is an awkward way of putting it - I mean as a representative figure. You might think of this action as a kind of equalizer : a democratic limitation on the authority of that same Word. What I mean is, what is being implied by this kind of verbal formulation, is that the scriptural witness, the whole Biblical narration, is to be taken as some of the Epistles take it - as allegory, as typology : "in a spiritual sense". In other words, the historic act of divine intervention, narrated in the Bible, is intended to be understood as an "illustration" of universal human experience.

This is in no sense put forward, here, as asserting a limitation on the moral, experiential, spiritual motivation & meaning - the diverse forms of religious sustenance - which are and can be drawn from this scriptural & sacerdotal source. My thoughts here represent just one among many ways of drawing out the implications of the Biblical event(s). For me, anyway, this vague direction seems to offer a possible means of reconciling faith & humanism, religion & the secular.

& further... it must be kept in mind that the "Son of Man" is characterized by Jesus as someone subsisting always in (close) relationship with the Spirit of God. It's an irreducibly binary or triune mode of existence (leading ultimately to unity & oneness). Here is where humanism & faith part ways. Jesus relates in the Gospels that "all Power & Authority" have been granted to the Son of Man; indeed, the Biblical "illustration" of truth may have even emerged originally from Man; but what is the substance of this illustration, exactly? It is the manifestation, & the record, of the unaccountable activity of divine Spirit - understood as guiding humanity toward its own ultimate goal. Sacred history is a strange sort of two-step... conscious/unconscious... reason/nature... sort of like the action of poetic/prophetic inspiration (O Muse of fire...)

The odd thing about the latest blab movement, which they're calling Conceptual Poetics, is that it seems to be made by poets who have no ideas. There are no themes, no topics, & no artistic concepts about how to shape & present same. The only idea in play seems to be the same one that underwrites the making of processed cheese (although processed cheese is more substantial). Take a prior artefact and run it through a processor, or homogenizer. This will get a laugh & win you a place in the Conceptual Poetry Movement (or Process). It's sort of like Flarf with a straight(er) face, a more determined (prosaic) pose. I don't know why I'm bothering to talk about it. I guess it's part of my Friday-at-work process.

"Knowledge is Power". & there is a kind of will-to-power on display in the foregrounding of conceptualization for its own sake. It's the fascination with finding the magic algorithm, the inner overlap structure, the handle-grip of the machine, the key. Like starting a lawn mower : sudden burst of control over all that grass. Then to pretend that it's not about power, that it's simply (un)artistic (unvalued, unoriginal, uncreative) free play : classic move of every intellectual game & ideology.

John Latta's post today, on the other hand, is classic Latta. Here the self-consciousness of the writer - the knowledge-overlap, reflexivity - becomes a useful gauge of limits, a rebuke to hubris & self-delusion. Humility as realism - the still-human comedy.

15

 
Blue-grey flame   beneath a crown of golden straw
and the horsehair   held in Lippo's fingers leaps
the traces   racing after her   who is   resting
so still   in her eyelash-curved   wave (folded

 
over itself)   closed lid of myrrh-box   purr
of the murmur   whirr of well-oiled wheel
hum of milk train   passing the jeweled
field   at dawn   (sound of river R)

 
and the lift of the wave (from Diana-moon)
like the green crest   of a fiddlehead,   or
an arc of spray   from Fontegaia
copper spring uncoiling   (moss-green

 
coin)   a silvered nine (or silver mine)
a rain of pennies   in the children's books
(uttering the sun)   where the willows   shake
their shade   over the stream   of early time

 
O my agate   gate   where I creak   transfixed
in the wind   out of ----   &   (lipped by the curl
of your magnet smile)   Where now is the whorl
of original spring?   In the wood   of my myrrh-

 
box   the streaming grain   of the stream
comes   itinerant   steeled in the hold   &
buoyant   floats   the acacia   toward the delta
doubling round the final bend, your   salty palm   fans

 
open         to trace   an almond there
(ancient flotation sign)   Mississippi Miss. ms.
Papyrus   unrolling   from further south
toward the mouth   lifted   into gypsy (stolen) air

[note : 1st stanza refers to a small painting of Mary Magdalen (attributed to Lippo Memmi) in the RISD Museum, Providence.]

So Fontegaia is drawing to a close, along with (I think) maybe this whole long-poem jag I've been on for - if you count all these long poems - 20 years.

I hate to come across as intentionally arcane, obscure, obfuscatory in Fontegaia. That's not my aim; I'm a very simple fellow. If it's obscure in the end, it's a failure. But then, often my previous self-explications de texte have left me with a bad aftertaste.

Nevertheless, I feel like expatiating briefly... - so what is "Siena" in this poem?

1. the home of the little Fontegaia fountain
2. a nexus of medieval & Renaissance visual art
3. a sort of little sister to Dante's Florence
4. an early example of a "free city", with a republican government & proto-democracy
5. a government of elected officials (for a few decades, 13th-14th cent.) known as "the Nine"
6. the town with the most-famous & ancient "Palio" horse race
7. a center of Franciscan Christianity (St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bernardino)
8. a kind of outpost or offshoot of Byzantine art & culture
9. a place that was specifically pointed out to me...

Taking all this into account, then, Siena serves as a kind of sounding-board, or catalyst, where these elements (& others) interact to form new things.

Right now (in this final chapter) you see a lot of imagery around numbers - esp. "nine". I don't want to get too explicit (since I'm still in progress!). But I'm trying to suggest some relations between poetry & knowledge, poetry & civil society (political philosophy), poetry & religion.

Dante famously wrote that "Beatrice is a Nine". No one's ever been quite sure what he meant - but the prevailing notion is that he's referring to some representation of the Trinity (3 being a factor of 9).

Maybe I'm working out something similar. "J" - the mysterious muse or instigator (in many guises) of all my quatrain efforts, since Stubborn Grew through Fontegaia - can be understood as a kind of mark or hieroglyph : a curling spiral, or inverted nine, or...

The "Palio" horserace - focus of chapt. 2 of Fontegaia - is a sort of extended riff on poetry-as-Pegasus. Now Pegasus, & Medusa, & Perseus, & Cassiopeia, & Ethiopia, & the 9 Muses, are all intertwined in the original Greek myths.

The Muses were actually a mythical figuration of the Apollonian (rational) spirit in poetry : they each represented a different facet of the ancient organization of knowledge & the arts (history, comedy, tragedy, lyric, astronomy, dance, etc.). Orpheus, the Greek ur-poet, was a representative or missionary of Apollo (thus his fate - torn apart by the maenads of Dionysius, the devotees of irrational passion, fury).

In Fontegaia, I'm developing (sketching out, let's say) a dual transformation : first, shifting between Hellenic & Hebraic elements (or muses); second, shifting between Apollonian & Dionysian aspects.

The underlying argument is that poetry figures reality holistically : as measure : dance. The dance is actually underwritten by the fusion of nature, good will, and knowledge. The agent (& also consequence) of this fusion is what is called "grace" and "wisdom". The innate or potential actuality of human good will is represented (in social experience) as conscience and natural law - that is, the global/universal awareness of good & evil (irrespective of race, ethnicity, cultural traditions, local conditions, etc).

Law & government are essentially the formalization of this innate natural law or (potential) good will - actualized on behalf of the whole, of the common good. When knowledge of the good unites with good will, the outcome is wisdom, expressed as grace. Without good will, law & government fail, are futile.

In the poem, "Siena" is both governed by "the Nine" and expressed by "the nine (muses)". The "ring-dance" of the Sienese maidens in the civic fresco by Lorenzetti is meant to be an image of the synthesis of art & political actuality, of poetry & history, of Apollo (knowledge, light) & Dionysius (passion, rhythm)... in measure.

"9" as a visual icon - the spiral, "J", the fountain - presents a kind of symbolic "square root" of this number. But this is so complicated I'd rather not get into it here, right now.

[p.s. I realize my presentation of "grace" here leaves out the whole theological dimension. In a theological sense, this is the other side of the coin : grace itself is the agent of the fusion of knowledge and good will - since without divine grace, the human will is too corrupt to receive (to understand) truth or knowledge.]

I was never much of a runner (though I was captain of the soccer team, & was on the track squad for a while, & was indeed one of Al Franken's wrestling partners!). But something in me (call it "Pegasus") starts racing toward the finish line of these long poems. It happened with Stubborn Grew, with Grassblade Light, with July... & though I was not thinking or planning or expecting it all, it happened again with #8 of this final section of Fontegaia. & it's a wonderful feeling, when something leaps into place - as if it were there all the time, just waiting for you. Rivers play a big role in these poems - & it feels exactly like - suddenly a new tributary of fast, fresh water slams into my regular, slow, meandering, ruminatin' river... I suppose a mundane psychological explanation is that I'm anticipating the end of all this inching laborious composition... maybe so, I don't know. But I did indeed want Fontegaia to run clear - & fast - at the end. & I had no clue as to how that was going to happen, until one evening a few days ago, sitting in the back yard after work, #8 just started tearing along.

Fontegaia, at a gallop now...

14

 
The aged sheepdog sometimes loses the scent
of his old flame   but then steps back 4 steps
and picks it up again   waltzing from the steppes
to the Andes   down the incremental ink-track   went

 
trailing a single dark hair   curled in a Guadalupe
loop   & round & down   into a quipu knot   like
Juliet in Cuzco  sunspot in the shade   of Manco Capac
so   love's mazement makes a labyrinth of   rosy lips

 
& so   the blindness of the heart's black hole
(cunning J-dem conundrum) might become
a spinning jenny demonstration   thrown some-
where   by modal centrifugue   toward Clio

 
& Calliope   or Cassiopeia   luminous suspended W
above the primal falls   where the well begins
the fountain springs   where Frisbee spins
in stillness, hovering - Noah's rainbow -

 
out of the still center   of the potter's royal palm
near the Middle Sea   of an infinite (88-fold) stringed
mappamondo   out of the hole in the Blind King
shade   out of Poe's fable   & Whitman's dream

 
the light   light fingers leave   across chippy water
old jib wassail, old Bluejay way   & the scent
of a goodness deepening through distance   what
she meant   by leafing me   through the dark matter

 
of Siena ennead   Nile-milk   by leafing me alone
& all   disintegrated from her heart   a separation
of the eyes   from sun   old chaos-causing Cuz
undone   by djinn   a spirit-whorl's   O-zone

                           
                    *

 
then   thence   to begin again
as unfurled flag   or fiddlehead
since   Lucy's lightened way   led
Will   unburdened now   as if reborn

 
& as each petal   of the famished heart
made bold to turn again   beheld   as from the pool
rose   rose   lake standing sheer   a school of
golden fish   translucent   there   in evening light

 
there   at the Itasca source   of all my   labile
laboring here   in ordinary   Providence
toward you   because   love's endless 
sentience is spun   from a blind sapience   wild

 
tamarind tree   of very rooted nature   kind
& true   through fair & foul   equable   steadfast
& firm   lasting forever   like a droning mast
through the last tempest   until you find

 
streaming   good will   in a delicate arc of spray
from a limestone font   sweet susurrus underneath
the stumbling speech   of a beckoning mosaic   wraith
of inward memory   you always knew   & could not say

 
O harbinger of restoration   little messenger
on tender feet   my carrier pigeon
out of Jonah's wail   take this portion
to her Mystery   like the town in the cupola, or

 
the rose in the chest   Jose   Martin   Jasper
& Hart   it flowers so   and flows toward where
up where it came   the stream in the mirror
the rose in Notre Dame   so follow now   now   soar

      
                                        6.4.08

(p.s. some notes : this is the centerpiece of the final (5th) chapter of the poem. "j-dem" - term from contemporary physics having to do with theory of dark energy. "Manco Capac" - mysterious Inca savior-god (see Melville's Confidence Man). "Middle Sea" - ancient term for Mediterranean (middle C - center of 88-key piano). "Blind King" - The Blind King was the name of an old storefront windowshade store on Atwells Ave., in Federal Hill, the Italian section of Providence.)

Fontegaia keeps on keepin' on...

13

 
Out the library window   beyond the Courthouse
at the end of the park   under the shady maples
& ringed with vines   lies an old well (RW's
early spring)   from whence   the plumbline goes

 
straight up into the sky.   & just as a stone
draws perfect whorls in the stream   just as it
drops beneath the surface   disappears
I would draw a set of radii   from this point   on

 
into the town   & let it pulsate, rotate
a rippling impression of   an ancient face
a Personage   as if   breathing through the ice
of frozen circumstance   warm air, wind   aslant

 
into cold soil   where the seeds are   And
this, my sketch   for an image of the Truth
- a living, breathing   parsonage   at azimuth
of plumbline-crown (its vertex   in your heart)

 
& that which is everywhere the same   inexorable
necessity   the gravity of the grave   & the
blinding roar of the sun   & the restless sea in
motion   under the moon   become slowly   amenable

 
(amen, amen) to the georgic   human hand
trembling over its seedling-keys for   the prevailing,
guiding melody   the providential path   the Way
and suddenly   over the verdant, waiting plowland

 
a harmony of   9 courting spheres   in a dance
memorious pavane   slow Sophie-seraph lightfoot
sarabande   for Roger's will-to-truth (soul liberty)
See   they whirl   in a stereopticon (Siena trance)

Onward she goes...

12

 
Down stately Prospect Street I go, on my way
to work   in the morning   in Providence
dawdling along   slow brain-matter   dense
trouble in mind   trying to figure out that Day

 
of Jubilee   how   out of these slowly corroding iron
wrecks   this wracking violence   just how
it comes  (as the blarneyman says) dropping slow
Pax, that is   Peace   not just my private lawn

 
but Peace in general   over the broad rolling earth
to the steel-drum splash   of sword into plow
(delving, planting)   How will it be?  Just how?
It seems impossible to frame   the Falstaffian girth

 
of such an expansive, expensive ship of state
Impossible   so to direct the human will
into such channels of a civil grace   so naturally
supernatural   a dream (full-timbred   first estate)

 
Until   we reckon in   that primary, original good will
the deep dark cosmic J-dem hole   the well
of doing-well   prompting an echo in the soul
of every child   the fountain of the W (Blue Nile

 
falls, hovering   beneath a well-wrung constellation,
Lucy)   there   in the balance of its equilibrium
a dance   of Will   with Sophie (merged in the hum
of some mellifluous & royal honey-hive)   turning one

 
turn, then another   1-3-2   and so revolving
in a far-flung highway   O   that milk train way
from the deep breast    of the dark matter   hey-ey
O   the sustenance   for every steadfast vessel (love)

I've put a link to the video of the reading with Anny Ballardini & Peter Thompson over in the sidebar. (Requires Quicktime player, which is available as free download here.)

Busy today in Fontegaia-land...

11

 
Strange mourning dove   hidden somewhere behind me
this evening   fluting her clay ocarina   inconsolable
blue-grey counterpart   to all the cheery warblers
and chatterers   a low woodwind   in minor key

 
lonely   What do you want, heavy-hearted little bird?
You have your mate somewhere, I'm sure
you have the bird-feeder   and the June weather
Time, time... you're moaning   Time   hoarded

 
kept close   within your somewhat tubby frame
keeping time   & this minor key, this mournful note
must have another counterpart,   your saturnine
urn   its jovial mead-cup   true end and aim

 
of such drawn-out, repetitive, lengthy, endless complaint
O ever-despised, lonesome, no-count heart (slate
tablet's plum-robed sentinel) of yearning earth!
My brooder, there in the shade - muttering, faint!

 
You chant your dirge   just as you do   in the window
of the town hall   in Siena   and this evening
your meaning came clear through   to me   (wings
of seraphim bear similar sign)   it is   to know

 
is to love   to love is to know (beckoning
mote in the eye of Magdalen) there is no more
than this   this is the source   of that obscure
slow semaphore   absent moon-fountain (morning,

 
Diana)   elusive water   too clear to see
only rightly seen   in simplicity
foundation sure   of every
spectral fresco   of   good governance   & free

10

 
& then he played a brief encore   a haunted
(Chopin?) gypsy melody   an elegy
quiet, mysterious & sad   maybe
for his own people   (from Lvov)   (Beethoven

 
counterpoint)   and   somewhere
there is an axle of the rolling earth
in the heartlands   in the heartlands of
your soul   I hear that wasp intoning there

 
magnified    from the well of deep rose evening
a drone (a B-flat miner) zeroing in   on a target
of concentric colored rings   his whisper-chariot
uniting with a deeper bass   like a maestro's fledgling

 
son   down deep there   in the well   of milk and honey
where the milky Word reigns   raining upward
from Eternity   and shore to shore   a pillared
arc   arching back   high   over the makings of a day

 
I want to go there now   into the heartlands
where the wasp sings   at the axle of the earth
and wheels   like a master of the clay   an eagle-
wraith   diving toward   the dove   where she stands

 
hesitant spouse   bereft widow   (amid neglected
purple irises   beneath bent lilac wands)
transfixed   at the sepulchre   (her hands
against a rim   of cold, solid granite)

 
& hears that other, deeper voice   from the spring
through the full piano-panoply   (drift of May
silver & gold)   as a matrix of concentric waves
(streaming river-water)   melding   into a ring

keepin' on Fontegaia...

9       
                          for Phoebe

 
In the rattle of the restless uncertain business
down the street, up the street   questions
the soul, then : chance, or Providence?
I was lucky last Saturday   a willing witness

 
ushered into my (free) place (father of the usher)
4th row, Lincoln Center   Emanuel Ax, playing
Beethoven's 5th Concerto   with playful bearing
of a rollicking bear   who's found the honeycomb

 
there   and when 10 fingers lift from pounding octaves
and tremolo of tender  haunting trills   he turns
rolling on his bench   hearkening   smiles   breathes
in the violins   sweet   master of intricate delight

 
So   glancing at the Times this morning   noted
photo of distant galaxy   in the shape of a nippled
breast   and thought of the Milky Way   the principle
of designation   human signs   for the remote

 
ongoing mutter   of dark matter   but I think this
dancing bear   has found the honeycomb indeed
in the dome-nest   of the turtle-home   the secret Law
of setting-free   (between gloomy ax   and the kiss

 
of Pax   the pact   in the mosaic   in the fresco
in the sign   of Siena)   yes   this old geezer
(Old Faithful)   this old hobo too   insouciant
slouch-hat rambler   found his Lincoln icon (imago)

 
where the stereopticon of the spiritual war
between time and Providence   is resolved   as when
a magnifying glass   pours sunlit fire   into a thin
green blade of grass   as from a deep well-jar