lanthanum 6.18

18

Unreadable gray sky. November twilight.
Remnants of maple finery, moss-green & gold.
Season of low eaves, rain... a conjectural world
comes into threadbare focus (iron-wrought

urn). The human stance is listening. A listing
balance, tenuous : tightrope & gyroscope, bold-
tentative : to trust, to verify : to say, We hold
these truths, & yet to cry, Where is thy sting,

O Death? At the apex of wisdom’s honey-
dome, the pendulum rests, revolves... where
we acknowledge that edge of knowledge (hair’s-
breadth line, irrational number). Beneath a sea

of flickering mirrors (Marmara). Elliptical,
elongate compass rose, risen through bifocal
lens ‒ All-Man mandala (kindly universal
individual) ‒ a human tuning-fork (humble,

endless). So play that wedding number again,
Jonah, with your indescribable grey-eyed bird’s
floating accompaniment. Needs to be heard
now, amid the grinding bass of minor flattened

reds, blues ‒ the rival teams, insiders &
outriders ‒ rubes & snobs (both arrogant)
who murmur in Byzantium. Parse that elegant
passage to more than indigo, my little Indian

summer violet; for the matrix of this fractured
maze is like your nutmeg orchardist, at home.
Nestled twixt Athens, Jerusalem ‒ Ithaka, Rome...
St. Maggie in a peasant scrim (unseen, unheard).

11.7.10