9.02.2015

The occasional ark

Sometimes the macrocosm & the microcosm bump into each other, I guess.  I was reading some old Ravenna Diagrams, about a painting of St. Augustine by Piero della Francesca (I saw it at the Frick), in which Augustine's cloak is a crazy quilt of leather Gospel stories.  This got me thinking about Melville's Queequeg & his tattoos.  & then there was a story today on the BBC about the divided Bering Straits islands, Big and Little Diomede (divided for decades between USA & USSR).

In some sense the earth is a human body... in some nonsense, anyway....

WOLSEY RED

On a sultry 16th, in the month of Caesar
I was ambling down by the Blind
King, on Wickenden –
betwixt the Golden Sheaf (or Fleece) &

her Sheep’s Clothing – like a raven
in wolf gear, or some Pierre
o’Cesca – like That Man there,
following his own tattoos into an Inchon

Dept. of the Interior.
Aboard the good ship Keep-U
(between Racquel & Rue – 
achh...) skirting an ice curtain

somewhere... in a Wolsey red, mate.
Weaving around blind
cataracts, muzzled
shoals – paring bears in the Strait

below White Narrows (it was 1728).
I don’t know why ‘twas done.
The Inuit intuit none
of our designs.  Split Diomede? Great.

They look you in your eye as though
you were in RI!  Weird.
I only see weed (black widow’s
weed).  A coffin exchange came through

the aerial, Mira – maybe
amygdaloid inside?
Keep the white slide
for video, Queequeg. That’s my knee.

9.2.15
Little Diomede Island (Ignaluk)

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