Celestial canoe

Today, most curiously, is the birthday both of Edgar Allan Poe, and of his literary soulmate & would-be bride, Helen Whitman.  I've written a lot of local-historical poetry about them, & other local Providence things, which you can find here (best to start at the beginning).  

Edgar Poe was fading fast in the late 1840s.  Yet he had hopeful & grandiose dreams - of marrying Helen, of starting a new literary journal, of instigating an American cultural Renaissance.  It all came to nought... or not.  Poe, in characteristic ghoulish (Baudelairean) fashion, achieved his aims - after a century or so.  His Providential ghost-bride (Whitman) came at it from another angle... yet they reached the same goal.  (Walt was the only literary figure of note to attend Poe's lonely funeral.)

Early tomorrow morning, a rare alignment of planets will be visible on the North American east coast.  (Search below for confirmation.)

LILAC BARGE

In the Rock, the library, in Providence.

Snow’s hexagon glissando

falls on Whitman-Poe

birthday.  Athenaeum lens

(blind flash of mercury & lead)

poses twin agate lamps –

of seahorse hippocamps

& dread.  Envisioning (not-dead).

Dust-labyrinth of pupa-pharaoh.

Curious mummy-volumes

Oedipus exhumes...

– Eureka!  I have found you,

Madeleine!  In mold of lichen

Venn diagram (Raven) –

Martian crossroad, Jovian

Juliet-canoe... (shade of Ferrara sun).

Saturnine Henry disappears

under the alignment

of these stars’ bent

light palladium coheres

& spheres revolve (toward Galilee).

Into Newport Holy-Land

sail Jack & Jackie... Helen

Whitman... Eddie Poe.  One shy

brown bird, conducting lilac barge

beneath cedar boughs;

bearing between twin prows

her dewy double-ewed grail-charge.

1.19.16

Providence Athenaeum