WINTER HARBOR
John Berryman, at the Guggenheim
with Robert Lowell
(twins of the groundswell
‘60s – gyrfalcons of the time)
relates a cutting parable
to illustrate poetic
speech. Paternalistic
hot-shot banker plunks edible
& butler-polished gift-apple
into tot’s trick-or-treat
bag... You big shit!
yells kid – you crushed the crap
out of my cookie! (Guggenheim
giggles). Jokes take place
in Minneapolis – this
much-derided mini-apple (rhymes
with Big). Poet’s last home.
Dust-devils & tornadoes
fill his Oklahoma shoes.
His ping-pong twang off spiral womb
booms (sepulcher-recording)
up the ascending ramp
of modern art (Duchamp
is, Mr. Bones). & there be something
weird ‘bout Henry – year-long
yearning in the yearling
lurching at spring –
light from Evening Star (so long!)
*
glancing toward Morning Star
across a black-iced
Mississippi (nice
Minnesota teeth, or solar flare).
The holm oak is an evergreen.
Turned inside-out, grief
lifted underleaf –
a pale moss-light, Nativity scene.
Like that Natasha veering toward
her lonesome labyrinth,
whose airy terebinth
fills sails of summer shade –
whose fluttering eyelids well up
with incomparable
change. As in the parable
of viceroy in treetop –
evanescent black-&-yellow
wings’ twin semaphore
your sign-lingo, your
promise of new life (tomb-slow,
lentissimo). The snarky raven
& the tremulous dove –
the starlings’ chatter-trove
amid bare, barren limbs... Olympian
Zeus rattling his thunder-oak
will never leave this winter
harbor – mangy splinter,
tuneful cove – spooky light-spoke.
12.22.16
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