5.16.2019

Down the Mrs. Nile




BLACK MARBLE

The slow green river is historian as well, 
moving with time from here
to there, yet always here
same as ever, with detritus of fossil

shells – eroding palimpsest
subject to misquotation,
willful erasure, mistaken
readings...  Observe that anxious,

fretful archivist – thin railing Ez
with his fistful of heroes
impaled on total loss
(a maze of smoking Flanders trenches).

Like a Minotaur in the bughouse
with his Schifanoia grid –
hierarchical, to put a lid
on greed, by force (his Musci-Louse).

What then’s this chaos of bad dreams?
Life’s horror-show?  Not so,
not so.  PAX.  What thou
lovest well...  After the steamboat schemes

Latrobe still floats his capitol design.
Cornstalks, tobacco flowers...
Virgo, with Isis-powers,
on the adamant of time, will shine –

black marble out of Nile (West Branch).
Not abstract or Pythagorean,
but human, Galilean –
shepherd in Ravenna – beaming avalanche.

5.16.19



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