the clay wheel of America

HARLORN NINT

The tiny Russian church on Franklin Avenue

like an Easter toy box

– St. Pantaleimon – is

slowly, slowly, expanding in size (cinnamon-blue

eggshell transept… more light from East).

& this is Sirin-Nabokov’s birthday;

my mother’s interest led me

to find him too; Pnin, Pale Fire, a kind of yeast

for hilarious risings into Harlorn Nint

(you sense what he meant).  &

never mind, supercilious gent,

that I myself am bumptious Pantaloon –

(hint, hint).  Her ocarina loon-call

from Petersburg bridge

stays here, with me; the edge

has never left my raven-knife; Hope’s all.

We saw the Pantaleon window, painting light

across the massive maze

at Chartres.  He was

a Nicomedian healer-martyr, “all-compassionate”;

the tromping Emperor (sick Pantalone

himself) despised his expertise.

Some judgement-grave (not nice)

whorls in a spiral from Big Muddy Zone;

the clay wheel of America is heavy

as concrete.  I set my seal

across him swamp-gray dollar bill –

the eye of Providence over the levy

*

dealt by Pharaoh.  Each eye shall be

flooded with Cairo salt

when Black Elk’s figure 8

echoes (6 ways) Ravenna’s quay Rhody.

& then the Isis-eye of that palm-print

curls into acorn coracle…

green glint of dovecote-oracle

(Ionian emerald, honey-gold & mint)

when two wheels meld in one almond

& a blood-red waxen overlay

(the shattering of JFK)

molts Newport ships to ancient Trebizond.

I set my seal there, in a double ring

where the canoe binds equilibria

– Gateway curving to Cahokia

& up & down, from Delta to the spring.

It is a Janus-face – past & future

reconciled there, pain

& hope.  Because the vin

et pain of his free-will suture

like that flint beak of Mandelstam, reaching

into the wound, to heal

will reconcile Love & the Real

with a Redemption already achieved (teaching

of Cullmann, as in Pushkin & Scriabin).

& so the grail-stone of the eucharist

whence the 4 Eden-streams will burst

marks twain upon our Mississippi spin.

4.22.20