V-WAKE
The distinct end of poetry is beauty.
& beauty is wholeness, radiance
& harmony, per Stephen Dedalus
– out of Aquinas (Aristotle too, maybe).
Beauty, rounding on itself… dimensional
& resonant. Unlike the trodden
thoroughfare of explanation,
abstraction (utilitarian, impersonal)
& then Truth stands there, facing you –
smiling, breathing! – the mimesis
resolves at its moral crisis – the
peripeteia of heroine & hero flow through
& it’s all too real, this thunderstorm
in your heart – when Lear
& Cordelia meet again (in fear
& trembling) at the obliteration of all form
all kindly grace, all courtesy & charity
beneath tromping beast-breath
& mincing m’carnal serpent-teeth
– until you hear the tingle of the mercy-
bell (so slight, so bright, so still). So
I would defend the poets’ cause;
manifest those subtle laws
(human & divine) by which they fulfill
their milky icons, walking through stone
as in an Easter season
at the Great Sabbath Even
when Mary goes to the tomb (afraid, alone)
*
& meets the shy gardener (Ever-Living One).
So I would elicit my own
testimony (prodigal son) – &
body forth a pregnant Henry maze, spun
from that seedy Emperor in mid-July
who loved Our American Cousin –
swan-diving into Frisco basin,
branding his heart with fiery Never-Die.
& under the aegis of that orthodox St. Maximus
I would retrace the delicate brushwork
Marsden Hartley (in his Moby Dick
memorial) marked 33 – sea-terminus
or Ocean-birth, Jonah or sepulcher…
black hole or vanishing point,
centering thin, small (paint-
brush) horsehair… your Jerusalem Chamber.
Everything resolving now, in the master play
when Prince Hal meets his father
– O recreant & fickle feather!
Arrogant betrayer! This your day, boy –
clasp your virulent & blood-soaked crown!
For the rêve-songe in the river-
valley of our May-King quivers
in a V-wake – groans with a birth – your own!
When the Eagle of mute Joachim molts into Dove
& Mammon-prone America restores
Columbia – & when the sun soars
in the oak-bole, & Cordelia mimes… LOVE.
4.17.20
