set to sound

SIMPLE SPACE

Henry was just an American poet,

not well-known, born

in Minneapolis… a plain-

speaking, ordinary place, a cold spot

on the planet.  He had his talents

& his quirks – his great

advantages, pensive disquiet,

the serious focus of his mind, his diffidence…

but none of these things mattered in the end.

Poetry is neither marketplace

nor museum.  It is a simple space

for flighty conversation, set to sound;

a fatal stage, a public theater

where fantasy rings true –

YHWH appears to you

disguised as sister, holy fool, butler…

anything but king (or slave-herder).

King David plucked his harp,

made his obeisance sharp

& clear – YHWH is holier

than I, or any man on earth.

Henry drew back the curtain.

In his poem, all was done –

la vida es sueño… from Fort Worth

to Dallas is but a short drive.

Righteous ones must die

until the message (IN RI) bears

fruit – honey flows from her beehive.

4.25.20

Georges Rouault, The Old King

the distinct end of poetry

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

down around Kay-Rho

SALT-LICK

Prince Henry Hal, like a latter-day Latrobe

went surveying his great property

in swamps – following Path P

down around Kay-Rho, mapping his globe.

& he was most lost.  Loster than lost.

His sidekick Hobo sighed.  Said –

this palm at the end of your mind

holds an eye that glows, a wave-tossed

moon.  Pearl, embossed with diamond

& ruby… emeralds for eyelashes.

There, where kingfisher splashes –

a quatrefoil rose window, set in almonds.

Notre Dame burned down today, Hobo.

The blaze destroyed the spire,

almost the whole… – F’ sho.  Fire

will do that.  But there’s another one, y’know.

We already passed that house.  Down MLK

Way, on Black Elk Boulevard

(in Buffalo).  Look hard,

Henry – you’ll see him sign the X-tree

with his finger… mark the six trails

like a phosphor Southern Cross.

His medicine mends every loss –

’twas his last full measure split the rails

like lightning.  Now the brave who give

their lives to heal the sick

come to his green clover salt-lick –

circle the hearth-fire – bright, contemplative.

4.15.20

on Holy Saturday

RIVER-TOY

On Holy Saturday, the Great Sabbath

when Jesus murmured, It is finished

& in his grave (like Jonah’s fish)

rested… as in an Ocean River bath…

When 12-yr-old Henry grandly admired

his glue-stiff model (Old Ironsides)

alight with joy, & tired pride…

– as just now Sophie dashed across the yard

to him, 50 years later – to display

the paper flower boat (sky-

blue, & Clizia-giallo) she

runs off to let fly, down the Mississippi…

her tender river-toy… her revery, her rest.

& while Henry gyred – wacky

as Coney Island in Waconia –

like Hermann Gödel, in his final nest

of parenthetical limit (righteous exactitude

of unknowing) – across the path

from Sarah’s parents (math

of relativity – some spousal quark beatitude)…

Where the world ends, & begins again;

at Swan Point, where her mother lies

who died the day his father’s eyes

first opened.  Amid the Great Congregation

of synagogue & church (pain-bearing world)

one pearl-eye opens at the prow

of raven-beak Argo.  Mark thou

how contrapuntal matrices of love enfold.

4.11.20

Henry having a royal fit

ARIADNE’S CROWN

A limpid morning, Palm Sunday.

In the little woods

behind the Shriners’ (closed)

Hospital, gaunt oaks lift branches high

in anxious supplication (to an emerald

Acorn King).  Prince Hal,

scion of OK Gal, in his corral

of febrile & uneasy crowns, grows bold –

to place his father’s own upon his brow

in the Jerusalem Chamber

(where Huck & Jim clamber

aboard… that cardboard scow,

the trumped-up King of England’s dhou).

The river bends, reverent

& full of revery (blent

with the clay into its royal slough).

You boy, there!  Yes you, boy –

rivery O-buoy!  Come here!

King David shall appear

& dance – like naked singularity

or Solomonic wormhole, full of sacred

density – before the Ark!

& with the flicker of a quark

the center of the galaxy turns red

& churns like furnace of the cosmic kiln –

inverted mirror of MLKy

Y’Way – so massively

reflecting (like a missile-toed oak-gall)

*

that mauve & scarlet Rooster of the Day

who chants his clear call

to Event Horizon Wall

& leads the Magi home – another way!

M87 – black hole (multiplied

by 56, at least) –

from center of the feast

of lights – preternatural Virgo, Argo-eyed

Hagia Sophia – Isis of Ocean River

barge!  Prince Hal

trembles now, elliptical

epileptic – empty Apollo quiver…

overshadowed by that Thunderbird

shadow-of-shadows (el Rio

del Espiritu Santo).

His Ariadne’s Crown only a word

for the implicit eagle’s nest of silence

where the plague-eddies

of blind King Eddy

disappear into Big Muddy, & the dense

congregation of the Humble One

who rides a mule into town

(distance-divided by their own

disease, their wrangles for the crown) –

are suddenly hushed before those lips

mute-smiling, like a rose canoe;

those palms, encircling us now

in one speechless embrace… (love-clasp).

4.5.20

in Deserto Rosso

LITTLE ROOM

Like Giuliana’s little boy, in Deserto Rosso

for 6 weeks I was on a ventilator

(“iron lung” back then).  For

Guillain-Barré.  That was 1956 or so.

Paralysis for Henry Fish Quattoir -

great reckoning in little room.

Like coffin-casket, in full bloom;

like April, breathing frailty to power.

Who shall restore the sickly Lord?

There is no temple on the earth,

no glorious basilica that’s worth

the wonder of a single child (a word

once heard with flooding tears, in Ramah).

You who are sum of all

creation – telos, quintessence, lovely corona…

behold the Argos-eyed canoe of Noah.

How the universe giulianizes in you,

Giuliana (as Cusanus wrote)!

You are both verde crown & mote

of mustard seed… the whole tree, Julio!

Now Henry faints… his epileptic storm

of vertigo (at sight of blood)

flings him to Frisco neighborhood.

Where Juliet ascends… to join a swarm

of victims, falling like rain from Golden Gate

(our Twin Towers).  He stretches

out his arms… the King of Wretches,

Grail King.  Melek, MLK (Good Friday fate).

4.1.20