my circus is circumference

AGATE PATH

A camouflaged Eye of Providence

hovers over the pyramid

like an acorn emerald

planted in oak-leaf munificence.

The Geneva Drive is in Ravenna.

Its clock ticks in a circle...

twin circles... minuscule

mosaic tesserae resolve into Divina

Paradiso.  So Jesus-Orpheus the shepherd

pipes Eurydice

free of that ceremony –

Flee, Morning Star, into thy molten Word!

So Raven-Cautantowwit mounts up

like chunk of cave-shade

out of Narragansett glade.

History will halt here (full-stop).

The wheels... the wheels... from Sepulcher

to Joachim’s Eagle...

a 33, at harpoon angle

spins gravitation for a falling star

into reverse, Hartley.  Your 9th-month

manger – energy

transformer – tyranny

to liberty – Caesar to pigweed (amaranth)...

in our eye, blind soothsayer.

Dreamer.  Beware the Ides

of March, jewel!  The tides

wind up your record player

                 *

wrapping American wolf-hides

against endless winter,

before pale blue Easter

cracks the shell’s snowline... abides.

Two boats in Gloucester rock against the pier.

Twin meditations on a feast –

Thanksgiving yeast

to lift this clay into a Gaiasphere.

Light leaning down from high Polaris

filters into Catholic Oak;

Blackstone’s wheel-spoke,

planted in Pawtucket – ferrous

axle, trimmed by Roger Williams –

fortified by Edward Coke

to be King Charlie’s nook

when he eludes Roundheads (skipping exams

for exile’s exile – double-cross).

I’m whorling a rusty-russet

agate path, Juliet –

for you (muttered George Henry Loess).

Out of circuiting clay, no less...

out of the mid-month

warbling of Bluejay (29th

of May, no doubt).  Camelot is

something else.  The Lady in the Lake

of the Isles raises

Excalibur aloft... says

Hiawatha is a sacrifice (oak-thirst to slake).

3.1.19

leaves of shades

ALMOND PROW

Snow was gentle over Rhode Island

on the birthday of MLK.

It fell on tenement & highway

& on the gravestones (Irish & Italian)

near Mashapaug – where Narragansetts

warmed by winter fires

sang for their ancestors.

Henry remembered how sun sets

there, flaming the cauldron west of town –

suffusing with rich violet light

(flower of Ocean State)

seven hardscrabble hills.  Raven has flown.

Memory like a lonesome sepulcher

is quiet as the dust.

His loves (merged in one ghost

dance) circle Blackstone’s Catholic Oak.

& he walks by dark brooding Mississippi

through brown scrub

like Hobo in an empty tub,

or Orpheus without his head – see

the Maenads turn to friendly tadpoles

wriggling alongside, as

he wails downstream?  Alas!

High in his Ravenna dome, haloes

of milky starlight crown a shepherd’s brow.

Mosaic over Memphis

(or Atlanta)... Isis

enthroned, or Miriam?  Jonah’s almond prow.

1.15.19

in my style of raven-squawk

OVER AMERICA

America, replete with stories,

bursting with tales – I’ll

tell you another, in my style

of raven-squawk (Cautantowwit’s

oblique rescue-directions, south-

southwest).  Narragansett

wraith of Afterlife – what

zigzags from the smokehole (mouth

full of shade).  Ink-echo of an Incan

Thunderbird, or bald eagle,

or maybe owl.  Feel

the light gray prickling your human

scalp, Columbia.  That Mexican

tin double-dove mirror

frames Aztec cult of fear

& violence (Dia de Muertos, Halloween).

The Consul, slobbering mescal,

muttering William Blackstone...

Went to live with Indians...

With Narragansetts.  Harboring all

refugees – all troubled, exiled souls

(Rog Williams testified).

& so we double back to Rhode

Island, to Providence.  My school’s

a bit of Brownian motion, drawn in

toward indomitable diamond

by Love’s invisible almond.

As magnet gathers scattered iron

                * 

into a Magna Chartres wheel

her beautiful dove-wings

breathed into lungs

inured to painvine (coal dust, steel)

& lifted Life up wholly from the ground.

That green palm held by Alighieri

circuited grey orrery

spun from high Ocean River State – profound

light fiery water vessel made of clay

wrested from death-cave

to quintessential grave

transfiguration – your soul’s dancing ray.

It is Love’s interlacing hands

figuring a catamaran

or Manitou two-woman

womb-canoe – crossweaving islands

in a cat’s-cradle (a fleecy safety-

net).  You may not

recognize the US yet

in such pre-Cambrian confetti –

Ezra Caw-Caw Ezekiel, on his harsh

bark, wandered, insane

with hatred.  All began

in 1913, he would cuss – poison marsh-

land of the War to End All Wars...

Yet Henry’s hobo mule

mutters an older Yule

under his breath.  Open the doors...

                *

those silver mirror-doors of monarch-land.

Roger’s canoe banks in Ferrara

shade-garage... Alleluiah.

A little almond planted on good ground

blooms to Eternity.  Thanksgiving

magnanimity, sweet William

sings; the grey I AM

flickers in flocks of overshadowing

lightness.  The one who made himself

perfect transparent acorn

octahedron – he was born

at end of May (ancient festival

of restoration).  Like evergreen

King Arthur... JFK

or MLK... Melchizedek

emerges from his tent of welcoming.

The doom that Jesus faced on Golgotha

he had prepared for, long

before.  Green prow or prong

of spiritual Power, he bent like Uther

Pendragon into the beggar-skins of men;

he smiled, & shared the bread

& wine; made his last bed

a sepulcher of victory, beyond our ken.

Over America, the clouds roll by.

The curling fiddlehead,

the milkweed pod... float

on your way, Monarch.  Souls never die.

7.18.17

poem for Father's Day

John Gould rowing in Oxford, ca. 1995

COPPER SEAL

Father’s Day.  Here’s a quiet hallway.

Grandpa’s twilit apartment

on Delaware Street.

Cozy, gemutlichkeit, OK.

Grandma’s old Revolutionary print

over the dining table.

George Washington & nimble

Lafayette – their filial détente

confirmed in pizzicato minuet.

Grandpa’s brass cannon

shell shines dans le coin –

Et nous voilà, sieur Lafayette.

So the crimson seal in melting wax

like Hamlet’s father’s ring

purls out, expanding

into undiscovered final acts –

Pacific reconciliations, palm-

print circumferences...

the moss-green salience

of Liberty’s majestic calm.

The Son of Man looks to his father

as to an anchorage –

firm stay against dry rage,

banal amnesia, unruly weather;

history would lose its thread

& be estranged, without

a commonality of thought,

that human constancy – dead

                *

center of the curly sprout

who springs up (fed

by seedy Shakespeare’s Head)

to brazen River of the Holy Spirit

(Father of Waters).  Before all times

the soul looks out in joy

upon a wide Creation Day

like mossy meadowlands – rhymes

with Honest Abraham in his

absinthe mandorla – bright

JFK & MLK – light-foot

Truth come marching in (this

copper seal of Peaceable Kingdom).

Light of fathers everywhere,

the milky dawn-lair

of the race, breathing soul freedom –

like whisper of Lipsanothek

(cross-braced in elephant

ivory from distant

Brescia) – a life made perfect

sustenance.  So a little acorn

from William’s Catholic Oak

(in windy Providence) spoke

to me once, as father to son;

as a green man in emerald coat

smiles from a heart of sunny

gold, so dauntless – funny!

Lifting my heart to his coracle-boat.

6.18.17

John Gould, U.S. Navy, 1945

it's not the actual statue

COTTONWOOD FLUFF

The poem curls out of the soil

of speech, an idiom

of natural freedom –

not the symbolic Rose (Étoile

du Nord) but the actual rambling

pink thorn-petals

pendulous stained glass

welds to parallactic lightning

(baptism of liquid fire).  These two,

the symbol & the thing

itself, twirl interlacing

through the June weather – like Hobo

& actual Providence, the scrappy

burg Rog Williams named.

Free habitation, framed

by metaphysical hope; happy

locution for Rhodos-location.  Only

an Ocean state of mind,

maybe – where you might find

your inner JFK, sailing toward Galilee;

only a craggy Catholic Oak

whose simple fortitude

cools tempers rude, &

opened ears when Blackstone spoke –

lifting his anima naturaliter christiana

to chant that common law

inheres in English & Ojibwa –

sponge of manna-Minnehaha

                *

drifting like green Columbia

or cottonwood fluff –

adhesive, light enough

for grave thread-whispers (ahh...

I understand).  Radiant Naiad

à New York, lifting her torch

for Liberté... hopscotch

of bare feet round hummingbird

maze-vat... such were smoke signals

for a wide corn-dance –

pregnant sum-trance

of orbic humankind, out of deep wells

(perennial realtà).  It’s not the actual

statue, the actual state

but what they indicate

(A-frame of Lincoln-log) – rational

celebrations of Memorial Days...

Thanksgivings (4th

of July an afterthought

of fireflies)... myriad ways

a Union of republican consent

gathers (in common sense,

civility) at the tense

apex of divine intent –

buffalo tepee of Providence,

Manitou table

of justice; peaceable

kingdom, benevolent, immense.

6.7.17

meet & join

personal compass of Roger Williams

FAMILIAR ALMOND

My snarling yarn snowballs thistle-

clumps of confusion into

the midmost of the Slough.

Incomprehensible green missile,

towing kisses from that acrid swamp

in Mendelssohn (whence

we dragged a canoe by bare

feat, Heidi, home – only to dump

it in the permafrost garage).

There are many jinxed

men buried in there, minx.

Path P was a chi-rho camouflage –

X murks the spit (twin cousins

rustling for windy blessings).

Oaky, salty Invernessings

hone your eye into a baker’s dozen –

thirstings between gold floor-leavened

loafers & a 14

April funeral (foreseen

but not seen-for).  The scene’s unheavened.

Then for heaven’s sakes, let’s have it,

Lucky.  Twelve’s the number

of twin seraphim (Mary

& John) & Jenny’s lost mint (Juliet)

– the mother rising in the leery

graviton – the hamlet

feeling mighty chary yet

(Blackstone on hold, with Roger steering

                     *

spins his compass toward the iron clearing).

West, Virginia, west

to Vermilion... yon felix

nest.  Gone dragnet spearing.

& yet the guyline mumbling

of poetry retrieves

a sense of limpid leaves;

the universal shuttling

of loom with lambent seraphim

conceives an agate diamond-

crystalloid familiar almond –

6 paths of Dakota Slim

remind the mind of Eagle-Heart

(who reigns by thundercloud

of humble Jonah-bird

O sages in the Super Mart)

that everything says meet & join

in lattices of give

& take   Seek ye   & Live,

that honey-dome   of stubborn pain

intones   my cousin Juliet

great-grandmother Jessie

Ophelia   madre de Jenny

listen   a gentleness, O jet

of Mississippi water   sip & see

the ghosts come back to me

in Paradise   a little tree

of Jesse   blue   (a juniper, maybe)

4.12.17

night sea journey

SALT-SPARK

                          I mean the bedrock of our freedom – a bedrock of our

                          freedom is the right to worship freely. – G.W. Bush, 2.27.17

A light snow fell the first of March.

Ash Wednesday,

Will Blackstone would say.

Antithesis to Caesar’s march,

this errant solitaire into Rhode Island.

Where his friend Rog Williams

established bedrock freedoms,

planting Providence to stand

all time to come.  Like some great cedar

rooted in the granite eye

of personal soul liberty –

Milk River journey (if you dare).

Dark night of Jonah’s foundering.

Black scar of raven-

knife, Earth’s oven-

kiln.  Poe’s ghastly pondering...

Job’s pain.  Pound’s acid bath of hate.

So take this flake of ash.

Solder hexagonal gash

ice red across your brow, ingrate.

Within the creaking iron rose mandala

where Time slowly, slowly

runs to stillness.  Sea-

rose, sea-bell... whispers, ephphatha.

When the Eternal comes, emerging

from Leviathan

like an infant infantryman.

Unknown soldier, Everyhen, merging

                    *

with your sunken sun... a crown surging

from Lake Vermilion

– soul-memoire’s pain

et vin (violet lilac, ever-urging).

So the shy brown hermit lends his Lent

for ghost dance baptism

to Roger’s freedom-rhythm.

Chaste kamen of Magdalen, arc-bent

in parallax beneath the surface –

retinal curve of stone

lifted, of death undone

by innocence... & you will trace

the light thread-path, proportional –

like hazel-wand, or Blue

Morpho – wing true

monarch (black-yellow jag, regal)

from Providence to Mexico.

Across the night sea

gulf, Psyche, Persephone –

along an agate spiral go

into your copper spring turned green.

Slow wheel in clay...

a simple Lincoln penny,

twirling planet on a mast of pine –

the fiery root – Cautantowwit

& Manitou – the Spirit

blazing perfect light –

salt-spark of snow – sun-chariot.

3.1.17

Memory is full of Providence

FALL STEPS

                           i.m. Henry Shelton

Fall steps softly to the door

beside the river now.

Memory, somehow

is full of Providence today – your

little hideaway of brave

adorable & free

spirits, whom to thee

were given – opening, wave on wave

sea-gates of joy & liberty.

Like that dear one

on Petersburg pontoon

floated to town – Elena, she

of the midnight sun – as if an emerald

kamen-ring of Gumilev

(tattooed ghost-brave)

stood there, incarnate – held

my hand, like Word made Flesh – began

to dance & sing; as if

Columba on his acorn skiff

arrived in New York harbor – shine,

Franco-Irish lantern – beam

your torch around the globe!

Moss-copper robe

whose folds encompass freedom’s dream

whose web of mutuality

is wind-blown sail

on cosmic Ocean trail

chaste vision of equality

                 *

tall northern pine who will prevail

like massive cedar tree

in Puget Sound   like she

who danced the Shaker upland trail

to soul freedom, with John Slocum

or Henry Shelton in

Rhode Eye   Franciscan

mule of social justice   plumb

spine of Blackstone’s Catholic Oak

or Williams’ open hand

give me your poor... stand

in my healing shade... Manitou spoke

on Wisdom’s dancing-wheel of joy!

& my hoarse scar-tattoo

on Queequeg’s silver-blue

casket – my burbled Jaybird cry,

confessional – only an ochre scratch

on earliest cave-wall;

only a golden ball

of Ariadne-wool, wet sheepish match

balled-up by selfishness.  Who lit out

for that stony kingdom –

ancient Big Rock Mountain,

deeper firmament, beneath the shout

of pokey politics – that Cosmosphere

of lovingkindness, where

the soul finds Primavera air

& breathes... & sighs... & lives forever.

9.23.16

4th of July, Providence harbor

like a walnut brain

SKIN-SWIRL

Wide lonesome chord of milk-train horn

across an Osage plain.

Lilac & star, American

crowd... shy bird calling the not-yet-born.

The microcosm of a Maximus

is like a walnut

brained by teeth.  That

worn brown face, in Omaha bus

lounge, spoke quietly.  “I am Dakota.

I’m a man.”  The poem

lifts a sign toward home,

that’s all.  The sum of Ariadne-

maze, malevolent eye of Minotaur

is in the skin-swirl

of your fingerprint.  Roll

back into the vault then, sailor –

shed each blow of monster violence

until you find the mild

eye of the typhoon-child –

immaculate origin of Providence.

I see her hero stepping through the gate

of stone, one hand held out

on a wave of love.  Light

scout, scouring the root of hate –

defanging that lamprey of predatory

malice, hostile cruelty –

injustice clamped on history.

With Coke & Blackstone whispers : Now be free.

6.28.16

India Point, Providence

Gemstone of Paradise

NEVA-LAND

The poem is for lonely you

amidships (I-&-Thou

nailed coign to prow) –

& for that grubby neighbor too

next door (George or Georgina

with the garden hoe).

A solitary lamp-glow

lingers in the old cantina –

in William Blackstone’s study (man

who went to live with...)

– uphill, on the forest path

to Middy Wewe’s blithe fountain.

George Washington spins in his grave

to see how we behave

without a mind to save

us from ourselves.  Thee must be brave,

& true, & kind, & dedicated

to the perfect good –

that global neighborhood

that shines, wid’ green & delicate

kiwi-glow, beneath the rind

of blind & brutal night.

A callow grail-knight

stumbled on it once, near Samarkand –

spry Wolfram rings the tale – &

like an unknown soldier

leapt – O soulman Prospero! –

from here to Skye (in Neva-land).

5.20.16

Womb in the cave-shade

ALMOND ARK

They were farmers & shepherds in West Branch,

cartwrights & blacksmiths, laboring

through pain... the rusty ring

of iron clamps, the thick stench

of horse manure, the pigs & cows...

yet took their time for quiet

in the Meeting House – let

runaways abide, lambs browse.

Their silence lodged in protest against

violence itself –

the insolence of Guelf

& Ghibelline, the gangs, the hunts...

the iron dream of domination

locking the brain-cave

in its frozen grave

(creak-echo of damnation).

There was a spring in Tuscan hills,

coiled like a rusty serpent –

green with moss, bent

into turtleshell... old Williams’

spiral (out of Coke, Blackstone).

Mules’ rustic rights

& supernatural delights

limp into leaves of a live-oak woman –

her heavy womb in the cave-shade

like a Negus by the Nile

hidden for a while...

almond ark of spring (oak-apple maid).

5.11.16

Quaker Meeting House, Scattergood School, West Branch, Iowa

Spooky distances (for 3.14159............).......)...

APPLE PIE

Hobo drowses in his Einstein field

of asphodel, spooky distances.

Life’s tender differences...

only mauve peonies on copper shield.

Irrational yearning for the earth

might be the shortest path

to Providence.  Wrath

of History’s a concave labyrinth –

your soul must wash a dusty planet

down Big Muddy, Hobo.

Rise from your bed of woe;

our Hero beckons from his granite

lintel toward the circling sun.

Path P (transcendental

for each chaste equal

guest of compassing compassion).

The one who went to live with Indians.

Blackstone, Yellow Sweeting

apple-man – his greeting

(like sweet Williams’ own) a Both-Hands

Welcome, Minnehaha flute –
ray of soul liberty,

loop of Easter Rabbi...

Hart, Malcolm, Giulietta’s route

bent (parallactic) toward the light.

A catenary smile

or Life-Saver will

thread sad grooves into a chariot.

3.14.16

Mississippi River, from Indian Mounds Park (St. Paul)

Primeval Spring

TRACERY

They leave a track across time,

the sea-salt souls – faint

& delicate as painted

tracery of April birch-limb

shoots under a pale blue sky;

massive as meteoric

stone flung from the thick

of heaven (dark as a raven eye).

Unreadable profundum – yet

a trace of what they loved

remains (as in an alcove

names are tapped in cloudy granite

for a terse echo of foregone delight).

Then centripetal gravity

sheds all formality

& mutters from the depth of night

the soul’s original, L-mast

uprightness – earliness;

birchland of quietness,

in boreal Aurora dressed.

Blackstone & Williams, Edward Coke...

such men of merciful Law

& lawful Mercy... & I saw

the matrix of your Liberty – who spoke

with spokes of fire upon her brow.

Psyche, Persephone...

Cana, in Galilee...

primeval Spring, welling forever now.

3.9.16

wedding ring-structure

FINGER-DAB

These sibylline papyrus leaves,

so many shades of raven-

ink, scribe-feathered Ocean

etched with moony mesmer-waves...

The earth’s a musty limestone book

Psyche a palimpsest

charting gilt-emerald quest

through eerie oreille (slant rook

to woody isle, Macbête) – a flickering

archaic pain-matière

or wedding ring-structure

spring Geraldine Fitzgerald flung

for blue-eyed boys & one grey heir.

The old man frets in dust

& stone; his ferryman

(Rouget Blackstone) fins through the air

from northern Iowa to Eire;

the turtledove they seek

has grown so pigeon-meek

her flutings barely skim the lyre-

string.  Once in Calabria

flint-hermit Joachim

pictured a raptor-flame

plummet through time (vera-

mente Kiev-pointing).  Gentle

Columbia, please ravel up

my rusty finger-dab...

lips’ labyrinth, rose-granite mantle.

2.25.16

In a Scattergood world

PURE SOUND

                              i.m. Robert Treuer

Back East, in Rhode Island, the big snow

coming.  Thinking of William

Blackstone, hermit-pilgrim – the

one who went to live with Miantonomi

& the other red-men.  To the House

of 4 Pines – under

cartouche of Little Bear,

North Star.  Out of Nazi Austria

sped a peregrine, by grace of God

& pity of strange braves

(Scattergood saviors,

anonymous donors... meek just good).

To a tree farm he fostered (in remote

forest).  Led into circle

of silent First People,

tending ashes (sitting shiva).  Little

prow of acacia, rocking near Itasca-

Nile... your upside-down

fire-drill will drown its

candle in stony Minnehaha.

Sigh, winging out into grey sound

(b-flat at midnight).

The musicologist

from Florence mutters back to ground

just so – back to the pigeon-clay

of primordial, steadfast

Bee (until the last

dragon of Sheol fades away).

1.22.16

the plain senselessness of men

BIG WIND

Poverty is the best education.

Lady Poverty

& sister Poetry

are twins – identify with a long line

of holy fools, primitive peoples

punished into meekness

by most extreme duress.

Fort et dur (judicial phase).

Abe Lincoln with his Choctaw cheekbones,

Black Elk, Roger Williams,

William Blackstone... hymns

in the wilderness (breeched from stones)

float toward a gray middle ground

of sky.  Shy of names –

since the herm what frames

this Percy-dervish meadow-go-round

of constellations... only Manitou

will do (for some).  Great

Spirit.  Big Wind.  A late

night pathos, sifting through

cottonwood, magnolia.

Only the geometer

of beatitude & bitter

pain.  Familiar Maximus-Bertha

who rises (bulbous) from the plain

senselessness of men

like airy turtle-dove

machine – kind, moderate... humane.

1.2.16

Yu the Great & Alma-joie

SPIDER-PARADIGM

Emperor Yu, beside the Yellow River

noticed a painted turtle’s

dome poke from the yurtling

current... crosshatched with a magic square.

Was struck with wonder – enlightenment.

The order of the world

arrayed, made clear – curled

around one salient shell.  A tent

of meeting at the end of time,

a mote embedded with

encaustic gold... the myth

fleshed out by spider-paradigm –

one woof of mutuality

supernal company

dovetailing tympani

to turtle-immortality.

The character of a place reflects

the character of those

who dwell therein.  Flows

of time illumine the limestone text,

the lambswool poncho, shrouded cave –

where we will meet again

old Roger Gentle-Hand,

bright Guillaume Apple-Mare... Genevieve

Little Tree... dear Juliet Bluejay...

where the matrix wheels

an April love... seals

1200 tribes with alma-joie.

10.21.15

Yu the Great

some old weird poetry-history, from toward the end of Forth of July. W. Blackstone places his "W" over a map of the Mediterranean:

 2


  
 It was Good Friday (raining) in Lima, Peru;
 it was a rainy April day in Washington.
 It was November 22 in Avignon
 (a lucky day in Paris – Dallas too).

  
 Blackstone lay half-sleeping in a meadow
 underneath an oak – his white bull
 grazing drowsily (slow, calm) downhill.
 And half-dreaming, saw (in the shadow

  
 of his hat) strange visions.  On a wide
 and blue-green map (where a playful whale
 dove deep toward shore) a serpent curled
 (all blue) from hidden mountains northward,

  
 and, at a bulrush delta, zigzagged right;
 then wheeled again (upon a huge, rugged
 stone) into an island labyrinth,  caved
 inward by the sea – while from a root

  
 in Aquitaine, or Septimania, a dragon
 like a red thread spun straight forward
 into Constantinople, and there turned
 likewise back to sea – and wound

  
 itself, entwined, with the Southern serpent
 (tightly, lovingly as any Solomon enfolds
 his Sheba – one, unfathomable, sealed –
 one purple veil-knot).  Out of his own entrails,

  
 then, strangely, this woven Minotaur emerged...
 til Blackstone woke with a start (the weird
 hex going, the map dissolving, merely muttered
 into his own fuzzy beard)... and spring surged on.

       
                                     4.15.2000

When I was writing July, a lot of "American" things came through sort of improvisationally, like George Washington (& Walt Whitman, & Abe Lincoln, & Mark Twain). Luxuriating in childhood reading & memories.

 2

  
 Wail of a far-off freight train
 rolling   into the distance, the distance
 Blackstone   deep in solitary meditation
 disentangled Anglican   by nature or

  
 design   looks out upon a landscape
 pale green moss near Oxford   peaceful
 on Orthodox Christmas,   Epiphany
 in England   knotted somehow   paschal child

  
 made manifest in birth   in starlight
 when the light that enlightens is
 a kind of new birth   and   every infant
 perception (mangered gemutlichkeit)   is

  
 hidden berth   of all our memories of
 goodness   and hidden beneath
 our sins   which are themselves (Theban
 labyrinth) hidden beneath our pride   summer's

  
 weeds become   so threadbare   buried
 with the masks prepared   for the Mardi Gras
 of the world   so that we may not stumble
 and so the mask may not slip    not dribble

  
 accidentally into sight   this courage of sinners
 in wastelands of   each local hell   to fabricate
 a bolder front   O Satan, we   thine atrophied
 bats!   Proud servants,   glorying in rancid

  
 shame!  Odd Hessians   on a long voyage
 in circles toward   some banal drunken
 surprise across   the Delaware   naked
 and unaware   while   the Father

  
 of his Country perches   (serene, detached)
 at the wobbly prow   and there is no system
 of Dante's hell, only   the eternal mystery
 of waiting for a punishment   which God

  
 I have no wrath   will never send   since
 the evil deed   is punishment enough
 (along with the heavy tinfoil
 masks   each deed entails)

  
 A little child shall lead them
 Blackstone gazes out the window
 past the sagging sagas   and the dunes
 of fairy tales   toward his Bethlehem

  
 down Blackstone River   into Sunset Land
 since   it's always the blanket or
 what's under the blanket   or the blank
 black hole   where it was before (Nile

  
 tomb   Inca burial cave and   icicle child
 emerging from a manger   steaming
 with domesticated beasts)   we must
 find it again   like breadcrust

  
 tossed from the rail into the sea and
 floating home   where we began
 where the blanket wrapped our nakedness
 like the frail   translucent texture   sighs

  
 and comfortings there   in the manger
 the walls of the coracle,   your   hurt
 heard   her   heartbeat   thread the
 nexus   naiads   now   (this   gam

  
 of wedded hulls   of grain-crumbs   drifting
 to feed the orphaned gulls   crying and
 piercing the dead silence, becalmed)   raking
 the void with   fire   John Paul   Jonas (fighters

  
 with fire   sons of thunder   Boanerges
 suddenly bursting through   the powers
 of darkness) and James   whispers
 antiphonal   from the tower wall   Jerusalem

 
 Jerusalem   rings out   over the rooftops
 of Jerusalem   like the sound
 of the Hiawatha   hooting   Now's
 the time was   then   as the spotted fur

  
 of the leopard   in the emerald nef
 spins   counterclockwise like
 a constellation (Pushkin's
 Swamp Fox trail   into the fen)

  
 and Bébé climbs into the boat
 lets fly the dove   and all
 at once   Law and
 Prophets merge   in a tub-gemote

  
 A little child shall lead them
 your heart   remembering under
 the wreath of wraiths of   undone
 wrath   gathers the myth

  
 like mud from the bottomland   into
 the eye of your hand   (quiet clay
 wheel   balanced   over the delicate
 hides of beasts)   in order to wean

  
 the shepherd   from the marketplace
 of words   and the sheep   from the stalls
 of beastliness   and all   at last   from
 the woeful pride   of a forsaken masquerade

  
 so that the ship may float   like an ark
 or   civic kayak   pivoting   on trust
 and unexpected grace   and the steadfast
 love   that looks on tempests and   keels over

  
 no more   but laughs   and gives   a measureless
 measure   (floating free   and buoyant once
 again   like the crust of bread   or mote
 of a sailor's aye-aye Captain!)   seamless sails

 
 through Stephen's Gate   into Jerusalem
 the distance, the distance   gone
 struck out   into the territory   one
 nigredo fin   off Kalevala   J-sample

  
 of blood   poured hand to hand   red
 heart   from Teotihuacan   host
 hollowness come home   stone
 bedrock   light   afloat through two dear

  
 bears   (sun-heart at midnight or
 North Star   Aurora Borealis
 ancient light   sown-silver robe
 of whispers now   dim   tiny)

  
 (a tiny light   in the middest of
 Blackstone veers   green
 Magdalen   Vierge
 Venusian and steady) (hum)

                                       1.7.2000

 
 3

  
 Under the wayward spears   of an Atlas
 Blue Cedar   in Swan Point Cemetery
 with the Seekonk beside us   quiet, dreamy
 and the January sun pale   distant

  
 seemly tombs   inscriptions
 fading   I come to bury Caesar
 not to praise him   Antony's ruse
 (coffer with a triple bottom   cryptic

  
 spring-wound   crosshatched   hieroglyph
 box-within-a-box   Gorby doll
 of repetitions   Mobius sea-swell
 mummy-wound and   filigreed

  
 like the brow of Moby Dick)
 as I sprawled across the old sofa
 and watched the Vikings and
 the Dallas Cowboys   like a kid

  
 fallen into mother's milk
 repeating himself   as if reborn
 with muses circling a barren urn
 fixed   pivoting from wheel to kiln

  
 in a spiral toward   a Marion Peru
 limen or   Blackstone's Law
 lost in the notebooks   buried in a wall
 beneath three floors of European

  
 monarchies (of butterflies or   swans)
 concentric waves of ripples   expanding
 as the water moves   over a damp
 Atlantis of   Mississippi river mud   snow

  
 melting   it lands there   beside bridges
 between twin cities   heavy   lonely   capable
 in the bleak   winter light balanced
 by steep cascading banks   mournful dirge

  
 of river-streaming   Où sont les neiges
 d'antan?   He died on a cold winter night
 slowly   I have no wrath   quinsy
 carried him away   hard-going   gentle

  
 man   having accomplished his will   and
 said goodby   his throat closed   sealed
 against   the crackling of thorns
 under the clay   and   all the Law

  
 and the Prophets   concentric   in a green
 firth beneath   the bloody flag   or
 cross of light on   Grace Church floor
 of renunciations   overturnings

  
 humbly   retreatings and surrenderings
 the servant of his country thus
 bending the line of tyrannies and
 years   into an arch   like these windows in

  
 Trinity   in Newport   these sweet
 repetitions of the rooster's crowing
 shells within shells of shields worked
 over the heart's ancient and riverine

  
 artillery   Masonic G   plumbline
 grown silvery   across the iron sides
 of railings toward infinity   sedes
 symmetrical seeds   thrones   enabling

  
 this kayak at the perihelion of streams
 to float   out of its frothy berth   again
 I shall not drink it with you (mug of tea
 steaming toward neglected cemetaires

  
 of meteors   or one bright lonely star
 at the prairie crossroad   where iron rails
 echo   and wind   bends in narrow lines
 the long soft grasslands   rustling)

 
 he left us parked there   at Stephen's
 golden gate   paternal phantom
 under the triple floor   of a metaphorical
 July or   sham rock   Blackstone's nef

  
 ineffable last gaze toward   Nile-mouth
 afloat in pyramidal   world-dream
 aye-aye Cap'n   so long Pap   unfolded
 quaternion   whirlpool edicule   thumbline

  
 sketch of Royal Palm,   shading Tigris
 and Ticonderoga   Finger Lakes   enscribed
 with an early ruse   before the rooster crows
 Abraham takes orders   at the well   a secret

  
 angel will unfill   with gales   and stays
 of laughter   (come to carry Sarah's
 not to bruise him) where Sheba's
 finespun blanket is thrown off   the scent

  
 for Solomon   and the Roman drumbeat
 rolls away the stain   and sting   of death
 beneath the third floor of the coffer   13
 lucky clovers come slowly round   the tumbrel

  
 timbre of the timbrel turned tender   dawn
 in the greenhouse   there   in Newport
 a successful campaign   via terrapin
 swamp fox trot, Nathaniel   with a nod

  
 toward the east   and Touro Synagogue   freedom
 in the mosaic   mordant   everlasting   lamp
 soft light shed   like   lamb's wool palm
 of victory   morphed

  
 at the font   of washing...   salt
 of Lima earth   one cup of tea, one
 baptism gone   Florentine
 one infant crown   afloat

 
 like a ship of light   in a cup of water
 turned to wine   in a plastic cup
 or   emerald eye   (established
 before the earth was)   Touro   Newport

  
 wedding   529 sails   puff   as
 water grows black   and death more clear
 truth more salty   and misfortune
 simpler   the cask or barrel   coffer

  
 with a star   afloat like Jonah   in its depths
 a ghost-reflection   one whole dove
 set free   upon the void
 Ephphatha

  
 see   through whistling clay
 the flute sounds   ride the mountain
 waves   in terraces   your naval
 natal day   plays   plangent scales

                                              1.9.2000

 
 4

  
 I was washing up in the winter courtyard,
 Julius   your red hair and my
 failing eyesight   meet in a mirror
 like a rusted star   cloaked in black dirt

  
 brotherhood and Oedipus   at the crossroad
 crying abba, abba   or an inverse she
 baa-baa, she baa   over an Atlas
 Blue Cedar, somewhere   a sleepy sorrow

  
 distant, muted   like a child crying alone
 on a couch   softly muttering and   unconsoled
 while the loyal troops   concerted vigilance
 on guard by the old Newport Armory, Nolan

  
 we are   everlasting Finns   long fellows
 Waste Not and Want   unraveled into
 war   beneath a distant   invariable
 charitable star   far-flung swells

  
 after the funeral   and I saw him
 standing there in uniform after the
 re-enactment   his name   under a reef
 of medals   Kilroy   like some conscription

  
 remnant for   the Father of his Country
 some ruddy   sunburnt   equatorial
 democracy of   microcosm-reality
 hove-to   in that blinding snowy courtyard

  
 where the general   encrusted shell
 of heroic David   shielded   in Scythian gold
 obscures the star   ringed with tartar   dogged
 twin   not red   but green   like a glimmering leash

  
 on life   yes   under the many-colored blanket
 blooded with brother's blood  (or lamb's)
 ripples the star   of orphan balm
 buried deep   beneath pentagonal calibrations

  
 like an emerald bee   under a jawbone lie
 stubborn   borne through black ink and
 blank night   on the rump of a donkey
 Love   into your palms   my Jubilee

  
 And like the night-light   of a mournful child
 past midnight and   past adult eyes
 you will be washing   in that courtyard
 the ice-cold clearness poured   your chilled brow

  
 drinks in   the prow of reality   ineffable
 shadow of the Magi from   the source
 of every Nile   as the Angel knows   whose
 hand held back the sword and   baffled

  
 both command and   its fulfillment
 this   was the many-colored
 jewelled lie   like Manco Capac
 beside the pool called   Sent   unfolded

  
 leafed   in a shroud of shades
 the uncut garment   of a polar bear
 rugged yet   mild and   dewlapped rabbi
 standing in a garden   shuddering

  
 with cold and   early morning
 a little child shall lead them   Magdalen
 or Lucky   green quaternion and   emerald
 Cuba, Elián   an   island urn-manger

  
 your berth is here   upon an earth
 grown   supernatural   in whispers
 in the leaves   of wind   (lips pursed
 with mystery)   a tender curling   ear

  
 of corn   whorled   like Ruth
 upon a path grown   silver
 trumpet now   with violins
 drawn parallel   flown through

 
 that feline   pinhole of light   elusive
 jaguar guardian gone   soaring
 with no one on his track   there is
 no other happiness   to learn from a star

  
 and I'd like to tell you   mumbling, my
 little one   that it's through our babbling
 I deliver you   to shine   Bébé   in
 that circumference   my bumblebee

  
 since a star is only a star   and
 light is only light   a rainbow
 your calm smile   my   Marion Peru
 at noon   lifted from the cave   to rest

  
 and warmth   gemutlichkeit
 gesundheit   breathing   sneezing
 coughing   crying out   a Zeno-
 Zeus   so lucky   home   on empty couch

  
 with nowhere   to lay your head
 until   like a hungry blind unhanded
 Maximus   so slowly inching   forward
 under the upturned rafters of a dear

  
 mosaic   (afloat overhead
 where an arch of sheep   accompany
 your voice   a muted organ-pipe
 gamboling   toward the reed-divining

  
 almond rod upholding   the spangled canopy
 or   mystery poncho   in Ravenna
 bee-stung   honeyed   mouth-ravine
 grown naked now and   copious)

  
 in the moss of night stars   melting
 flakes of winter snow   your hair
 flown clean   (a feathered ray
 falls there and   trembles)

 
 inching forward   snailshelled
 through the rusted   fishing boat for
 iron ore there   in the northland   tubular
 bereft hulk or   love-manger   delicious

  
 homeland   Hiawatha   hollow horn
 blown sweet and lonesome now   across
 the prairie   redman Lincoln   Norway
 spruce   blue-green   almond eye all

  
 Magdalenian   there   at the star-cavern
 within a nondescript exterior   of
 Superior stone   pebble   tear-shaped
 eyelid   Armenian cupola   stern yet   vernal

  
 shines   veteran   dusky   dawn-bathed
 through turbid   potter's clay
 a Minnesota spring   in January
 one leap year one   limber habitat

                        
                                  1.11.2000