petit songe du solstice

MASS PLANTING

The soaring voices of the Rose Ensemble

filled the cavernous wooden vault

of St. Mary’s with green light

on solstice night.  Meek humble

faces in a crowd become limestone

architecture of high song –

a van der Weyden throng,

a Bruegel mass planting a cornerstone.

When the tender light falls first

& softly on the muddy fringe

of some new edifice... strange

dewy glinting, where the stone burst

from whale-mouth of the earth

(Jonah-Persephone’s deep

crypt, where ages keep)

with fluttery breath of infant birth.

Jonah... Osiris... buried Man...

little Nutcracker King

solving his Sphinx thing,

finally.  Sibylline Isis (Belgian)

murmuring – I am that which was

& is & ever shall be;

no mortal has ever

lifted the veil which covers me.  Cuz,

tell Henry : Rex Pacificus

has found his mate

beyond the Golden Gate –

Magdalen, her gardener (Jesus).

12.22.18

a glossolalia from grapevine hive

ALMOND SHELL

The gray clouds in the distance, over

the Bruegel panorama.

Coltrane, Alabama.

Hollow octave.  Windblown clover.

In the foreground, a guy named Frank.

Jeff, Joe... somebody

you know, Big Daddy?

No.  Here to clean the sewage tank.

In the garage, a long-unused canoe.

Dry almond shell,

cicada husk.  Well,

things happen.  I loved her, too.

Everything wears out like a garment,

Preacher says.  Love’s

monarch’s in the grove –

dark cedars frame him monument.

Cupped hands perform their wrinkled rite,

a mandorla for Miriam

(her longest night).  I am

your cloud-shape spinning into sight,

I am your turtledove of rose

granite.  A woven smile

gets fuzzy, chile.  Goes

bumbly, succeeding prose;

a glossolalia from grapevine hive

that only Providence

(unleafing salience)

can sail through oven husk – alive.

9.12.18

evening of the year

TIRED HAND

November is the evening of the year.

Peasants in Bruegel scenes,

old Hobo has-beens

cluster by each barnyard bonfire.

Smells of farm & mill & stream,

the salt of drying fish.

Legends of Gilgamesh,

Leviathan.  Earth’s drowsy dream

wherein these van der Weyden faces

peer, like wildflowers

(like elemental creatures).

Matrix of sky & sea places,

of perishable limestone prints

from whence a soul emerges

smiling... Demiurge’s

horsehair, flickering (Francesca’s hints).

Medieval bread & wine of things.

Cascade of bridges over

other bridges – river

washing under massive rings.

The solidarity of timebound

beasts, breathing together

under whip, rein, tether.

Muddy, between Arch & Mound

looms... pregnant with Spiritu.

What Piero knew,

Bruegel & Jasper too –

shade-palm, surrounding you

                    *

& me – stretching toward Pacific blue.

I layer watercolors so,

over crepuscular canoe

hid in Italian garage (one almond clue).

The limestone waterfalls in Rimini

like tears across a scallop-

sign.  The curtains drop,

the veil gives way... a human unity

of suffering is all our play.

Da Vinci, with tired hand

limns one command –

love one another, every day.

For we are one.  A multitude,

personified.  Benevolent

Ancient of Days bent

each into the mirror’s flood,

together – riverflow of heart-

veins from the earth

welling to fiery hearth –

lenticular sunset, plangent cloud-art.

So spinning from primordial rose

the golden maize of Chartres

guides you to its Artist...

Daedalus, not Minotaur; Grace

Ravlin, not some puppet-master

in the Kremlin.  Shadow

of Mona Lisa grin... you

rise before the fall (Easter).

11.10.17

my Bruegel panorama

AUTUMN AIR

The little gold galleys of the butternut

navigate through autumn air.

My Bruegel panorama

of proverbial bird-wit is fading out.

The motherland calls Hobo.  Every leaf

a chaste canoe... Rus, Rus.

The enemy be us,

pugnacious Pogo cries – war is grief

between brothers.  Apollinaire

drifts in gray whiffs

of wistfulness... his skiff’s

more tangled up with Minotaur

than was before, sighs Psyche-

Ariadne.  That graybeard

on Ravenna guard

surrounded by gray paint-debris –

he might be me.  Ocean is gray

as wing of turtledove today.

Way in the middle of the air

Ezekiel saw them wheels a’glory

Louis sang (on path LP

somewhere in Tuscany).

Leonardo da Vinci

drew Vitruvian Man like a Kali

on a microcosmic wheel of fire –

he was such a star!

& in the Last Supper

Judas & Jesus in sfumato-mirror

                  *

reach together across girlish Jean –

or do they reach for her?

Shocked faces of the men –

is it betrayal, or espousal sign?

Some knot of gravitational waves

whorls into matrix-vortex.

Beloved spindrift Rex

emergent from that sea of graves –

a eucharist or mystical body

encircled by a palm

inscrutable as that helm

of Jonah, breaching the cloudy

surf of Ocean River – O font

of soul-transfigurement!

So rooted in the fundament

we rise as citizens of Turtle-Tent –

when the Eternal comes, & we

are summoned to a wedding-

feast.  Melodious syrinx

of Orpheus-Nazir... blithe epi-

thalamium from sparkle-profundum.

Wrath of Kali-Coatlicue-

Moloch subsides away

& Leonardo frames his simulacrum

of one vernal smile... Mona Lisa

bubbly as Virgin

on the Rocks.  Come in,

she says; God’s blessing in persona.

10.19.17

a flower for Bloomsday

CIRQUE MATRIX

Gray Hobo-bird faces a problem :

how to save his own long

featherweight fern song?

How to rewind a strung-out poem?

Effigies & icons flashing by

like ripples in his eye –

Burchfield, El Anatsui...

Hartley, Martin, Klimt... Johnny

Jasper... fond winter raven-

oeuil of Master Bruegel...

Pompey, in the empty well

of Yahweh, was befuddled – No One

There.  The clear plein air of Quaker

meeting house, of Shaker

chair.  The carpenter’s

simplicity of Philadelphian law-

oracles.  We hold these truths...

But Hobo’s murmuring his

Nil Reed Candace house;

his prairie wind blows wild (Ruth’s

trail through mazy corn, tracking

Boaz from Goshen-land).

With poem-in-a-can

in hand (his pemmican) & Red Wing

Thunderbird-Woodpecker perched

atop his hat, he moseys,

slouching, sea to sea;

aboard his polar bear canoe (birch-

                 *

light) he circulates a mystery –

where be this Henry Church

round whom leaf-sundials march?

Planted in Resurrection Cemetery?

Or hidden in a holm oak tree?

The painted whisper gallery

enshades invisibility.

Will he sleepwalk forever, Poetry?

The milkweed monarch fans meekness.

This moth is camouflaged

brown dust.  The sagebrush

rolls through red deserts, the cedars

pine for Juniper (slate-blue).

Time’s broom sweeps clean

but tiny seeds remain.

A microcosmic mustard-yellow

gyroscope (spun in Ravenna

backwater) balances

Galilee on Providence;

the bicycle with one duo-antenna

twirls its silver spokes into

a rose-wheel window.

Where did Harry go,

Hobo?  He’s hidden in Otranto

glass.  He’s riding Pegasus

into a cirque matrix –

cartwheeling carny tricks

as Henry Flower Wilderness.

6.16.17

Red Wing colors

TWIN WINGS

Sun through winter clouds, light

grays, pale blues...

Red Wing colors –

Mississippi stoneware (molded tight).

The heavy clay, churned by the river.

Earth forms distend,

disintegrate... days end,

begin... arrows in a quiver

of darkness.  Black Sea, cold, dead.

Salt lashing the eyes,

unseeing eyes – Oedipus

in his beast maze (Minotaur Ed).

Bruegel with his traps & nets.

Sardonic Injun Joe.

Taut lips of Little Crow.

To the bottomland we go, eaglets –

where Janus wrestles in the ice

with icon of his father.

Horned (narwhal weather).

Stars nest in a pair of dice.

High in stretched vaults of shade

stone elms lean down

over a golden corn-

maze (Ariadne made).

Light-roping constellations chant

reunion, reconcilement –

on twin wings of prairie-tent

coulombe (your ghostly complement).

1.31.17

beneath gray Bruegel sky

WAVE-CRADLE

Crows ink beneath gray Bruegel sky.

A line from A to B

zigzags spacetime – see?

So raven vanishes in Noah’s eye.

Between two points, a yawning Ocean.

Infinite intensity

of black-hole density

draws yesterday into its spin.

What is your personal specific gravity?

The poem is gray pebble,

obscure soldat (trouble

for no one).  Ordinary Smitty

whose greatcoat pocket holds an agate.

Lodestone of a jay

tracing King’s Highway

into the calyx of a ruse (checkmate).

It is Path P, the chi-rho

branch – diamond

mandala of almond;

Black Elk milk road (ey yo).

Love is the tread between twin pillars –
only a glance of weightless

spiderweb.  Inverness

of vernal tenderness... wind, stars...

when the bow sways in its wave-cradle

& Ithaca, Iona, Eire

lift like green fire

Skye-perpendicular – familiar grail-dreidel.

1.25.17

after Bruegel

BRUNE STEEPLE

Horsehair flickering a panorama

of rustic proverbs.  Bruegel

as the crow flies... oil

congeals a plangent winter summa.

Infant beginnings at the end.

Light-hearted kids under

a hulking storm.  Her

hunchback flimsy beggar-friend.

A village in the blank weather,

the dread season.  Human

high fellowship.  The reign

of love rings in the killing air.

Absolute zero.  Vanishing point.

& will the center hold

within this trench of cold?

The Flemish realm is out of joint.

Remember when the honcho came?

The strong man, offering

rewards or suffering,

no quibbling.  The gilded frame

worm-riddled.  & where ravens gather,

there your servant lies –

his casque of Paradise

just one hard crust, one leather

jug milked round a cackling blaze.

Dark curls of brune steeple

remind knife-shadowed people

how a dove broods in a thorny maze.

1.9.17

hen hides under blanket

LITTLE RINGS

In the muted Bruegel colors now

a raven’s-eye view circles

round twin Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, so long ago.

Heidi & Holly, Jamie Freeman –

kids in a panorama

skate across my retina

from a Flemish Ice Age (Union

Pearl, foundered in frozen cup).

Laertes, will you drink

with me?  I think

not, yet... & so I take it up.

How gravity spins round the Sampo,

Longfellow – how Minnehaha

eddies through Edina

like a maelstrom over Nanabozo

– silly wabbit in the old cartoon

of Manitou & Redman –

stormcloud, lightning (Hen

hides under blanket, ‘til monsoon-

tornado trundles off to Canada).

Rabbi, Rabbi... Raven-

priest, Melchizedek... when,

O Wind, will this wallowing miasma,

lethal raincloud, lift?  A voice

from hurricane murmured –

when the agate here immured

in North Sea tears, as in a vice

                    *

floats into primeval Paradise

upon a simple kayak-word

out of the lunar hoard

of acorn-candelabra : REJOICE.

The train rumbles over the bridge

in the iron night, in the rain.

I won’t be back again

until Ferrara meets the Iron Range

in a poem coming down from winking

Starry Night.  Those whorls

are fingerprints – pearls

whispered out of Ocean, drinking

planets, orbits, icons, emblems

drawn from infinite thirst

for a milky source (first

taste of infamous black diadems).

Bears navigate a starry circle

over Berryman.  The stone

crypt glows in the bone-

castle.  Jessie Ophelia will

step down from the riverboat

beaming for Minneapolis.

The sky is gray, is

Minneapolis, St. Paul... c’est tout.

In Mendelssohn the Mirror Lakes

are ripples ever-new.

You’ll understand... you

live there (little rings an iron makes).

11.26.16

setting out toward the 9th

ACORN WIGWAM

The last of the crickets, in their silver mines

among dun stalks, pipe

to each other, under a ripe

& misty Bruegel sky.  Hobo Henry’s lines

distend toward hibernation.  Soon

he must contend with bumpkin

men, their jealous trumpetin’ –

all Caesars of the earth, again...

that agèd guild of frozen snowmen

Knossos harbors in the maze.

But now we know their ways –

cowmen dividing up the herd end

up dividing up themselves, as they began.

He flecks his oiled horsehair

to spike the nightmare –

cloud-grey dove’s-eye view, the human

magic lamp, Okie dream-songe.

& like a baby ape emerging

from the cave, he’ll sing

the Sun of Love, très riche, étrange –

Apollinaire’s trompette marine

will flute the sweet bass

threads, an Ariadne-lasso...

YAMB-WHIT-YAM (so coralline,

full-fathomed now).  Kind eye

of Psyche, manifest

to fire the clay – to test

the relativity of acorn wigwam (A-OK).

11.17.16

ravens snag rookies in bluejay trees

SOLE MAGPIE

The angry father is a sad figure;

the unarmed child who walks

with open hands, talks

toward him, reaches C major

on the 88 (pine-green octave).

Ravens snag rookies

in bluejay trees;

the hunters wonder what to have

out of their hollow sack of Bruegel-

frost; argufying

starlings form a ring

around a sole magpie (farewell,

Maggie).  Translucent October

showers yellow-black

on Caesar’s hunchback

(rogue goldfinch – he’s never sober).

Cold grows colder, stone more stony;

rude men kneel down

for a crust of wine-

stained loaf; God’s only phony

for the mickle microphones – the orphan

player’s Richard III.

She’ll stand by me,

mutters Rusty Piers (cowman);

after the grey November rain

stars will come out again,

gems constellate the plain –

& Hobo echo her enchanted brain.

10.18.16

Jasper circumference

GRAY PAINT

The vast Flemish panorama

coheres in a raven’s eye.

Through haunted oaks, high

wind tosses bugle-calls (taran 

tara).  Bruegel’s gray paint congeals

on the perimeter

of the sea... Demeter

wanders like a Walloon reels

caterwauling, Persephone!

In Flanders grass, poppy-

purpura (like the sea

around a stubby Orizaba) –

only the poem is humble

enough to bear the yoke

of a poshlost rude joke.

She won’t let you stumble,

Psyche, in your edgy sundance.

That quatrefoil in the blue

mortuary was for you,

poilu (Apollinaire) – entrance

to complete volume of sibylline

Mnemosyne.  Pine

tree pantomime... a line

of sketchy aquamarine (shan shui).

A jasper circumference defines

our Atlantean task,

to reconcile each mask

of pathos (in a matrix of threadlines).

4.8.16

Where the crooked sumacs are

BACKWARD THUNDER

The Redeye of these freight cars’

heavy backward thunder

over rubidium crossbars’

X.  Where the crooked sumacs are –

their creaky grey akimbo-structures

(rusty caducei).  Amorpho-

phallus Titanium?  No,

not quite... but ruddy, like Osiris-

Oedipus (up 3-Way Highway,

where the pylons meet).

Eddy Parallactic,

relatively paralytic – all that whey

so massive, bending light around

Caesar’s own seizures,

jade embrasures

(pyramidical, tyrannical, profound).

The iron Bruegel earth turns so,

in snowy dunes.  Until

one feathery perpendicular

percolates up (with bleaker crow).

Light eddied, slow (28, 29...)

where a spring coils

moss-green (oeuil

of Bosch, in Kansas City sun);

where Iris plants meek sovereignty

by Eero-Eeyore Gate – &

Eurydice, come late

May, rose... (tiny Iona tree).

2.2.16

MN Arboretum (Jan. 2016)

Old man Boethius

DAWN STREET

In the ash-gray sky, where the ravens drift

in the Bruegel scene, over winter

panorama – harbor

& skating rink, riddle & gift...

In remote perspective, the raven’s eye

reaps furtive memory,

most ancient flame.  We

walked together, you & I

down the dawn street, in spousal light;

only a pigeon-murmur

echoed our passage there.

The hearth’s full of embers (life is night).

Old man Boethius steps out

his syllables, each

vowel like a cherished

peach.  This radiance will cast

doubt into shade (beneath pine branches

where salted gratitude

savors his fortitude).

Beatrice-Columbia suddenly launches

into sweet aria of praise

when Jonah surfaces

from dove-grey eyes

of everlastingness   Apollinaire’s

fumes   filter into laughter

War to End All Wars

a cloverleaf surprise

renders mercy on earth   hereafter

1.17.16

Life's unwritten history

BRUEGEL SCENE

Summer loses weight, becomes

translucent at the end.

Sunlight slants graveward

with a farewell glance, & autumn’s

trumpet-call is barely audible

amid hilarious

alarums in the circuits

of the starlings (swarming, risible).

& so you wonder where you are

on earth.  John Berryman’s

in jasper, John’s in grey;

Man’s in a graveyard green (so far

from here).  Splat in a corner

one cloud-turtle (from

Iona) lifts her drum-

shell from the sea – almost another

comber, very salt & watery.

I’ll join the starling circus,

friends – I’ll whistle us

to Minneapolis, SE of Rimini.

That raven’s in the Bruegel scene.

His glance is like one

wintry oeuil upon

her apron – by the deep tureen,

at dawn, in the spare refectory;

feathered in soft silence

on a wall of remembrance.

What’s up, Dad?  Unwritten history.

9.21.15

September 21

Magnetic North

This weekend I'll be driving to Minnesota, so won't be blogging-flogging so many poems as of late.  Here's the new addition to Ravenna Diagram.  (Was interested to learn that Bruegel's great painting "The Hunters' Return" plays a role in two of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, Solaris and Mirror.)

MAGNETIC NORTH

Snow on backyard pine, a winter

scene.  With bitter words

the hunters return.  Bird’s-

eye view.  A raven’s splintered mirror

integrates the earth with cold

& calm – ravenous fire

with ice-skating, the hounds’

dire hunger with a master’s hold.

Strange distance in this place of graves.

Graven with flames... a tinder

touch.  So you will render

up the whole of life, in silent waves

windblown, articulate (ash-

hexagon from one

remote hearth-rune).

Only dappled light (reed-wash,

acacia screen).  In the continuum

of strange dream-song, a black

milk pours into Black Elk,

Melchizedek... slips back to you, O

Somno-Man (where sparrows hum

across the mirrored ice).  Your

wing-palms print once, twice

beneath aurora burial (drum-

roll, funereal).  Snow gathers

at magnetic north.  Rose

dust & wilderness

meet on your lips (coal-cinders).

1.9.15

Jesus Thoughts (11) : on a Bruegel day

Fleeting short thoughts this morning, at work.  Glancing out the library window, at a Bruegelish autumn scene : snow on the rooftops, the Unitarian steeple.  Low clouds roving up from the south (Narragansett Bay); a few flickers of gold leaf flaking off the maple trees; huddled shrouded monkish people walking by, leaning into the wind.

The recurrent, obscure & pleasant fantasy-sensation of drifting into the seamless continuum of a Bruegel landscape.  Or is it a sense of heavy stones dusted with snow in the Middle Ages.  Or is it a sense of a time-warp, an anachronism, a synchronicity.  Or is it just an imaginary (willfully imagined) feeling of stillness : of Time slowing down, the wheel coming to a halt.

Forgive me for my self-indulgence here; maybe I'm just an old monkish librarian.  Thinking this morning of one of Jesus' parables of the kingdom of heaven (& I've probably got it slightly wrong, you'd better look it up).  Here's my rough paraphrase :

The Kingdom of God is as when a rich householder throws a wedding feast.  He invites all his friends, all the rich & powerful & intelligent, the priests, the scribes, the lords; but nobody shows up.  So angrily he throw open the doors and invites everybody in : sinners, criminals, the sick, the homeless, the poor.  & they flock inside, happily celebrate with their host.  But one young man shows up without a wedding outfit : the servants of the householder confront him : "What? No wedding suit?"  & toss him out.  & so it will be for each & all, when the Eternal comes upon you.

"When the Eternal comes."  What does this mean?

To repeat : I think Jesus believed he was the Messiah, the Son of the Most High - & understood what it meant, its implications.  One of those consequences was that "in his name" - in his name - salvation, healing & blessings were coming into the world.  What was "his name"?  Among other things, it was the sign of his individual personhood.  Through the action of God coming into the world as an actual person, the form of the individual human life, the life of the person, is blessed, is made holy.  As it's been put in another way : Man as the original Adamic "image of God" is cleaned, polished and restored through the "name" (the personhood) of Jesus.

Once he began his "public" career, Jesus lived his life as a sacrificial priest, making a sacrifice of his life : & in doing so, every such public act became symbolic, a dramatic sign.  The life he lived became framed within the aegis of its end : he was moving toward his own death, he was moving into the dimension of eternity.

And there must be an "eternal" dimension to every person's life.  The Bible, the "Word", sets up a kind of light-reflective mirror.  On the one hand, we see the outward, "objective" traces of the historical record, the chronicle of the radiating vibrations from Jesus' actual life on earth.  On the other hand, in the mirror of the word, we sense the inward meaning of the Gospel message as it impinges on own personal consciousness (within our "subjectivity").  A curious doubleness, a complementarity of inner & outer weaves itself together in this "mirror" Logos.

I'm looking out the window, at the wintry Bruegel-world.  Sensing strange oneness, underlying time & distance : like these dark red-gold leaves, flying, floating & clustering everywhere, pervasive, omnipresent - under a worn old lamb-statue, leaning out from a cathedral door.  "When the Eternal comes..." (will I have my wedding coat?).

Quiet in the library today.

Snowstorm yesterday, now sunlight on the trees, old colonial rooftops. Snow-radiance, winter brightness.

Sort of a northern light, Bruegel-light, Thomas More-light... imaginary sense of medieval gemutlichkeit comes to me now & then, like something out of collective memory (fantasy, I should say). It's in a lot of my poetry.

"Lit with the cold and clear Minnesota light" ("Grain Elevator")

Thinking of Stevens' "idea of the sun". & the tale of the Biblical "burning bush" that drew Moses out into eventual Exodus, and a scriptural Code, a social Covenant, & the history of the West.

The spark is like a mathematical equation :
Universal God + Mankind-Imago = Human Dignity/Equality = Justice

ie. if each & all bear this divine image (like M's "gold coin of humanism") then the irrevocable consequence is : dignity & respect & equality for each & all. (cf. the "greatest commandment", from which depends "all the Law & the Prophets" : Love God; Love your neighbor as yourself)

A further thought : these verbal articulations of social design (justice) are themselves epiphenomena of the unspoken Actual - the common intuited relations of love & respect that relatively free & sane persons offer naturally (at their best, anyway) to one another.

In other words, part of the overall gift of life is a certain unspoken normative justice, an equilibrium of happiness & peace.

Then the Biblical revelation (or divine intervention) is not so much a motor of history, on the order of cause-&-effect - but rather a manifestation (a "glory") of the truth as it already is, & always was.

Everything pivots on a sense of the unique Person as enfolded in, or unfolding, an image of the universal & divine Personhood. Everything pivots on consciousness & the Person. "I am that I am."

These things have been known for thousands of years.

Yeats is a very hard act to follow, forgive me. Here's some more alchemy (Grassblade Light). Sort of addresses my grandfather, my uncle, myself, at the same time. An elegy for my uncle (Juliet's father) really started the flow of Stubborn Grew. My grandfather built grain elevators & dockyards in the midwest & Saskatchewan. "Balthasar" has to do with a painting by Bruegel ("Adoration of the Magi"), which popped up early in Stubborn.

26


 
There is nothing but cold and dark,
as at the bottom of the sea.
As winter in Saskatchewan would be,
eventually.  And so castles made of sand... sink,

 
now, into this infinite sea, handsome
sailor boy-o... drift, now,
drift... with Minnesota snow...
flow... let go the oars,

 
drop from the transom, the huge
flat outline of your grain elevators
now, old man... old man.  Sow
the wild grave prairie with your centrifuge,

 
separate the waters from the waters,
night from day; and from the regal span
of life’s love-surge, constrain one
standing sound... your daughter’s

 
laughter, once again.  Once more.
Now droning cicadas in July
exhale one body – sigh
toward the vault... soar

 
together, merge – a water music, as
your mother’s father’s sun moves down the Thames,
an evening lightship, borne upon the flames
of flowing water.  Balthasar prepares

 
his final epiphane:  out from his naval green-
gold golem draws a ruddy gem.  His glittering
eyes reflect each burning facet floating in
his hand as he presents one gleaming human soul.


           
                                   1.5.99

The Magpie on the Gallows


 
 
Bruegel willed his last work to his wife.
We look down a slope of leafing trees
toward a weatherbeaten gallows, where
a small black-white magpie has alighted.
A group of cheerful peasants goof and
tumble waltzing down the hill, merge
with the background (sketchy, indistinct).
Beyond the rickety gray wooden frame
a May-time vista opens wide (vast, mild,
serene) to mountains, sunlit castles, sky.

 
Everything returns at last to the wife,
the bride, the mother in the landscape.
Mendelssohn – a dream my mother had
(her miniature oils were its expression,
the world I recognize is their reflection).
Out of summers buried deep, the longing
streams: the tripod of the firmament
rests on a point of irrational blind
balance: the magpie rumors – wars, 
scandals – skitter across an icy surface.

 
Bruegel’s image seems to say, the world
outlives our quarrels with our dying;
our quarrels and our dying flit away
enfolded in a subtler nature (one
we cannot fathom yet, but witness
here – peering into the limpid curve,
the tender distances, the calm horizon).
Remnants of an ancient controversy
teeter on the hillside... but the magpie
(casual now, indifferent) soon vanishes.