SMOKE-TREASURY
That the diamond exists, murmurs Black Elk
justifies your dream.
Octahedral theme
of orientation by humility (MLK
& JFK meet in your mandala-canoe).
As Roger the Seeker christened
Providence a refuge, at the end
of seeking (for beginning anew).
To model the heavenly kingdom of God
in clay, or dusty speech
like a doorway, or Gateway Arch;
like rose mandorla, made of flesh & blood.
Not city on a hill, but village
in a valley, by the river’s
mouth – one Narragansett
giver’s canonical Key into the Language
of America. That the diamond exists
justifies your dream
in shades. Mandelstam
(in Pushkin & Scriabin) writ of this –
because the Redemption has already happened
art is set free, to celebrate
(watch Oscar Cullmann adumbrate
this meaning in his diagram). The End
is the beginning. Not that the end has come.
Only interrogate
this blistered heart
to find that smoky rite of Eastern Rome
*
spring in the limping step of herald Hart
or the epileptic anguish
of poet Prof. English
Berryman (in his hexagonal ziggurat
of Resurrection Cemetery – over the river
from St. Paul). Come home,
patters that silver stream
from crane-bone flute (archaic sliver
flinting mica, in Cahokia); a raven
laughter diagram
or Bluejay paradigm
or Jonah-dove conundrum (rune haven);
a sweeping cry out of Cautantowwit’s
smoke-treasury; an answer
for yon affectionate peacemaker
when he crawled into the Narragansetts’
welcome-tent. A smile (ineffable
as that 6-sided snowflake
traced by Black Elk
over the grave of Buffalo Bill).
All this intricate nautical geometry!
– these asides by Hobo,
his obeisance to Venus (Virgo-
ascendant sunset cemetery) –
is just the flimsiest balsa-wood scale model
of an Old Ironsides ark
or Constitution… spark
for Gravesend dancing-floor (pokey asphodel).
3.11.20
