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

come here, baby Minotaur

SEA-SAND

Love is the end & the beginning.

Cave-artists in Sulawesi

drew pigments from red scree

for their wild pigs, dwarf buffalo (zing

go the arrows of the sacred hunters,

therianthropes).  44,000

years in burial mound

(palm-prints on wooden posts for pointers).

Desire in soggy adolescent clay

molts to perversity

or rises to chaste clarity;

smiles of mothers & fathers slay

the stony-hearted Minotaur

with a burl of soft air

(light for the maze-lair).

Love circles back to where you are.

Come here, baby Minotaur,

you’re going to dance with me.

Concrete comes from the sea-

sand; this milk is from a star.

I’myeh spirit helper, Jonah Raven.

Take this clay, spit

into your hand, & roll it,

mold it to your eye.  There’s Ocean-

Ouroboros, glowing in the deep.

That’s Milky Way, that’s

Morning Star... your heart’s

a coracle, Cordelia (wake beyond sleep).

12.12.19

Cordelia in the wasps' nest

AUTUMN RITE

In the car coming back from the memory unit

I catch the tail end of Mahler’s 9th

the slow slow strings’ fading strength

bent like snarly willow limbs into some resonant

sweet culmination (ancient Mendelssohn

elegy in mind).  Autumn’s

rust-blood golden sun’s

quintessence now, O silent one?

Cordelia in the wasps’ nest, at the axis

of the earth... Lear, trembling

like an oak gall wasp – bleeding,

stung by the crypt-keeper (Euderus

Set).  The wasp within the wasp, Osip –

Shakespeare’s quaint acorn-

crown of happiness (shorn

pharmakon).  & shalt thou drink my cup?

The box-within-a-box, the matryoshka

toy?  Like bloody JFK

in Dallas, on a Friday –

Jackie’s pink tiara (autumn leaf regalia)...

The river of violin sound measures time

to its serene delta, my friend.

& the tree (Hagia Sophia with a million

eyes) harbors the wind like a nursery dome –

you hear the sound of it (that waterfall

through twin cities, Berryman)

but you know not whence (my son)

it comes (oak’s Galla rite, imperial).

10.15.19

at the end of summa

SURSUM CORDA

These heart-shaped leaves of the cottonwood –

yellow-black memories,

your excavated face

from the dark archive of branded blood.

Leavings from an old mosaic, my Psyche;

yearnings you magnetized

like a Tombs Angel surprised

me from despair – desire molting to fiery

grace.  Loose, unloose these cords,

sister Cordelia –

churnagogue Jonah,

heart’s winepress of happy candle-words.

I hear hands clap together

this little light of mine

I’m gonna let it shine...

through the funhouse mirror

mend you ways, O Minotaur

sacre du printemps

bête pour FIN DU TEMPS

so you may stand with sisters

brothers   in the great congregation

at the end of summa

when the threads draw

taut (1132)   Rabbi, Rab Ravelin

sursum corda   my clay Columbia

as out of the flaming kiln

the milky waters spill

& your glad-sparrow brother sighs   selah

9.18.19

Idea of Order at Port-au-Prince

PIED-DU-ROI

The mysteries of the tree of life

wafted in pine-scent,

loon-call.  Where she went?

My tiny Haitian house (Hiram Abiff?)

flattened into iron, painted

sea-coral (for joy).

That illegible toy

Advent ball of light – Levite,

anointed by black sun (yellow-

black Torah).  Sister-

dove?  Little tree

of Jessie, O (hidden willow-

canoe of Providence).  Chip

off the sloop Francesca

(pale arte povera,

woven from raven-ink on quipu

stone).  These are the quadrants

of my quatrain train

with a hey, ho, the wind

& the rain (Earth birth-bangs, pants).

You will carry Ariadne’s Crown,

Cordelia – innocence

to crystalline prescience

at perihelion of night (black noon).

Palladium of cornbelt Maggy –

out of Byzantium

into some quonset dome

of little Rhody (heart’s domain).

12.30.18

a merry caw-caw for Thanksgiving

GIVE THANKS

We give thanks for life’s poetry

which arrives (unexpected)

through gates of neglected

farmyards.  For the spare mystery

of solitary lighthouses, beaming

steady wheel-spokes

(Rhode Island folks

know what we say, dreaming

sea-woven Narragansett night).

A merry caw-caw

semaphores her law

by roof-smoke... Raven’s last rite;

like Roy Van Doublegram – cross-eyed

matryoshka doll

(owl in a well) –

Hagia Sophia’s multiocular Argo-hide

(serpentine tesserae’s bronze

glint, like Quetzalcoatl

drifting up from Mexico).

For being lifted up to heaven’s

dome, by way of Providence

(O supernatural Grace).

Who is that Falcon-Ace

on Ibis-wing, speeding to silence?

Emily, Cordelia... be

with me now.  Will

must climb volcano-hill...

Love’s Istanbul (Turkey).

11.20.18

like a dream

BLIND EYE

Like a dream in the womb, in the mind of a maid

before all things were made.

Came naturally, she said

when the foundations of reality were laid.

Providence, burnished by smoky November.

Like a canoe on the edge

of the cataract of knowledge...

at Prospect Terrace.  You remember.

Roger Williams, sturdy son of man.

Dark grayish blue

Hope Diamond, you

whisper (below junk jewelry scams) your plan

for Providence.  Triangulated eye

over the Mammon-pyramid.

Re’s Eye, long hid

in our blind eye – to crucify,

Henry (in RI).  That woman in the wilderness

of last things (Chinese vase

still circuiting her stillness).

French, blue, Jeanne.  Fiery duress...

Only a child’s distress.  Cordelia.

Le coeur de Lear, de l’ear...

Coeur de Lion, here.

Skinny crane-bag (of ocean spray)...

St. Paul’s most blazing eloquence

out of heart’s Pig’s Eye.

South of the city –

Mississippi limestone (fossil evidence).

11.16.18

digging in the dirty green

AYE-AYE

The dirty green of the dollar bill.

Gardener George, earwigged

on one side (with a big

little Mona Lisa smile).

The eye over the pyramid (annuit

coeptis) on the other.

Levitating, mother!

Mammon, touching his limit –

a gilded pharaoh, forced to step

sideways (into the river-

sand).  Busy beaver

out of Illinois might be princeps

round here (nobody knows

til all the votes are counted).

We are all the Lord’s anointed

Preacher-Judge (siege perilous)

leers in the face of b-flat storm –

Cordelia, ascend

your throne, bend

everyone to teeming agape (love’s form).

The government shall be upon

his shoulder (right to left)

until the desolate bereft

& greedy soul relents – a human

Imogen emerges, lowly

& victorious.

Dancing the periplus

of Arg-Noah (144, aye-aye).

12.12.17

you cannot buy free soul

FLAT VODKA

The weather is alchemical,

the mix is changeable

& lethal – Lear will fumble

through the hailstorm, inconsolable.

The air is saturate with salt.

Even the snow is bitter

as flat vodka.  Better

to butter up the mayor, Walt –

don’t you think?  I don’t.

His orange head is swollen

full of bloody poll-pollen –

he likely toss you to the Don.

Phosphoric Osip fingers his Commedia

for signs of figlio

della figlia... down Rio

del Espiritu wend lilac, willow, etc...

Dumb Cordelia keeps her counsel.

Won’t corrode the word

filial with a coarse reward.

You cannot buy free soul,

dear heart – & salt is cheap.

Cotton bolls is de termite,

but woe unto de spite-

docta, who sow to weep.

I see a Solominka mincing

on the edge of a knife,

a precipice – fine

Ravel for violin (pining).

11.18.16

he was no Big Fish

SWEET CORDELIA

Like a Showy Ladyslipper in the woods

unseen by all except

chipmunks (scrabbling adept

through silent clerestories of dead

cedars) Hobo strayed, from Ursus

Major to St. Apollinaire;

he was no Big Fish, barely

a minnow Star du Nord (Jesus

his seine-maître, toiling away

upstream).  America

steamed on, formica-

sleek, pregnant with Labor Day

& White-Tailed Rabbit & Polar Bear

looked on, from cell blocks

melting in the superflux.

The Man of Concrete was no longer there

(he’d cried himself to sleep).  Henry

by a berried Berryman

stood by, his Resurrection

Plot cartooned in St. Paul snow (flaky);

apathetic Oblomov, at the gazebo

spied Olga in the distance –

wading through native plants

like sweet Cordelia coming to rescue

jet-bagged Lear.  Earth dangled

from one silver hair,

suspended over the bear-

cave (striped with blood, star-bangled).

9.7.16

"Pinecone", by Marcia McEachron

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

BOAT-MAID

Primeval spring, at the center of the forest

at the source of headwaters

where mothers find daughters

& fathers, sons... your robin’s nest

I sleepwalk toward, beneath half-notes

of chickadee, shrill keening

wail of cardinal, seeking

Persephone (between ice-flotes).

Psyche, Ophelia, Juliet...

your muttered hobo-names

for fishing lures.  These games

of avocation... drowsing yet

below Cahokia, the Kore fields

of poppies (Orleansville

or Alexandria)... Île-

de-France... Ariadne’s golden wheels...

Old Guillaume with his mummy-crown

smokes goldenrod & wine

beside the snoring Rhine.

Hobo might catch a Jonah-fish, or one

might swallow him (it’s all the same)

pining beside the brook

of Lethe... – say there, look

anew, McDuff!  Her ancient name

is Cora – she’s a round boat-maid

of cedar (juniper);

her berries are pure

blue, honey – she’s evergreen (almond).

2.26.16