...an illustration, from Dove Street (apologies for repetition):

NICHOLAS OF CUSA, SAILING HOME

     
       Never suppose an inventing mind as source
       Of this idea nor for that mind compose
       A voluminous master folded in his fire.

 
He was on board ship, sailing from Byzantium
when the moment of illumination came, a flash
of light that staggered him (as happened to Paul
on the Damascus road): when he understood
there can be no ratio, no means of comparison,
no middle term, between the finite and the infinite.
Thus, since God is infinite, we have no means
of knowing Him (invisible, incommensurate); so,
as Paul says, If any man thinks he knows anything,
he has not yet known as he ought to know.
It follows then, for Nicholas (De Docta Ignorantia)
our proper study is, to understand our ignorance.

 
I think of him in Constantinople, looking up
into that limpid sphere, that massive cupola,
Hagia Sophia: gazing back at those gigantic eyes:
Christos Pantokrator, hovering there, magnificent
in lapis lazuli, translucent marble.  He would 
have known that, even then, all-conquering armies
of the Pasha were encroaching on the city gates;
had swept away, already, the last flimsy shreds 
of once-almighty Christian Rome – history itself 
grown incompatible with that triumphant
image glaring down.
                     I cannot know You
as You are.  But when I think of you
I think of Bruegel panoramas: there’s Mankind
(a little, furry, muddy, peasant thing – yet
at home upon the earth – its caretaker – self-
conscious, quick – inventive builder, gardener –
blind governor – your tarnished mirror);
and, as he painted in The Road to Calvary,
you hide amongst us, suffering servant, near
the center of our troubles: buried in the crowd:
one of the roughs (disguised, in camouflage, 
unknown).

DANTE


 
 
Spiral, whirlpool, maelstrom, Medusa’s
hair – these metaphors of curvature
(like paint dust afloat from Siena’s
nearby mural) only remind you where
you are: in Hell.  The sordid images
(once disgust subsides) become pure
pathos, after all.  Where desire rages
sympathy begins, and as desire is
mother to the deed, the deed rampages
in the shadow of your own hot fire,
Dante.  The flame, your Beatrice says,
travels in a circle on its wire

 
and where that scintillating comet goes
you follow, wheeling (as the wind blows).

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.

ST. GUILLEM'S DREAM

 
 
 
The City under siege
the Sultan bearing down
two mighty armies rage
around the sacred town.

 
Our walls are under-manned
the hard-pressed Captain cries
without some helping hand
tonight the Empire dies...
 
O Lord, let it be me!
the sleeping hermit said
as (rousing fitfully) he
gripped his wooden bed.

We note the perfect discord of line #8. ("He'll teach them to sing out what we hold dear.") This line, despite its iambic-pentameter basis, is a metrical disaster.

TORTURE LOGIC


 
 
He will insist, and can almost believe
that if these surly, scrawny, naked men
absorb the special lessons they receive
their time together in the holding pen
(the soakings, burnings, beatings, and the rest –
the stench, shame, hunger, sleeplessness and fear)
will not have been in vain, as some have guessed.
He’ll teach them to sing out what we hold dear.
Be that as may be, he is in their face:
whoever they are, whatever game they play
he’ll screw loose information, leave no trace.
As for the stubborn... always another day!
We don’t know yet who’s causing us such grief
but causing pain will surely bring relief.

writing a lot today.

HEIDI, PRACTICING ACROSS THE STREET



 
 
Spring plays slow scales, waltzes toward July.
The leaves obscure the branches, and the shade
obscures the leaves.  Time’s intricate façade
a busy undergrowth that blurs the eye.

 
Footnotes and erasures cannot clear away
her dense disguise, your camouflage.
Only a few piano chords, a forlorn page...
we’re magnifying figures in some Book of J.

ON THE OCTAVE


 
 
This limpid morning belongs to the flowering dogwood
drifting white petals stained with a gash of purple
to the center of the sleepy backyard garden.
Hidden somewhere beyond chattering sparrows and
yodeling robins, a solitary mourning dove fingers
an ocarina, like a version (in minor key) of the Angel
with Flaming Sword, at the Garden gate.
                 So Mendelssohn
would become his composition:  a furtive green island
seen as light through water, as fingers extend
to the muted bell-tone
of a final octave.
    So I would travel back
aboard the swift smooth chariot of a single note
to where the ghost of a charitable father turns
to the image of a faithful son, in pure
attunement:
     by deep foundations of the sea
lifted from the grave, as was decreed
before the waters were divided from themselves:
when the soul of every man (Mary, Eurydice,
Persephone...) emerges from the sepulchre to meet
the gardener again.  And now a heavy lilac scents
the air, like limpid light through water; as if
to say
 you must translate and be translated,
the pillar of smoke and the pillar of flame
become your own:  for the only sign
is the sign of a mourning dove
at the edge of the garden.

sketching, sketching...

IN THE FIFTIES


 
 
Mendelssohn: a playpen,
a grass-green child-rearing
zoo.  Rows of pastel ranches 
pasted on remnants
of farmland, speckled
with fading apple trees.

 
Everything designed
for us: big yards, swing-
sets, sandboxes, baseball
diamonds... Little
League, Girl Scouts...
the enchanted island

 
ordained by the Bible
(Dr. Spock).  We
watched much TV,
played “army” every 
day, suffered shame
and sibling rivalry;

 
we did the picnics,
the infinite Sunday
afternoons (listening
to the four of them
– Mom, Dad, Grandma,
Grandpa – chortling

 
quietly over the bridge
table)... so much
you know already.
But you might miss
the careful oils
my mother made:

 
glowing grass; kids
akimbo (playing
“statue” under
the sprinkler); dark-
leaved oak trees
swaying overhead.

BEYOND GHOST WOODS


 
 
I would walk out of Mendelssohn westward
along parallel dirt tracks around the swamp
through Ghost Woods, up the sandy slope
to the ridge that lay between trees and
cemetery.  From there, standing in chest-
high weeds, I could see all Mendelssohn,
and beyond, the tall skyscrapers downtown
where my father worked.  It was summer;
no chores or school; only that high lookout
between graveyard and neighborhood.

 
There’s an old war between generations:
between children, trusting all in play
and grown-ups trusting only in money:
children knowing nothing of hardship
and grown-ups, forgetting what joy is.
A battle tiresome and intense by turns:
adults impatient with insipid offspring,
children scornful of parental blindness...
time itself the substance of their quarrel.

 
Across a blank page I retrace those steps
since somehow walking through woods
to a vantage over tombstones (where both
parties cease their play at last) eases the
bitterness – settles for a while that strife
of labor and delight (thinking of my father
in his far-off gray tower, and of myself
smudging a white page with gray marks).
Time steeps labor in forgetfulness.  The 
only coin in memory is understanding.

IN MENDELSSOHN


 
 
The little forsythia in the shade of the fence
is losing its gold sheen already.  The only
sign of spring in Mendelssohn: when
we tumbled through the screen door
without our coats.  Light green, it glows
now in thought like an icon, beckoning.

 
Like ancient priests with their rituals
or primitive soldiers hypnotized for war
we were sleepwalkers – playing, playing.
The bold spring sun infused each one
with silliness, joy, anarchy – with 
daring leaps, with fledgling flights.

 
I lounge now in the old backyard
like a dried-up husk or hollow pupa,
papery wasp's nest.  The sun still
shines in Mendelssohn – awake, awake...
We were dreaming then.  I’m sleepy
now (my only desire: to dream again).

PENTECOST IN AN INITIAL A

                 
                    Stefano da Verona, ca. 1430-35


 
 
These old piles of leathery parchment
fused all the arts – the odd square notes
in plainsong for the choir, the Latin
poetry, and, crowning everything,
such illustrations!
          
                     – this letter A
formed by a pair of rainbow-colored
dragons, whose entwined tongues
sprout leaves.  In the upper swirl,
God the Father sits aloft on wavy
cloud, from which descends
a blue dove, floating over twelve
disciples curled in a circle (within
the hulking serpent’s tail) around 
a taller Virgin Mary.
              
                      So everything
begins again – this time everyone
pregnant with the dove’s bright
fire.  And now the choir begins
to sing:
   
            antequam Abraham fieret 
            ego sum

[the Latin reads: "Before Abraham was, I am"]

ANNUNCIATION


 
 
The painter, patient, painstaking, slows time:
quick nervous feathered strokes congeal
the gorgeous pageant of the real
to stillness, light (transparent pantomime).

 
The model, posing in a quaint alcove,
waits too (for pregnant image to emerge):
vague drafty sketches, baseless camouflage
become sharp stream of fire from beak of dove.

MADELEINE IN APRIL


 
 
The white-flowering pear tree
against a backdrop of gray
clouds, lead-silver rain:
tiny Milky Way

 
or early Pentecost, turning
slowly in the melancholy
mirror (over the small
seed-spirals, buried

 
in puddles, soil).  Then you
turn toward the water too:
toward the cloudy glass
framing the blossoms;

 
toward your Jerusalem
(model or chamber,
ointment jar:
invisible).

Luke... look... lac.

St. Luke Drawing a Portrait


 
 
It’s a game of perception.  The Virgin, calm,
attentive, aims the nipple of one small breast
toward the lips of the laughing Infant.  St. Luke,
draped in flowing vermilion, pauses, looks up
from his sketchbook, his fine black-golden
stylus held there motionless.  It’s a portrait
of the artist (van der Weyden); in a corner
behind him, an ox curls under a writing stand,
where a draft of the third Gospel lies open.
Between pillars in the center, beyond the
garden, on a bridge, in the middle distance,
a man and a woman (with their backs to us)
gaze at a river that glides to the horizon.
The man aims his index finger toward
a far-off spit of shoreline, where
a tiny church is barely visible.
       
                                 (This work
the mirror-image of an earlier one, by Jan
van Eyck, The Rolin Madonna: the kneeling 
donor, holding his book, looks up (entranced 
by mother and child) from the opposite side 
of the room (and painting); in the center,
in the deep distance, the same river,
almost the same onlookers.)
              
                             It’s a game
of perception, with multiple mirrors:
that onlooker’s index, pointing almost
out of the scene, circles back to this room:
St. Luke, looking on, is van der Weyden,
looking on: as we are looking on, absorbed
(as that infant soon will be) in the milky flow.

A WAITING GAME

 
           Sic tempus, cum sit mensura motus, mensurantis animae est instrumentum. 
           [Thus time, since it is the measure of motion, is an instrument of the
           measuring soul.]  - Nicholas Cusanus
 
 
Each day has its particular gravity
as each time varies with each local place.
Hours gradually slow to an eternity,
sometimes.  Traveling home again, to face
an April rain in Providence, obscurity
of vision seems to gauge a waiting grace.

 
Once Nicholas Cusanus figured grace,
chance and will within the gravity
of a game (De Ludo Globi).  You’d face
a ring of nine concentric spheres: eternity
rolled into an ovoid ball you’d try to place
in the central O.  The game’s obscurity

 
(exactly equal to the general obscurity
of everything) exemplifies the grace
inherent in defeat, since chancy gravity
haywires the ball: no one loses face
who tries their best.  And if eternity
is the reward of a long wait, my place

 
is assured:  master of running-in-place,
rolling these spheres of absolute obscurity
(always slightly imperfect) with the grace
of an also-ran, I know there’s gravity
in the fall of a sparrow. (Look, face
the sky next Monday: almost an eternity

 
of scientific patience may win eternity
of fame (almost), if the rocket can place
those perfect balls of quartz past gravity,
perfectly aligned with IM Pegasi (grace
go with Gravity Probe B!), in the obscurity
of silvery space... where I would hide my face

 
34 years to see the shadow of your face:
veiled double, in the foyer of eternity,
polishing your mirror over a last place
called Providence: circuitous obscurity:
dove-like sister: light, gray-winged grace:
pebble, black hole (waltzing gravity)...

 
and if there’s gravity in the thought of your face,
I’ll find my place on the ninth hole of eternity
nestled in the obscurity of your blind grace.

 
                                  4.13.04 

LETTER TO EMILY D.


 
 
You would have liked it here.  The sun flares colors
clear as the sea-floor.  The Navajo
make tracks circled in clay so sharp, so
clean – bladework of feathers, aloes, arrows...

 
And then, the Grand Canyon resembles you –
the Colorado scribbling a planet down
through dry spectral layers to the wet
blood-red and prehistoric marrow.

 
For Scripture precedes history – your insight
precedes Scripture – April’s alpha and omega
purl playfully from your soul-saga.
Who finds you meets a palm-tree full of light.

      
                                              Phoenix, AZ
                                              4.12.04

Here's an odd little poem for today. I'm heading to the Southwest tomorrow, for a wedding - be back around April 12th. See you then!

LAKE ORPHEUS


 
 
Twinkling stars
echo in the lake;
whiff of shore-slime
mingles with night air;
long ago, another time.
You’re buried there;
I can’t return.

 
Paltry words
yearn to fly home,
fly earthward, back
to the spring-world –
fluttering they rake
the skies, onward
they roam... yet

 
where you are
they cannot see
(through the deep
untroubled mirror
where you keep
almost forever,
wakeful E.).

Watched the happy-go-lucky PBS show on cosmology last night (Elegant Universe). I could identify with the neglected string theorists & their rejection slips from science journals hither & yon.

Over the weekend the true impulse returned & I went back to my template quatrains & I think it will work. Some excerpts below from the new version Dove Street.

  It begins like this, on a dark autumn day.
  The wind is blowing, you don't know
  where it leads.  Pussy-willow, dogwood
  wave their last leaves.   The lead-gray sky

   
                  shrouds the universe in its camouflage
  of sleep and melancholy.  Ravens
  mark your place in the book of dying
  and being born.  Goldfinch paces his cage.

      
                                        * 

   
                  In Bruegel's The Dark Day, the herdsmen
  follow a ridge in the foreground, drawing on
  their oxen, charcoal outlines seemingly stolen
  from the Lascaux caves.  In the distance

   
                  storms lash a somber, mountainous coast
  helmeted with desolate castle;
  shipwrecks ornament the entrance
  to the harbor.  A wintry violence

   
                  looms in murk above muted ruddiness,
  ramshackle roofs of valley and village;
  Bruegel grins in the teeth of all this rage,
  shepherding home his cataclysmic canvas.

      
                                         *

   
                  Every leaf bears an image of the tree
  (as when the underside of an autumn olive
  stands upright, tall - a tiny silver cypress).
  Every book bears an image of the Book To Be

   
                  and every child bears an image of the singer
  (almond-eyed) who left a humming shadow
  in the neighborhood - that summer cicada
  shrunk to autumn cricket (fading, lingering).

      
                                      *

   
                  Cosmologists are gathering in conference rooms
  with maps and diagrams and arguments;
  Anthropic Principle, String Theory, Branes,
  Dark Energy vents, dents - various dawns, dooms.

   
                  I walk down Dove Street almost every day
  to watch the silver-gray autumnal sky
  mirror the shifting moire of the bay
  (soothing my heart this way).

   
                  Orpheus fingered the space between the strings
  of his imaginary lyre (he'd thrown the real one
  in the river, after Eurydice had gone).

   
                  Only a pearl-gray shadow (lightening).

      
                                    *

   
                  What mutters and broods in an undertone,
  the doves and pigeons underfoot, gray
  wing upon gray stone.  What flits off
  at your lumbering step, O ponderous one -

   
                  through a gap in the trees in your heart,
  under your eyelids, beyond memory,
  beneath, behind.  Dazed now, you see
  but can't explain:  home again - Dove Street.

      
                                    *

   
                  As if childhood were Bruegel
  panorama - tiny almond eye
  planted (hidden) at the center. 
  And the passionate quest - trial's

   
                  puzzle of yearning loneliness
  only subplot, type, analogy
  (ink-path echo - shady
  image - singular ingress).

       
                               *