Here's the new pocket-size, illustrated, & less expensive Dove Street.

Simon DeDeo reviews Dove Street. & this is the first review I've gotten in 30 years. I'm glad it's not an excerpt from a blurb.

His take on it seems to quote (without attribution) from this stanza:

  Under the Bruegel-skies of late November
  a hobo stumbles on, hunched-over, broken-
  down, his fortunate misfortune taking on
  a common nature – weathered, as it were.

My mother's drawing (cartoon?) featured in HAT 6 poem. 

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).

AN UNFINISHED TALE BY BORGES*

 
     
                             O Domine, suavitas omnis dulcedinis
                             posuisti in libertate mea, ut sim, si
                             voluero mei ipsius.**   – Nicolaus Cusanus

 
This tale depicts a young man named Borges,
terminally ill, slowly going blind, unable to
decide how to spend his last day.  Should
he go outside before the sun goes down,
and lie in the sweet grass one more time,
and gaze up at clouds, passing slowly
across the face of the sky?  Or should he
open the book he’s been meaning to read
(the green volume, waiting so patiently
there by his bed)?  He begins to read.
The tale depicts a young man named
Borges, lying on his deathbed, unable to
decide whether to go outside, or continue
reading.  Finally, the young man sets
aside his book, unfinished.  The light is
going dim, golden.  Trees are murmuring.
Soft air moves the curtains by the open
hospital window, next to his bed.  Borges’
eyes are tired; he can no longer see... so
he shifts himself, slowly, aching, from bed
to wheelchair, forces the wheels to turn,
and rolls (wobbling, slowly) toward the door


 
 
 
* In the Spring 1943 issue of the Buenos Aires literary quarterly Jovanista,
a letter, purportedly written by J.L. Borges, signed “Julio Ciego”, referred
sarcastically to an unwritten (oral?) Borges parody, titled “An Unfinished
Tale by Borges,” performed one evening at the popular Café Manana by 
the poet Ricardo Cesped. 

 
** O Lord, the sweetness of all sweetness, you have given me freedom
to belong to myself, if I will. 

CROCUS TIME
 
 
The purple crocus with the golden cross
my wife uncovered on a cloudy Sunday
raking off the winter leaves, is tiny:
its petals are translucent baby-flesh,
the infant of the season.  As the clouds
roll on, uneasy, overhead, as chilly
air shuffles off dried-up debris,
this little fellow, like a piping clover
(bird, song, flower) feeds on sunlight.

 
A trunk line rumbles just around the corner.
You hear the thunder herd of SUVs,
truck honks, the slow-but-steady roar
of fossil fuels (piped from Saudi sands)
closeting the planet in an overheated,
stuffy greenhouse.  And it seems to me
Detroit and Riyadh aren’t so far apart:
one full of young men burning up the earth,
the other, with the same, burning for heaven.

 
Oases' rich mirages lure you, prince:
whether you’re the bad son of the West
or Sinbad of the East, the same vague form
(reclining figure, in a flying cave –
pure lustrous Paradise, or golden car)
embodies your untouchable desire,
unlimited, immaculate... and guides
you down the subtle, crooked corridors
where guns and butter (slippery) coincide.

 
Daydreams of the desert, smoking wheels
of would-be cowboys, fantasizing sheiks,
complacencies of conquest, opulence...
strangely, I sense the weather changing
at the pivot of the earth (cold passing).
Sad that so much innocence must die
before all crocuses and careful gardeners
(meek tenders at the mortal junction –
earth and heaven) come into their own.

AT CARATUNK


 
 
Beside a spring pond
limpid as Corot
waiting, I found
oak, birch, willow
fed heart grown fond.

 
Some blind bond
drowned long ago;
some old wound
whispering low
in branches, wind.

 
(Signals they send
we don't understand.
Seedlings, sounding
every season's end.)

 
Over flat land
spry flocks row;
under hard ground
small seeds pry
off stiff shells, rend

 
frozen sedge, wend
green stems through.
In an endless round
I'd lose myself (so
into a circle bend).

This one's a little better, maybe. [To illustrate earlier comments today: note how (not really so) archaic setting plays into archaizing style.]

THE CRUSADER'S LAMENT


 
 
Dispatched to save a fruitful farming town
resembling those of our own lovely shires
assaulted by fierce nomads, like to drown
their dry-baked jealousies in others' tears
I sent for reinforcements to its chief
who answered me, “Thy master is delayed
(by falconry) from bringing swift relief:
I can do nought: may God come to thine aid!”

 
Now raging shadows all around my tent
merge with my shadow and the nightly dark
and terror and indifference are blent
in my own blood.  Lordly denials dent
my helmet, and the skull beneath... O mark
thee, saint and infidel – here’s devil’s work!

ST. GUILLEM AND THE SUNDIAL


 
 
The snow melts,
the weather clears,
fresh winds blow;
spring draws nigh.

 
The shadow of
this broken blade
(from my old sword)
melts too, each day.

 
Afternoon
unsheathing it,
in far-off woods
it melds with night.

  
         *

 
By stony hills
I battled, once,
the bitter storms
of infidels.

 
But enmity,
venal delay
here tether me
against my will:

 
Jerusalem
remains afar,
captive yet
to useless war.

  
         *

 
I am stilled
as this sundial.
As rusty swords
pursue my shade

 
into dark woods,
I’ll follow them      
(blind pilgrim, so)
to vernal tomb.

textual note on poem posted yesterday : a "hermaphrodite" is a type of brig (which is a type of 2-masted sailing ship).

A FRAGMENT FROM PURGATORY


 
 
– so we moved along the bank upstream,
   and where the river bent in a broken circle
to the left, beheld a busy municipium:
welter of gleaming glass and flickering steel
   resembling vast shuttlings of water bugs
(chaotic, breaking apart the smooth still
surface into myriad coarse shags
   of garish noise).  Then my eyes shifted
to the river itself, and picked out a brig
there – hermaphrodite, trim, she drifted
   with peculiar motion, perpendicular
to the flow.  At prow and stern were lofted
pennants (princely St. George at the fore,
   and aft, a black-green, jumbled image
fusing, it seemed, some fasces with a star).
Upon the poop, a gaunt man in a rage
   stood, yapping imprecations toward the bow,
whereat a lank chap, dignified with age,
responded languidly (voice diffident and low).
   Apparently, they each commanded wheels,
and piloted the ship as if to go
both ways at once – causing the luckless keels’
   erratic laterality (crosscurrent,
at cross purposes).  I turned to him, whom eagle’s
perspicacity once lifted to the firmament
   on high.  Stern and melancholy then
he gazing, spoke.  “Throughout the Occident
once reigned supreme in poetry, these men –
   their tandem sway the ultimate authority.
In talent matchless, their forceful mien
bore down all before them.  Yet, perdie,
   an overweening awe for ordered rule
(drawn, I blush to say, from De Monarchia!)
caused them to miss that inlet whence the whole
   sweet cataract of liberty descends;
and so you see them, netted in such moil
of turbid aimlessness.”  “And yet,” contends
   me – “if there be contempt for duty,
honor, justice, loyalty –  neither high lands
nor low – no fear of that sublimity
   called holy – what remains, but feud and die?
What path leads out of universal enmity –
that peevish self-engorged impiety
   which desolates the vernal countryside
with fattened castles – that blighted antipathy
to common good, which makes the cities bleed?”
   My dear guide, pensive, murmured then:
“Remember this (your elder teacher’s screed
of long ago):  Freedom builds within,
   or breaks your bones.”  And on that note
I glanced upriver – glimpsed the leonine
white crown, the heavy shoulders, the stout
   birch staff, the hiking boots – the veteran’s
cap, askew – the slouching, musing gait –
pioneering through cane reeds, alone –

* ["Freedom builds within,", etc. : from a poem by Edwin Honig titled "Cuba in Mind"]

“Pollock”


 
In the melancholy film,
a gawky cowboy, collop
of clodhopper, awkward,
wants to be Art Star, but
unsure where to start.

 
In the ineluctable film,
the son of some Jack or
Jock drips a drop or
accidentally drops drips
off the edge of abstraction

 
into documentation.  A
relentless film crowns
him painted into a corner
of his myth, his theme
dribbled out on a limb

 
on film – an endless
film – him flinging
himself down and
away (careering
hubbub of fiery

 
fame).  In the sad film,
after too many beers
and ribs (a scared
Icarus now) his
fearsome car flies...

 
flips out of the picture
(melancholy frame-
up – the film of him,
the art star – startling,
starting over somewhere).

This building is up the street (Morris Ave.) from the site of the poem posted yesterday.

TEMPLE EMANU-EL


 
Unlike the capitol’s bold marble, rivaling Rome,
your simple curve (amid rooftop vernacular)
peeks from the hillside; through tender air
morning sunlight sketches in your dome.

 
A line is only a figure for perfection;
Immeasurability need call nowhere home;
yet light crowns your six-sided honeycomb
as if to meld the bleakest contradiction.

 
Labor dresses, lightly, weighty stone.
Liberty’s the child of constant care.
This gold almond (hovering hive-sphere,
so modest) evens odds to unison.

 
The burden of the Law goes singing, here;
mankind, infinitude, through droning time
fused in heart’s foundation, frame a rhyme:
scenting ascents (attunement) everywhere.

Sweetly Now


 
Walking home,
head full of gloom
(my own woes muddled
with those of the world) –

 
noticed (on the sidewalk)
cheerful letters in pink chalk
(rounded, girlish – cursive script,
broken off – author skipped?) –

 
PEACE
               LOVE
(signed, in a heart-shape) CLIO

 
the Muse of History : as if to say
I’m starting over – here, today.

not really a poem, just a quick sketch today, from Dove Street. Do you have people like this, where you live?

5
      
                                 i.m. Richard L. Champlin

 
He came to rest   (meek one)   in an abandoned orchard
alongside a stone wall   in Foster   in the dog-days
of August   his hand atop a sapling   a full box
of peaches at his side   the perfected naturalist

 
come (ripened) to his hour   out-of-doors
and maybe the orchard   harbored apple trees
like Blackstone’s Yellow Sweeting:  he would know
having discovered a red-flowered Spicebush

 
(Lindera benzoin forma rubra R.L. Champlin)
and the national champion Pussy Willow
maintained records of notable trees
exceptionally astute and persistent observer

 
birds, turtles, and butterflies   very good storyteller
diligent keeper of written records (daily journals 
amounted to 35 vols.)   companion to most
of the old Yankees from northwestern Rhode Island

 
local lore and cultural history   locations of springs,
Native American mortar stones, threshing rocks,
charcoal mounds   reverent, modest, and private man
Redwood Library director   botany, ornithology,

 
mycology, entomology, malacology, ecology
so you might sketch a quick landscape
beneath Yellow Mountain    with the tiny figure
of the scholar   hidden there   contemplative

 
eye   beholding   mirrored   beheld now   in your eye
the absent shadow of your twin    your spouse
(Blackstone for Guillem   Eurydice for Orpheus)
(apples in a cloistered garden   sister-dove)

       
                                           2.27.04

 
*Note:  lines in italics from obituary by Peter Lockwood, published in Rhode Island Naturalist,  
v. 10 n. 2 (Nov. 2003).

& so today's illustration (Dove Street):

4

 
A washed-out February light   winter floating away slowly
and the sound of a mourning dove   one   one-one
mingled with elisions of an iron brake   life’s nonsense
and my notes   cars on the road

 
a world gone quiet   in my mind   (preparation
for annunciation)   spring’s in the womb
of sister-dove:  limping slowly on the barren earth
she goes   as if she had a stone in her shoe

 
maybe   a stone fallen from heaven
landed in a camel-canopy   Abram’s otfe
out of Ur for good   across the sandy waste
under the fringed silk   she sits in shadow

 
cooing to the warriors   urging them on   to the end
of their beginnings   all the way to Jordan
or Jerusalem   where they guard the black stone
of the scapegoat   (father, son and   intervening angel)

 
another stone   too heavy for heaven   and buried deep
in your corrupted heart, O   horseman, knight:
love is reason   and reason is love,   she coos
and this equality   brings Jubilee,   she whispers

 
where seven iron rings   circle the sacred city
each ring manacled to its own   unbreakability
(like weapons of mass destruction   guarding
weapons of mass destruction)   from the days of John

 
until now    the Kingdom has come with violence
violent men    take it by force   but it shall not be so
with you   murmurs the fragile   enshrouded bird
(grey wing   buried in grey stone   furled   in black)


         
                                       2.26.04

more Dove Street:

3     
                     Omnia enim universalia, generalia atque specialia in  
                     te Iuliano iulianizant  [All universals, generalities, and 
                     specifics julianize in you, Giuliano]      
                                              – Nicolaus Cusanus


 
A faint gray pencil-sketch   my mother made   decades ago
floats in a blue corner:  two redhead brothers   like twins
almost an octave   Guillem & Giacomo   sit   parallel
each sketching (right-handed)   intent   upon   blank white

 
& Gong Xian   abandoned the field   and the fugue of war
(a change of ancient dynasties   Ming for Shang)
trailing retreat   transmuting each desire
(only flickers   of black horsehair)

 
the Yellow Mountain was   left to your imagination
in grey-black flecks   and war and peace   the blank
spaces   the crooked lightning paths   left up to you
(your willing hand   your loving heart   your sight)

 
Leonardo drew (lefty, mancino) the faintest of red lines
beneath the leaning eyes of Mary   bending down
(seraphic)   toward the babe:   his notes
a kind of mirror-writing (all’ebraico)   with “tired hand”

 
And in the wintry womb   the gray-black limbs
iterate (tired, crooked) against the snow   a backward trail
or trial   a coiled, cold metal spring or   trapper’s guile
(elusive prey   grey shadow   fleeting   glimmering)

 
low cooing   from a frozen eave or   looking-glass
intones an octave   twinned in unison   (some mournful-
silver marriage rite):  a thread of golden lightning
through an ocarina   to a painted ear (and scandalized)

 
announces stormy weather   thunderstorms and   thaw
across the mountains   where waterfalls   rush
past banks of cedars, reeds   (your brush with
fate   by horsehair   led you   here)

       
                                   2.20.04

Dove Street, cont.:

From your node of dove-grey granite   nestled in the Hudson bluffs
above the hustling metropolis   my saint Guillem
where the convalescent painter   painting so patiently
slows time to sweetness   and lights into the depths   I thought

 
I saw   it might be   something like this:
three young ballerinas   in feathery pink and gold   peering
curious and tremulous   around the curtain   on tiptoe
with unconscious grace  (Degas, the Guggenheim)

 
and the young crowd’s eager faces    peering   curious
and tremulous   on tiptoe   with unconscious grace
into the frame:  there   in the feminine mirror   an iteration
of a golden measure   or   benevolent universe

 
the play’s the thing   for melancholy Dane or Orpheus
hooked by the furrowed shadow   of an empty heart;
time slows   and lost is action   to the name, unspeakable
and grey  (like the shimmer of Law   in the dolphin-depths)

 
all’s figures   cries the street-wise idiot
when the heartbroken hero   descends into the grave:
for the one who went before   already lifts him free
in the slivered glint   of every new year’s day

 
and O what mighty wooden O is this   resting on a Sabbath-ship
a ring-dance   ringed around a painted pose   a pause
or cloistered clustering   around a single coiled spring
a noon   where an ink-brush runs   a stream   upstream

 
to a sunny mountain:  what gives   which gives   who gives
and gives   and flows   perpetuum mobile   continuum’s
heart’s blood O   hearty sacrificium   full, complete and
with unconscious grace   (inflected law   of every lovely feat)


       
                                        2.19.04

this is how new things start, possibly (always a maybe). from Dove Street draft:

Close your eyes   and step into my summer garden
(empty, small, forlorn)   come into my cloister
built of whispers   among chunks of dove-grey stone
from Guillem-le-Desert   and listen, now

 
to the cicada-continuum   hidden in leafy shade   overhead
a droning one-one-one   of winged heartbeats   eyes
closed   the threads of sound proliferate and
lose themselves   and then   (returning)   come around again

 
and where the small courtyard   (behind your eyelids)
contains the world   a heavy heart spreads canvas sails,
takes flight   like a gray brush-stroke   toward Yellow Mountain
or   as a fiddlehead uncurls   in chilly mud   toward the sun

 
In the abandoned cloister   your gnomon leads the way
toward noon   thus   at the vanishing point of appearances
a warmth exudes   light flashes in a spring   wounded, unwound
there   and gathering the earth   and all its dusty paths

 
into a balance   graceful, just   barely   there
afloat   like gnats in the evening   over a wide river
the particulars of every dream   that ever was
were there   with you   empty-hearted Orpheus

 
waiting   for the light-fall   the wing-beat
bringing word   of your beloved
from the grave of winter   embedded
in the purling spring   a sign   (J-fragment

 
from a fiddlehead)   the only sign
shrouded in murmurs   of mourning dove
or some Shoshone June   ghost-dance
here   in the empty garden   (at the entrance)

        
                            2.18.04

from Dove Street:

Now the snow (pure, blinding).
Water slown down, retarded to
star.  Yet I know you're there,
under the gleaming ring,

 
unseen.  Where images fade out.
Puffy doves purr, tut-tut, bunched
on the ridge of a tree-branch.
Having you left... you're all I've got.

                          
                *

 
The war goes on, outside the brain.
Where the grey dove of Bran or 
Bretagne once dove in.
The mirror's extra dungeon

 
for X, of X, in X:
stage envies, accomplices,
maybe lateral damages.
Machine read-out: You're next.

                          
                *

 
As if you were there with me on the branch
I'll mumble and purr, puffed-up in the cold.
Because you're not here doesn't mean
you're not there.  Unfold, again.  Branch,

 
little tree.  Tomorrow's always,
and always is your birthday
and this is all I have to say -
your birthday, always (little tree).

 
                                     1.29.04