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
