after Bruegel

BRUNE STEEPLE

Horsehair flickering a panorama

of rustic proverbs.  Bruegel

as the crow flies... oil

congeals a plangent winter summa.

Infant beginnings at the end.

Light-hearted kids under

a hulking storm.  Her

hunchback flimsy beggar-friend.

A village in the blank weather,

the dread season.  Human

high fellowship.  The reign

of love rings in the killing air.

Absolute zero.  Vanishing point.

& will the center hold

within this trench of cold?

The Flemish realm is out of joint.

Remember when the honcho came?

The strong man, offering

rewards or suffering,

no quibbling.  The gilded frame

worm-riddled.  & where ravens gather,

there your servant lies –

his casque of Paradise

just one hard crust, one leather

jug milked round a cackling blaze.

Dark curls of brune steeple

remind knife-shadowed people

how a dove broods in a thorny maze.

1.9.17

of the clay peoples

PEACOCK’S EYE

Path P stretch in six directions

out of Cairo, Huck,

sez Jim – any way you look.

One of them north-south junctions,

I reckon.  There was a labyrinth

of red clay trenches –

dead men in its clenches

like flies hung in a spider’s tent

– heavy that clay, so heavy!

Like the bottom of the sea.

How could a little child be

dancing in such dismal gravy?

She’s Pueblo, of the clay peoples;

they put away wrath before

the sun go down, f’sure.

Lookee there.  & through the peephole

of his fingertips I saw (obscurely

as that garden of Sheba)

a lightning pathway – Sun-Ra

threshing floor – arisen merrily

from ripened Flanders wheat (so

melancholy).  Like Van Gogh

seized with a fury-glow

of happiness... Persephone?  O

yes!  Threading her crane-dance

through a peacock’s eye –

purple Hagia Sophia’s

woolly poncho-swirl (at cave-entrance).

5.24.16