hummingbird hum

RIVER KING

A ruby-throated hummingbird

zips past my hideout

like a Feirefiz out

of Wolfram.  Parzival inquired

at last – What ails thee, unstrung king?

& tears of fellow-feeling

poured from that Grail-thing

wrapt from all eyes.  Dovewing-

featherlight, yet penetrating stone –

translucent as stained glass

above tall quarry-house

of God’s emerald-&-ruby throne;

& waves radiate from your Ocean-

Shadow, like the flowing beard

of an Ancient of Days.  Mild,

domestic weather.  We are all children

of one family, Turtledove coo-coos...

Come into the Riverboat

of Paradise, & float

upon a Fontegaia (green, chartreuse).

Dive into Dream River, Orpheus,

Eurydice... the River King

is on his dais, chanting

the origin of everything (in caritas).

We are all offspring of a Thunderbird

who lights the way with lightning –

guiding tears to clay, shaping

these bones into gemstones (flameward).

6.7.18

Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : HG poems (label : subject/HG poems).

I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)

I've been (ant-like) labeling the 4 years and 2600 posts of HG Poetics; soon, hopefully, there will be an actual Index of HG Obsessions & Hobby-Horses. But now it's time to go back to Fontegaia, chapt. 2...

10

 
Spring wheels around once more.  Air
grows temperate.  Providence in flower
swells and sighs, exhales its myrrh
(lilac, viburnum, mountain laurel).

 
Slow contrail traces a white thread
across evening sky.  Paints one
straight line (evanescent
fresco).  Distant chord

 
of freight-train horn.  Plangent
sundown.  Next door, kids toss
horseshoes (last trace of race-
horse).  Clang (iron fundament).

 
Amazon remains the same (zone
of absent plenitude).  Bugs drone
in unison (to Judgement Day).  Bone
rots (waits); iron = rust; only word

 
is adamant (alpha to omega, end
to end).  And water shapes it
(preternatural stream) like tropic
parakeet - like warbling Reverend

 
in Nev-Neverland (a rainbow
collar over morning gray).
Light filters the prism, day
trembles (hand in sky)... so

 
evening to morning wheels toward
Everytown.  Providence (primordial
prototype) is in the droning bell
now - is everlasting word.

photo by Richard Benjamin

8

 
And every race is a memento of the last
and the race itself is in memoriam
for the republic - its equilibrium
a dream of self-determination (still steadfast).

 
It seems a dream-work of oppressive habit
round and round the celebrated shell.
And the echoing shouts, curses - rivals'
obscene chicanery - twilight orbit

 
of the mob - all mingle there in the valley
of three hills (fuse and fade out into
children's games).  And the chariot
of the elders, clasping their hoary tally-

 
books, stamped with the black-white oval
of Siena... an absent river (Dante's gibe)
streams invisibly beneath it all.  The tribe
of poets crosses there - perpetual

 
hum (mellifluous).  You search for its source
in the double-almond of those eyes beyond
memory - like an icon from Trebizond
or the sound of a nervous horse

 
in love with the whole race (spread
over the sloping breast of earth-
buried bricks).  Woman of the South,
Sheba from Nile head-

 
waters, angel next door.  Evening
monotone (universal groan).  Cosmic
longing springs from the tropic
Amazon - her hair tendrils an unseen

 
planet; there the contemplative
urchin sets his paper vessel free
to echo in the stream of memory.
Horses, muses, stream, give, give.

...meanwhile, the horserace (or turtle race) continues...

7

 
On the prehistoric spine of Providence
spring trees branch white
with tiny flowerets.  Intricate
clouds come down to earth.  Once

 
each April, all the young trees
are almond-shaped.  The almond
blooms in winter snow (the round
year interrupted so) and so precedes

 
the Palio.  And so the Palio proceeds -
one horse (the last) sets a race in motion.
Pegasus, molding the Hippocrene fountain,
is pattern for these hill-town cavalcades.

 
Anxious against the rope the jockeys
plunge their steed-necks; hair's-breadth
will determine (after all the breath-
less muttered dickering) who hoists Mary's

 
flickering image in the Campo once again.
Meanwhile trees whisper a different course
(I remember small purple-white magnolias
in the courtyard beside the Franciscan

 
chapel, at the edge of a cliff-like wall).
They hold their places, swaying in the wind.
Sap rises slowly, tuned to long sorrow, blind
adoration.  Slowly, lowly... (like a turtle's call).

I'm on jury duty this week, so blogging will be minimal. Here's another scribble for Fontegaia chapt. 2 :

6

 
The swelling crowd fills the Campo-conch
like the roar of the sea - contrada banners
swoop and flutter, sailing - glory to Siena!
Horses, horsemen jostle in the cinch

 
of the lead-rope - twilight inches forward
from the bell-tower - the tenth horse
starts his run... the race is on (hoarse
cries of rival jockeys, lashes of calf-pud).

 
Peacock rivalry, testosterone.
O vain people!  Chasing a bloody rag
around the haybales (for a brag).
This is about the poets (non-Verona).

 
You hold the key to the highway, cowboy
(sucking your pacifier).  It's cold
in the mountains (iron manifold) -
where snow locks up the almond eye

 
in a hexagon of exempla - where the race
wheels around a cast-off labyrinth
and the frothing beast (ninth
horse of the Apocalypse) reflects your face.

5

 
Siena-town wheels inward on itself,
inseminate with signs.  Flutter of flag-
sisters in a ring (around the phallic
Mangia, swelling Campo, Fontegaia).

 
What's the source of all this muttering
and thundering?  They hunt the lost Diana
River, rippling somewhere beneath the brouhaha.
They reach for the silk concealing her tippling

 
utterance.  The Virgin saved them, once
(at Montaperti, in 1260).  Now (nine times
90 years after) they burble the same
nursery rhymes - the world a microcosmos

 
in a horserace, history a folksong
of parochial abuse (carols and catcalls,
bridle deals).  There are many protocols
flickering under Fortune's ping-pong

 
table (prong, sarong) - you'll learn them all
in order to become a man.  Only that dusty
widow-nun, shuffling so pigeon-footed (steely-
rimmed) mimes awkward exception to the rule.

 
Or the half-wit in the corner, self-conscious
beneath his crumpled horn - he'll take the fall
gently, for everyone, for a laugh (perpetual
motion winding down).  All part of the sensuous

 
wave goodby, children.  Sweet nothings
we've forgotten, baubles and toy
soldiers, the vagrant sweep and sway
of oak tree limbs.  The sigh in the grass.    

3

 
Siena's perennial quarrel with itself -
who can plumb this curious errancy?
Before the tumultuous horseplay
in the Campo, bells of Sunto, Martinella

 
(foghorn, swallow).  A solemn parade
of captains, guilds, contrade, humbler
towns, ecstatic kids, to the Spedale -
where they mime a Palio-masquerade

 
for those too old or ill to see the race.
The little carroccio (triumphal car)
bears the four elders of the Biccherna,
the trumpets, and the object of the chase -

 
the palio.  A silken banner, painted 
with a figure of the Virgin.  The drone
of the Sunto echoes her Ascension to
the Throne of Heaven, beside her anointed

 
Son; the iron in the Mangia tower reaches
through city walls, through thunderclouds
of August overhead.  To whistling crowds
of contemptuous kinfolk she beseeches,

 
Peace.  A whole more that its fractious
parts.  Hobo Francesco hears it rustle
in frittering almond leaves, the tussle
of gutter sparrows.  A racehorse

 
dumps in the cathedral; the Sienese
take it for good luck.  Poets bicker
over the body of the Word (a wicker
basket in the Amazon - a breeze).

Last night I was reminded that Eugenio Montale has a poem titled "Palio" in his 2nd book, Le Occasioni.

There's a translation of a much later poem ("After Palio") here.

"Palio" shows faint parallel to previous effort posted here (the contrast between "Bernardino" & Siena racing enthusiasm resembles the substance of the speaker's address to "you" - the spiritual "Clizia" - in Montale's poem). (see translation by William Arrowsmith in his great English edition of Le Occasioni.)

2

 
The high-strung Tuscans with their mimic battles...
elmora, battaglia di sassi, fist fights.
They make a game of it - Mary, local saints
watch from the bleachers.  The contest settles

 
everything.  600 years of symbolic
clan warfare - ghost dance, sacred epilepsy,
scandal summoned to the pitch of travesty.
O these infinite recurrent mirror-wars

 
of rival caballeros!  They make a pageant play
feud pay to winnow dry resentment and contempt
blooded with animal names.  Trumpets,
drums, neighborhood flags!  Oh say

 
can you see - the heart writhes
with parochial devotions - paces
its cage.  An eagle plummets - laces
the sky with lilies, oak-leaves - scythes

 
earth from heaven.  At that borderline
a frozen San Francesco stands in the sun
(collateral for all the vanity of Mammon).
He sheds his clothes... a simple sign.

                            
                 *

 
The star of poetry rides with the bedouins
out of somewhere east of Somalia, near
Sheba's Eden - pursues the chanticleer
Etruscans (smiling from sand dunes

 
of Rome, from their tombs in the hills)
to vortex of contrada-nonsense -
meticulous hubbub of impious Sienese.
A candle burns the purple from their quills.

... and so another round begins in Henry's (con geetar) famous horserace with himself (and all the other poets).

1
                     Mandarla al palio

 
Only God created the horse.
Among totemic animals of
(dragon, turtle, leopard, eagle...)
proud Siena neighborhoods

 
there is no horse.  Only the race itself
belongs to the horse.  Nowhere else
is a racehorse led to be blessed
inside the basilica-barn itself.

 
Virile, snorting, arrogant stallion.
Beast, clomping his iron hoof
beneath the cathedral's holy roof.
Bravo's elemental advent (of the Virgin).

 
Ninety seconds in the Campo ring.
A year drawn tight into a knot.
Banners, shuddering.  Local Camelot
rages for Arthur's fabled coming

 
back... Guidoriccio - nobleman
in yellow-black, atop thundering steed
above Mappamondo (absent, indeed).
Crown of nobile contrade; king of kin.

 
Meanwhile wily Bernardino grins from his curving
alcove.  The one who loses the race - the one
who surrenders (hobo, loser, slave... no one).
The shadow of a stolen colt flits (furtive,

 
cornered) - a shrouded patch of brown
or coroner's cigar thrown down (Corona).
Who will wear the crown?  The arena
overflows - a boasting hubbub-hippodrome.

This concludes what seems to be the 1st chapter of ongoing poem (Fontegaia).

28

 
A fine spring rain.  Settles like silver
mist upon the street-lit pavement.
Your native town, beyond argument -
actual as the gravestones by the river.

 
But you're not here.  And it was you
(like Ariadne, like a brown recluse)
played out the luminous painter-clue
that riddled me into this trobar clus.

 
Which one of us is missing, then?
Where mast meets shallop
at the center of cerebral hilltop
lamps of the frescos shine, shine -

 
the way your lashes flicker (here
and gone) across my absent-minded
minaret-dome.  So branches bend
inward... homely signs cohere

 
only for the vagabond.  Scripture
tags like a faithful Fido after vision
and the dogma of the politician
barks at its own reflection (pure

 
and blind) as hobo-capitan sets off again
toward the burgeoning rose in his sea-
chest (buried somewhere in deserted
San Francisco).  Toward your return.

27

 
I play the same chords over and over,
a trio of suspended 7th (A - infinity).
A simple bridge by Bernardino - he
of catenary smile (in arch-alcove) :

 
the one who battles, overcomes himself
makes peace, becomes a fruitful vine.
For the ben comun, for the Florentine
florescence, for the Sienese seraph

 
hovering above her vernal vineyard-hill.
Yon hobo Mexican in mental ward
sketched an analogy for every word.
His caballero tombed in prison-cell,

 
embalmed in crayon-honey, pistol
high - his freight-train ouroboros
(endless, serpentine, circuitous
regression - repetitive ur-tunnel) - and

 
an open-handed, blooming Guadalupe.
This Mary (of Coatlicue-echoes
and eyes of Constantinople) billows
up toward pencil-heaven, smiling, loopy...

 
I play the same chords, over and over.
Lodes of a mosaic Justinian
forever offering his mini-dominion
(pink-walled Providence) to Jaybird-lover.

Fontegaia keeps spouting off...

26

 
Every poem is a small apocalypse.
Justly the great ponderous world
turns lightly on the nonchalance
of Pax - twirling an upright slip

 
of green, where she lolls at ease
(in comfortable slip) across the corner
of the couch, in Lorenzetti's fresco
of Good Government.  Just so a breeze

 
of evanescence bears elusive scent
of something inexplicable - world, life
set right - 7th (sustained) after grief
and toil - a restoration (plangent... 

 
prescient).  Over Palazzo Pubblico
the spry agave-spine (Torre del Mangia)
leaps into space; time pauses where
your singing icons drone (calm echo).

 
Insignia of Sabaoth, harmonious iron
of time fulfilled.  Every person is an end
in Pax's slow-revolving laurel crown (when
she comes into her own, the labyrinthine one).

(I like the way she looks like she's listening...)

25

 
Quiet agave in the desert lifts
a solitary mast (for listening).  Rush
of wind, ache of rue.  Sift of ash
from old volcano.  Local glyphs

 
of weather and millennia - cuneiform
sparrow-tracks, flute-prints... you
dear dry green spine, curlicue
clay (my snail-scale home).

                     
             *

 
Tiny town of Massa Maritima
(Siena's miniature hill-neighbor)
houses festal phantasmagoria
(Lorenzetti, Maesta) -

 
rapt saints, apostles zone that gloze
('mid gilded violas, crowns, bouquets,
rhapsodic Faith-Hope-Charity displays)
on one small kiss (melodic honey-maze).

23

 
Sweet Bea hit me with a sidewinder
in the sand, sent me hopping sideways
too.  Estrangement is the maze -
serpentine scratch, remainder

 
from nothing.  Ramirez
applies graphite across tile
floor, straight-edged until
heart-cauterized.

 
Leaves, pesos, paper.
Spring equinox.  Hums
etched fuse.  Magnesium
splinters winter's keepsake

 
sky (plumbs Venetian
blind).  Little myrrh-
box memento-murmur
lifts now toward perihelion.

22

 
A ballerina pirhouetting weightlessly
spiraling inward on a shrinking radius
or pine tree vertical in somber forest
lifting its green lance (relentlessly)

 
- such are the spin-offs of my mappamundo.
The wayward pilgrim seasoned in chianti
limps and stumbles (April mummery)
and sniffs a myrrh-box (cryptic, chiuso)

 
somewhere in sub-basement of museum.
Light shines in the darkness of the tempera.
An emerald Magdalen looks back at me
from casket sealed by Lippo Memmi. (Womb.)

                            
                 *

 
The mirror in the murmur of the myrrh
is your desire (fletched, arrowed, framed).
And your desire (targeted, tamed)
surges toward sunlight like a conifer...

 
Siena's embassy to Providence
is miniature, mercurial (an emblem
of the light of day).  Semblance
of a pantomime - Sabbath-dance

 
of slaves set free.

Had to subtract a section of this poem (the old #20 - hopeless). So am shifting them around. Here's the new #21.

21

 
Providence rooftops and walls
from the library window (reddish
pink, red-russet, rust-red).  Flush
with autumn, always (old colonial

 
brick-pile).  Not much different
from the brown Siena cityscape
of the fresco (mappamundo,
mappamundo).  Lorenzetti bent

 
his figures around corners - loved
overlaps - the hide-and-seek
(parenthetical hypotheticals peek
like Francisco round his mule's beloved

 
ass).  Like the ambiguous griffin
Dante saw buttressed in Nina's eyes
(humandivine) Providence shies
between your dream and mine -

 
how to explain?  It's not on television.
The box within a box, the wave
beneath the wave, the grave
Agave (brave three-master).

(Agave and Agave, courtesy of Wikipedia)

20

 
The quiet moss-green image of Sassetta.
Aquinas (black hole) kneels before the altar.
Background of cloister-garden, library...
forsaken stage-set now (only a metaphor).

 
Aquinas tempered Aristotle, Augustine.
Sassetta memorized antique (pre-plague)
Siena.  Emblem of a dream, vague
microcosm (innocent, pristine).

 
A tiny dove aligned with Jesus-crucified
transfixes him (his body like a train
or veil of thought, beneath brain
impaled by hummingbird).

                           
                *

 
Hobo rambles through America, surrenders
passport, loses wallet, sheds identity.
Ends up in hospital in San José,
mopping with crayon.  Sees

 
vision of Madonna (open-handed,
mesmerized).  Nature is feminine
and Wisdom in the streets, O Solomon;
the dove (ungraspable) is Understanding.

19

 
Siena - Wolf-Town - threefold knot
in the twisted thread of Tuscan roads!
Above ambivalent pools of frescoes
your campanile vaults skyward - shot

 
from earth, a mason's amaryllis;
image of aspiring civitas (exponential
offshoot of such covenants of mutual
encouragement as We the People is).

 
A tiny peasant-pilgrim in the painted hills
clambers up through ninefold rings of
steppe, vineyard, wall, alcove... dove-
sprinkled street... piazza-shell,

 
city hall... radiant mirror-
wall... and there takes a final step 
into vertiginous icon-gyroscope -
a spiralling, unfathomable sphere

 
(an airy labyrinth, a darkling glass, 
a dream).  Tuscany's free-standing
city-state, ripening so, unknowing
what catastrophe was come to pass :

 
what reaper traveled up the pilgrim path
to meet them at the apex of their glory.
Black Death, Black Death, memento mori.
All roads lead through Rome (to Golgotha).