Last puzzle-piece for Fontegaia, chapt. 2 :

28 (coda)

 
So the Tuscan tinkers' toy Troy-town
on the hilltop (miniature Hippo
in the August sun) is ensign now
of end-signs (Jonah diving underground).

 
As eighteen tender feet translate to nine
spheres circling the sunlight glimmering
in streambeds brimful from the swelling
horse's hoof (gold-beaten shoe-iron)

 
one distempered Hobo (smoking pot
on mossy bank) dips his toes
in winking night, 'mid rows
of rock-doves in a railroad lot.

               
              *

 
They raced beneath the tower there
for the joy of racing, just as
a pride of lions circles a carcass.
Fabulous exfoliation, flair

 
of summer flares, embodiment
of equilibrium of men and horses,
laughter and money, knives,
smiles... the ancient, famous

 
tournament.  Stiff-neck mastery
of recreation.  A gimp-legged
padre (or his younger brother)
pegs last place (stigmata-victory).

               
              * 

 
Early in the morning, only a trickle
in the fountain.  For the boy's
best friend (a brittle wooden horse)
it is sufficient unto the day.  O fickle

 
people! - a child shall lead you then.
Alongside the last-place colt
of goofy Bernardino (grinning dolt
of God) a merry band or procession

 
of beggar-lads... the fool's parade
circles the Campo, heads to Cathedral
where they'll toast the empty saddle
once again - O dim charade, slow oracle!

          
                          11.27.07

Winding down 2nd chapter of Fontegaia poem. Finally found some time to work on it.

27

 
Herds of autumn leaves like red-
gold seahorse-centaurs race now
(ceremonially) toward the ground.
The pennants of each neighborhood

 
of every hilltop Tuscan town strive
to outdo themselves.  Cocky rivalry
of pennate foliage - circadian chivalry
of bagpipes, droning in a restive hive.

 
Numb roots of the trees still thirst
toward snow.  In the centaur's heart
(a horse chestnut at the center
of the swirling hubbub's hum) a wasted

 
wasp, forsaken, crawls toward the border
of bridled boudoir, fainting, slow...
Ajax burdened with an axle-wheel,
a naked mule dragging a suitor's quarrel.

 
Omphalos moat, dawn water
for the dying.  The river's fluting
now.  Last leg of labyrinthine fling.
A drone flotilla (shrivelled to mutter)

 
accompanies her fluent aria
with muted paddling of tender feet
round aureole-knoll called Complete
(knot drawn tight; flight's last cry).

 
The mingled alloys of the leaves say
near, near.  Profile of a referee
at apex of the cobweb-tracery
of Palio and round-dance (planetary) -

 
sliver-shadow of the solar One,
lanternglow of pulsing jockey-Jacques;
a morsel of the moon in parallax,
a ripple in the stream (yon Hobo's hon).

The number of known works by artist Martin Ramirez has just expanded by about a third (over 140 new drawings).

There's a funny article about how they were preserved and discovered, in Tuesday's NY Times (read it here if you're signed up).

(cf. also various sections of Fontegaia...)

Hurtling along goes Fontegaia-sled.

26  (A Fable)

 
Roughly 4000 horsepower-years ago
Abraham fashioned a delicate sled (more
delicate than words) for his dear young
Czar.  As the Lord commanded, thus

 
he performed.  They slipped through snow
so smooth and slow - past Isaac's
Cathedral, the Bronze Horseman (relax,
son!)... the little fellow knew, and didn't know.

 
It was like those games of knucklebones
the orphans play along the riverbank -
suspense lay in the suspended shank,
the spot of blood (the day's cartoons)...

 
Or like a dozing nation in a car
on the long ride home, bored
with the billboards' borrowed
flowers.  Floored it (too far).

 
Far, far into the prodigal forest
fled the knife-like stream of silver
nail-filings.  The cleft delver,
the Gold Glider, the last

 
train to St. Paul (1935 or so) -
fanned out across the iron prairie
where you lost yourself, Hobo - we
lost you.  Now, time flowers (slow,

 
slow).  And we'll go with you, Little King;
your anonymous loneliness, your meadow's
remorsefulness, your sorrowful shadow,
your lowness, Highness.  You times everything.

Roll on, Columbia.

25

 
Thirsty numbers square with a dreamy
stream beneath the earth : sanguine
Siena's Diana, Hobo's Big Rock Brandy-
wine - Sinai-ycleft and cliffed Jerusalem.

 
Remote sky-colored source (Itasca, Tuscany?)
whence horses, chariots, amassed, proceed.
Hippocrene ripple in a clouded pool (mead-
fed) of soil : iambic caesura of golden honey...

                               
                    *

 
And to fold a mirror into the heart of reality
is not the least Platonic or Plutonic rage.
Orbit of comet or black comedy - strange
will to laughter in (extreme) obscurity -

 
likened to parable, parabola, fitful absurdity -
The Unknown Soldier on an Horse (dragged
from his funeral to the heroine).  Fagged
Fall Guy; autumn's Pumpkin King.  A Mystery.

                                
                    *

 
A one-ring circus shimmers at the edge of town.
Not far from the ferris wheel, among crickets,
in the meadow, among fireflies.  No one forgets
your music, mock-orange (riverside, wind-blown).

 
Your heart a wine-fed river too, Hobo.
Lonesome, lengthened by rainbow stream
(slow Milky Way).  Sown with a flighty flaw;
raised in a figurehead (her thunder-bough).

Fontegaia chapt. 2 is dawdling toward a close...

24

 
Hobo swings home, after senseless miles
drawn by the umbel of a Queen Anne's lace.
My weedy galaxy... your lonesome grace
rises from umbered earth to meet his smile.

Fontegaia... today's draught.

23  (a Masque)

 
The dogwood colors gradually, blushing
plum and russet, slowly reddening
to holly scarlet, then fading... til
each leaf, like kiln-fired clay, goes drifting

 
along the ground.  So many stray horses,
lost in an autumn wood, all flames!
And the chill in the air - the seraphim!
Terrific echoes from the future race

 
- boomerang into the past - the chariots
of Israel and her horsemen!  Elijah
leans near the gleaming throne, a grail-
ship in his hand - Lord, suspended - floats!

 
The dark drops quickly now, a silvery
wrinkle of late-summer crickets (curtain
of homely sound).  Soon my labyrinthine
morris dancer will emerge (memory

 
a buried well).  Fleet companion,
lightfoot arborist... whose brook
slips past a forest door - dark book
of frittery wings (dried myrmidons).

Fontegaia ripples along...

22

 
Another year leans down toward autumn.
Steadfast whine of Palio gone quiet now.
Stubborn yarn of hilltop-town (plow
upending vineyard-wake) only the hum

 
of absent hornets over a fallow stream.
Race of a twining J, milled (purling,
providential) through my veins.  Preening
yearlings, tender feet in a mural scheme -

 
young scouts in alder labyrinth -
gnarled sign of constancy in suffering
(St. Kate, cartwheeling). 
Siena gathers toward a last July.  Absinthe

 
wormwood, rain; pale horses
neighing nigh, near splintered
almond tree (blooming anachronism).
My muttering (tracing their courses).

Fontegaia trickles in...

21

 
Inching onset of autumn.  Occasional
drifting-down of dogwood leaf.  A surf
of mock-orange, over the fading fence -
fragrant galaxy, vagrant, precessional.

 
A reader of teasing leaves predicts a fall
(perusing a book, pausing in backward
yard)... somewhere homeward
(angled in wayward words).  Furled

 
are the ferns in the brazen furnace
Danny burnt with his Boy Scout wood-
engraving kit, his rod of iron.  You bent
the future (reader dear) with tenderness.

On my lunch break, trying to read article about Siena buildings, actually thinking haphazardly about post of earlier this morning, about my life's "silliness", thinking all writers are silly, their work is hidden from sight, their lives - their real life - goes into their writing-work... which reminded me of my grandfather, the engineer, whose life was hidden in building projects in the midwest almost 100 years ago... thinking of writers as engineers, then chanced to read in the Siena book that the top of the famous Mangia tower in the Campo was designed by Lippo Memmi... which was a nice little thing for me to find, since it revealed some continuity in my work, by way of this poem, written long before the current "Siena" project (Fontegaia)... now I realize that Lippo Memmi's model for his icon of the Magdalen (in the RISD museum down the hill) was probably Sienese...

Fontegaia rambles on.

20

 
On a straw-strewn Campo ring, beneath
the inching shadow of a clocktower,
horses and horsemen display their power -
hearts hoofpounding for a laurel wreath.

 
A snoozing hobo in the clocktower
rotating away from the hubbub below
forges a dream-rim out of molten snow.
Its iron heart will win the race this hour.

Hopalong Cassidy keeps hoppin' along in Fontegaia...

19

 
August now, the month of Palio.
The U-turn of those tender feet
quattropasso in Siena street -
echo of an old paint's hollow

 
thundering.  Imago of Everytown,
a rooster crest's unquenchable desire -
your nippled ring a roaring hemisphere,
rage welded into ceremony (such loco

 
renown).  Motionless in motion, this
parade of silks and garlands round
an altar green with laurel... Greyhound
Pastor!  Ex cathedra Pegasus!  Thus

 
Siena signs her crepuscule of history
and wills it bent (as testament)
into a duplex wreath : nine sent
skittering on horizontal - only

 
a rust-encrusted tenth (last call)
sounds (contrapuntal) from the tall
bell-tower.  Armillary, spherical...
a gyroscope.  Reverberant sundial.

 
And all we know is this double-ply
of blazoned passio, importunate light.
Bands of limestoned spectators
in the Campo (goddesses, mortal) sigh

 
as one toward yon singular suspense,
forevermore.  Deep in their scalloped
bosom of clay, rocked in a tempest
in Arcady - smiling Augustan-Etruscans.

today's Fontegaia.

17

 
Palio-town spins like a gyroscope,
driven by heaving horses, meager men
against the gravity of time.  Now
is then.  Eden in a shady envelope,

 
or den of thieves.  A word on the lips
of a blind old oracle, pithy, mythy -
like the ragged shrouds or shifty
rags of earth's first refugees.  Lips

 
Monastery?  Vagabonds from Ararat,
maybe.  Shards of a hoary quarrel's
quibble over terms.  Through a needle's
eye - who's first?  Not this, not that...

 
And the race is not to the swift
whispers the epileptic hierophant
begging by the Golden Gate (can't
get there from here).  Lift?

 
Lift yourself.  She sees the wheels
a-wheeling over sodden Voronezh
like ravens - voron-voron-neverish...
and whispers around them (feels

 
her way).  Or flickery knives,
or tongues of silver-serpentine,
a rusty green gone phosphorescent -
like a river underneath the sky, or

 
beehives on the prairie.  Between
the start and finish line (or Man
and Word) they hover there - thin
fleet of arcs - a goldfinch sun.

slowly stumbling along (clip-clop) with Fontegaia...

16

 
Take me up in your silver wheel then,
morning spider - spectral spokes
held weightless there.  Olde bokes
by elder blokes stutter again again

 
as a gay lil' E and a wee lil' J
swirl mudpie-full of sayings-together
- where Seahorse rides the nether-
waves, a Tilt-a-Whirl or rim o'clay

 
(evening in Voronezh, or Petroglad).
An archaeology of mumblings
from farmbelt district (rumbling
groundlings?) - Homer's nod

 
to drafty sheets - shifty pliers
of the silky seas, a-moving,
moving (wheezy Dream o'Dreamy
wheels).  A roving tattoo clears

 
the air.  Earned in July at the early
Palio, it shapes a square of lucky
turns, a green cat's-eye quaternio :
some hobo's charm of purly

 
gold (rushy reed in windy arc)
or some Francisco's pencil-sketch
of Lady Poverty (O lazy wretch!).
The wind blows where it will - mark

 
how it wheels, look how it meets you,
J-J - way back in the rowboat stall
behind fleet contenders, pal -
a donkey in cobwebs (glue, horseshoe).

More dangerous burbling from Henry World (Fontegaia) :

14

 
At the root of the furious horserace in Siena
beneath the rivalry and vanity of the riders
lurks a phantom river (long-desired) -
clear civic fountain (figure of Diana).

 
Longing for water, water of long
memory - when the painted wood
of the account books of the Nine
wed justice and proportion (prong

 
of mercurial fire the silver starting
line, the finish line).  The Sienese
were happy children - olive tree
shoots of equity (Time, departing,

 
grows crystalline) - and the phantom
spring, trembling on lips (the word
begins in J and ends in ice)... guardian
angels ward us from that infant kingdom

 
(leafy, lofty).  Too simple to express.
A Virgin Mary in a catamaran
hoisted over the Campo is the sign
of our homesickness here - where the race

 
is won by one slow-witted yearning boy.
He cries, your moon-face is the lowest,
nearest star in my poor sky, dearest -
unforgettable horse chestnut tree...

 
Immovable on the steep slope of the Terrace
in the shadow of the founder's finding arm
the shape of my desire takes form : swift
limbs that waver in their signal place.

 
15

 
Sweet star that wavers in its signal place
on the brow of the hill of everlasting Providence
with your trains of candles - flowery iridescence
bowed like pilgrims on a mountainside.  A race

 
won by the meandering mule.  You led me here
with a low sound, equable and everywhere -
a wave-vibration, b-flat, basso profondo (Air
for Water Sprites Y-Cleft through Fire).

 
It semaphores through squares of Martian
saucer-shapes (some Greek discussion
with an Arab sheik, sans percussion -
syncopated Sanskrit, maybe) - quaternion

 
of green and lucky plans, a seedling nation
in a merry spiral (cartoon) carton flipped
o'er the Rhody gam, where Rachel shipped
him Ishmael - blasted son of all creation!

 
7 x 7 is the square of your returning
whorl.  Out of one equal sign (Saena Julia)
comes a reunion with yourself (my ME) -
the lovely ring tin tin of faithful perning

 
gyroscopes (Antikythera kissers) - gaiety's
font of fatherly, cardinal car-alarms.
His hand floats like a levitating snake-
charmer's fire-breathing peripeteia

 
over the emblematic city - casual sign
of heartfelt causality - your father's
father's father's little tree.  Crusaders,
martyrs... pioneers, pilgrims... everyone.

                                         
                                     7. 07. 07

Fontegaia lucky 13...

13

 
The old pilot in New Orleans told me
while we mopped up after monster K
each town declines from its first day
the way a spring becomes the Mississippi.

 
Every city has its ideal model
hidden in the plan of God (he was
an old-school evangelical); the mazy
stream swirls back to its original

 
source.  The Sienese collective dream
pivots in mid-August (a virginal
Mary-go-round, with actual
horses and real money).  Paradigm

 
of local Paradise : salvation history
rooted in medieval circular (1260
their Route 66).  On a pinwheel, Gertie.
Merrily we roll along, merrily merrily...

 
But you fled from me
faster than I could ever run
(at the end of August, 2001).
Vanished (gone maiden, horse-

 
chestnut tree).  I stumble after you
slower than the famous Colt
44 (slowest draw in the West);
crawling round a fleeting (nowhere)

 
laurel, beside a crystal (balled-
up) creek.  In the shade of shady
perennials, dangling buildings, where
we hung up our rusty lyres (Ja-el).

OK, lemme "unpack", as they say, just one obscure sentence from previous (in the context of earlier post this week, about the general aims & analogies of this Fontegaia poem).

...A sissy on a singing ass will win
Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn

 
cast-off of your unbound 
feat, mis-spoken jockey (nailed
in the Campo every time).

The "sissy on a singing ass" fuses together : the loser-poet, St. Francis of Assisi, the "slow horse" (the donkey, Jesus's "colt" which carries him into Jerusalem as "King") of poetry (Pegasus), etc.

"Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn" : the "palio" was the small cloth or prize or "pallium" given to the winner of the Palio race in Siena - the cloth linked with the Virgin (patron of city of Siena), & through her to "Veronica's napkin", the cloth which supposedly showed an image of Christ's face.

"cast-off of your unbound/feat, mis-spoken jockey" : generally thinking of the difference between the "real" Jesus and the various cultural/religious shapings, (mis)appropriations & distortions - throughout the long, tangled history of Jewish-Christian dialogue & dispute - of his "image" (much like current iconic celebrity-simulacra).

"nailed/ in the Campo every time" : the Palio race is, for the jockeys, a risky proposition in several ways - not least the risk getting beaten up by angry partisans of one horse or another. Also Jesus (the "nailed"/"feat" - the losing horse).

- this is, of course, just one sentence - there are other things going on here (echoes of Hart Crane etc.), & more (& different) things in the other stanzas....

*

p.s. you don't need to know all this stuff, carry all this baggage, to "get" the poem (or maybe you do). Often I don't "know" it myself very clearly. I relax into the poem, following certain parameters (like an algorithm). Like the bit about the "shadow faster than light". Came along when I happened to remember a NY Times op-ed piece from last week by Margaret Wertheim : shadows (because they are literally no-thing) actually can travel faster than the speed of light. The experiment (or thought-experiment?) she discussed had to do with a very powerful light beam circling on its axis in space. At a very great distance (on the perimeter of the light's "orbit") the shadow cast would travel faster - cover more distance - than the light itself.

more Fontegaia...

12

 
Your shade shapes my circumference
faster than light.  Horse, chariot fused
in one Black Sea brow.  Hydroplane Muse,
hippopotamus from Ethiopia... my nonsense

 
rim.  Spiral mote in the eye
of Hurricane Harry - gold glint
or old lint? - your transparent
dust-parenthesis mesmerized me

 
like the ME scrawled upside down
in undatable Greek along a curve
of vernal copper (Antikythera
treasure trove, kosmos in an

 
ancient ice-cream cone).  We were there
on the Green Mountain, boys - sprung
cruising a dulcet Sienese ring
beyond the river of time (spry

 
ninefold harmony).  The circle wheels
back forwards (like the last crab
in July) for Assisi Frank, Calabrian
Joe - upon an alphabet of eagles'

 
wings, or Justice in a tight-wound
J.  A sissy on a singing ass will win
Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn
cast-off of your unbound

 
feat, mis-spoken jockey (nailed
in the Campo every time).
Old sack of sheep's bones, Abram's
folly - U (hoarse whisper, wavy wand).

Mumbled something here a few days ago contrasting present-day concept of form/beauty with that of Moderns 100 yrs ago - Joyce's autotelic "quiddity" vs. today's "intelligibility". The excerpt from Fontegaia I posted yesterday might suggest I'm not practicing what I preach... what the heck is this strange obscure garbled stuff? Especially if you haven't been following the whole loopy string-along poem...

Anyway, it's a work-in-progress, & there are limits to what I can clarify about it, but... It's from the 2nd section of Fontegaia, which has been focusing on the distinctive Sienese horserace called the Palio. What I've been doing is using features of the race & of Siena/Sienese history in general as a foundation, & also as a jumping-off place (metaphors for other things).

Gradually I'm working toward some structural parallels or analogies between :

- Palio/Siena
- poets & poetry (as horserace)
- history/eschatology (the concept of the "end of time" - Apocalypse, 4 Horsemen of, etc.)

Siena links (in my mind) with eschatology by way of Joachim of Fiore, St. Francis & franciscanism. The Palio race itself is, for the Sienese, a way of sort of "stopping time" - it celebrates & mythologizes the "original" independent city-state & its founding victory over Florence at the battle of Montaperti in 1260. 1260 or thereabouts was also supposed to be an apocalyptic date in Joachim's & Joachimite messianic thinking.

In my private symbolism here in this & other sections of the poem, the contemplative/unworldly loser-poet (kind of an image of poets in America generally) is identified with the visionary saint/hobo (Francis), who paradoxically wins the race by losing it - wins it riding his slow donkey (Francis called his own body - affectionately - his "ass", bearing burdens). Contemplative vision & spiritual poverty are "slow" in relation to the quick foxy worldly utilitarian thinking which surrounds the poet on all sides. & the confrontation between these two mighty forces (worldly & spiritual) has its analogy in the Book of Revelation & the Apocalypse itself - the end of time.

"Ramirez" (in the section posted previously & others) refers to the "outsider" Mexican artist Martin Ramirez, whose paintings of railroads & immured horsemen etc. I'm using as another sort of link in the nexus Francis/hobo/San Francisco/Siena/horsemen/Apocalypse. (As noted in an earlier post, Ramirez, who was famously mute most of the time, sent a message through his family to the wife he had left behind in Mexico - "I'll see you again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat", ie. at the apocalyptic Last Judgement & resurrection of the dead.)

For "Ezekiel" - cf. the Louis Armstrong version of that song (alluded to by Eugenio Montale in his poem "Ezekiel Saw the Wheels". Montale also wrote a poem titled "Palio").

The last line - "Father! the chariots..." - an excerpt (revision?) of prophet Elisha's cry as his mentor Elijah is taken up bodily to heaven in a fiery chariot - "the chariots of Israel and his horsemen!"

There - all clear now?

Fontegaia burbles on. I wonder who understands this.

9

 
Proud Guidoriccio (upon his stallion
clad in rich honey-gold and black) still rides
over the blank space of an absent mappamondo.
Year after year, mesmerized horsemen

 
replay the triumph of their city-state.
Res publica del popolo - an April quattrocento
renascence - young lovely Sienese (memento
mori) twirling the ridda hand-in-hand, sweet

 
and sedate... (O Primavera).  Plague
brought down the curtain on them all.
Only a somber scolding wraith (dismal
Baptist with bare talon-toes) raged

 
through the chastened aftermath.
The merchants (in their wills) heaped
ashes on their brows.  The Reaper reaped.
Wheedling warlords waded in (bloodbath).

 
Yet... neither libertine nor puritan, bells
drone on.  Sound like an iron whisper
flows in waves across the sleepy air.
An equilibrium (Diana, Dionysius).

 
Like the slowest horse in the race - Ramirez
hobo-caballero, con crayon - swaying
King Bumblebee, atop dawdling (braying)
donkey (or sleepy waiter Biff - sez

 
the magic circus-word is : hippopotamus)
riding an iron horse through his peculiar
tunnel of love (Chet's trumpet, silver).
And the iron rose through disaster (us)

 
and the rust of river-water - through
august Augustus, Augustine's hip hippo, all
wolverine Rome, cavernous Constantinople -
til it roosted in a glinting horseshoe

 
buried in speechless soil (black earth
of curious Rus).  Like the copper penny
of a saturnine pilgrim - unearthed now,
uncanny.  So the Campenone berthed.