hope is the anchor of the soul

DRY THICKET

The salty bread & wine of commonweal

is not a partisan domain;

it came before Abel & Cain,

magnanimous magma of the real.

Like these green palm-prints in a ring

my daughter planted on a square

of Grace’s linen, whirling there

like burning wings of seraphim (wheeling,

wheeling)... the Power of the universe

flames through a hearth-fire

(undermining empire

with compassionate adhesiveness).

I watched this morning as a lone

bald eagle, gliding quickly

in great catenary

arcs (like Guillem de Gellone

or Joachim, the hermit of Fiore)

mimed curvature of bridge

along that autumn ridge

like a daguerrotype from Civil War –

the process signifying Liberty

teeters twin wings

an unknown soldier brings

to bear (O turtledove of solidarity).

The downward angle of the bird

that signifies nekuia

& kenosis (ah,

bright wings!) so anchoring the word

                    *

she flies – & radiates upward (selah)

that Shekinah you heard

wailing in Ramah (sword

rotating every way)... hey ey

yo, Ma!  Your motherland the Earth

is calling you, Hobo.

Only primordial blue

clay, replicating Ocean birth

can shape the high ship of the whole.

Those human ribs, breathing

from Galilee to Sing-Sing

slip the galley through a needle –

bear Arcturus to the North Pole

via waltz of galaxies –

salve memories

of lost sailors, & reconcile them all.

Hope is the anchor of the soul.

Light seed, planted in soil

of churnagogue, still

twirling on your milky way... scroll

out your almond gospel alms,

Melchizedek... your ray

through aquiline papyrus

lens, through Gilead pine-balms.

The clay awaits your bread & wine.

The heart yearns for it,

through dry thicket

retina of Man – your sappy pine.

10.26.17

in a land of Gerrhi

LITTLE BUNDLE

Light cottonwood fluff-motes drift

from high green vaults

along the river, Walt.

Thy hobo-hymn floats like swift

Scythian swallows   over the steppes

Gerrhi   in a land of Gerrhi

gray   milkers of mares

Geloni   like Jonah   swallowed up

& cast-off   by the sea again

like an exiled raven

scouring   the salt-sown

slate   for breadcrumbs, broken

limbs, dry vines   any sign

of home, of motherland

Guillaume would understand

Colossus of roses   tall man

grown meek   bemused upon his own

Bermuda   who bears a little

salt-bundle   close to heart

lifted six ways   a hexagon

grown octagonal   a diamond

have salt among yourselves

& plant   peace shelves

atop green Andes   condor-monde

Thus crooned the shuffling friar

under orange garage door

over grey sea-floor   as

poplars, nigh Gellone   signed, Ephphatha

6.10.16

oh... & Forth of July was finished on 5.28 (2000).

5.28 (as again I repeat myself) : the day William Blackstone was buried in Cumberland RI, on Study Hill, 1675. Also St. William's Day (the day Guillem de Gellone - crusader turned monk made saint - died).

5.29 : The day Study Hill was burned to the ground by a Narragansett raiding party (all W. Blackstone's books & notebooks vanished). My birthday. RI Statehood Day.

On 5.28 ('35?) the Golden Gate Bridge opened for traffic.

from toward the very end of Forth of July. The "W" that Bluejay & Henry's wanderings etched on the Providence East Side ridge, took some odd turns.

 6
   
            The scene, refreshed, reroused, was never to be forgotten,
            the hen and crusader ever intermutuomergent...      
                                        – Finnegans Wake
  
  
 A cask of negus went barreling down the rhode
 whorled in a victory-fin into the foretimes
 buried in the midnight garden   one St. William's
 Day   where he rose (our W) and rows and rowed

  
 his henpicked galley   through gales of galloping
 gallic ages   alone, Gellone   (with 28 oarsmen
 and a red coxcomb   for a bully steersman)
 it was a barging line or ink-can sunship

  
 filled to the midnight brim with Orange   or
 honeyed yellow sweetings for the Bethel brew
 it was a skeevy chicken key V shield anew
 down the rustling river toward   a dey of fire

  
 on Study Hill   or in Byzantium   an axe
 set to the roots   of Oak Tree Day
 Newport summons   wedding for old El Rey
 old Johnny Atahualpa Hamlet's   summery X

  
 the omelet ovum all at last   of everywombin' man
 incalculate and calculate   with little pebbles
 small gray veterans from Black Sea pledge
 unto out of   the Son of Man   (here back to then)

  
 and like a hand-sprung iron spring   by
 golly Moses there it goes   an able nef
 into the winestained cupola's deep
 arrak barrel   diving for the ring

  
 of south-north stars' lamb-lamp
 beeW your myrrh, my Magdalen
 gleams in those double-emerald
 ships (aye-aye me dewfall-camp)

       
                             5.25.2000

Link between Ariosto & ancient chansons de geste. Cinque Canti ends with disaster for Charlemagne. Echoes that ur-chanson, the Chanson de Roland (many of Ariosto's characters - in both Cinque Canti & Orlando Furioso - are drawn from the geste-legends around Charlemagne).

Mandelstam, in Voronezh, was reading Old French epics about Guillaume d'Orange (ie. Guillem de Gellone), one of Charlemagne's officers.

What does all this have to do with anything?

Good question. I dunno.

The atmosphere in some of these poems is one of anxiety & dread. One of their pervasive themes is the conflict (& the interrelations) between Islam & Christendom. Very old things & very new things - & old threads taken up from poet to poet.

Plus reading this kind of thing helps me avoid my contemporaries & the youngsters.

[Plus - & I'm sorry to repeat myself - I can trace my ancestry through my maternal grandmother's family back to Guillem de Gellone.]

[I've removed a rather bilious late-night post from yesterday.]

Today is the saint's day of Guillem de Gellone, who began appearing somewhat to my own surprise toward the end of the longy-long poem Forth of July. He pops up in some of the shorter poems too lately.

He was a military officer under Charlemagne, who later took holy orders and founded a monastic community in southern France, on the coast near Narbonne (Gellone). His real &/or legendary exploits in Charlemagne's Spanish campaigns turn up in several of the early chansons de geste. I like to think that he's an (extremely distant) ancestor (which was traced through my maternal grandmother's family by a genealogist on the web).

This is also the anniversary of William Blackstone's burial at his Study Hill, in Cumberland.

Tomorrow's the 551st anniversary of the fall of Constantinople (1453). I'm going down to NYC to see the Byzantium show at the Met tomorrow, for my 52nd birthday (5/29).

ST. GUILLEM'S DREAM

 
 
 
The City under siege
the Sultan bearing down
two mighty armies rage
around the sacred town.

 
Our walls are under-manned
the hard-pressed Captain cries
without some helping hand
tonight the Empire dies...
 
O Lord, let it be me!
the sleeping hermit said
as (rousing fitfully) he
gripped his wooden bed.

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.

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).

Reading The Tale of the 1002nd Night, by Joseph Roth.

And some interesting studies on Nicolaus Cusanus.

Working on Dove Street, the poem. Idea of the epic which ends in state of contemplation. Conjunction of date of Wm. Blackstone's burial & Guillem de Gellone's saint's day (5/28). Gellone & Cloisters Museum in the Bronx. Cloister & metropolis. Thought & action. Soldier & monk. Narratives of epic quest (ie. Odysseus, Orpheus) as subplots of, or figures for, a more fundamental redemptive plot (Everyman "hooked" out of mortality into "kingdom of God"). The dove that floats upon two wings (reason & love). (Emblem for poetry, too).

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

Curious affinities. I've never felt particularly affined with William Carlos Williams, but his long poem Paterson is echoed in my longy one in a couple places... first of all in his focus on Bruegel, & in particular the nativity painting (Adoration of the Kings), secondly in his poem's concluding focus on the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters Museum, in NY: I discovered in NY this weekend that one of the garden courts at the Cloisters is filled with statuary from Guillem-le-Desert, a remote monastery near Narbonne, in southern France. This monastery was founded by knight-turned-monk-become-saint Guillem de Gellone, or Guillem d'Orange, a hero in the cycle of early French chansons de geste, and one of my remote ancestors (one of Charlemagne's relatives and lieutenants, he is considered by at least one historian to be a descendant of Jews from Baghdad). Guillem figures strongly at the close of Forth of July; his saint's day coincides with the burial in RI of William Blackstone (5/28), the date on which the poem was finished.

Someday when I get my head together I will write an essay about the tradition of the long poem beginning with Whitman in relation to the notion of continuum, going back to the endless ring-structure of the Homeric cycles. Continuum and closure as two symbiotic principles, representing the traditional joining of "heaven & earth" or time & eternity, in the continuous Now of the poem. The unity of these two principles which the long poem, or Whitman's continuous single life-poem, represents.

Somebody wrote a book on this, I just remembered. Lucifer's Heel, or some such thing. Help, American Peeps! Milton was a favorite of the Founders. I wrote about that in In RI, of which a section appeared oncet upon a time in Apex of the M, & which a friend is translating into Scottish or Italian as we "talk". But I am n't a-goin' t'talk about m'self!! Except to add that the Long Poem which began with Stubborn Grew was completed on 5/28, the day that Wm. Blackstone, the first Euro alien in RI, was buried (after his library was burnt down), the saint's day of Guillem de Gellone, of chansons de geste fame, & the day before my birth, which is RI Statehood Day. I merely bring this up because We was talkin' previuddly about Good Friday & ghosts & their connection with Stubbornness.

Today is saint's day of Guillem de Gellone. One of Charlemagne's lieutenants, fought in Spain; memorialized in French chansons de geste. Entered religious order, founded monastery & school at Gellone, in southern France. According to some historians, descended from Jewish nobility from Baghdad who migrated to Narbonne. A distant relative, I think, I like to think.

William Blackstone was buried on Study Hill, Cumberland, RI on this date in 1675. The next day his property was burnt to the ground by a band of King Philip's men.

- "Talking of corpses," - the Consul poured himself another whiskey and was signing a chit book with a somewhat steadier hand while Yvonne sauntered toward the door -"personally I'd like to be buried next to William Blackstone -" He pushed the book back for Fernando, to whom mercifully he had not attempted to introduce her. "The man who went to live among the Indians. You know who he was, of course?" The Consul stood half toward her, doubtfully regarding this new drink he had not picked up.
- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

Malcolm Lowry lived in Vancouver. Yesterday digging through the files I found the first letter (I think) I ever received - a postcard from Vancouver, from my grandmother Ravlin. Colorized photo of twins in papooses. I was 14 months old. Tomorrow I'll be. . . sheesh.