Mussolini shoals

MARBLE FACT

Long way from stones of Notre Dame.

We haven’t that feudal allegiance

to a field beyond France.

Bright poppies blister over Belgium

where conundrum of Isis in Iowa

came from.  She is, and was

mysterium of Osiris

on the Mississip – Ezra’s mirror-delta;

hard marble fact planted at West Branch

in Herbert Hoover’s memory

(who would not have taken kindly

to any meat-locker Muss avalanche).

Ezra yodeling the alpine Swiss serene

of his muse Circe Clementine

Vichy (& all the swine

she mesmerized, so spotless clean)

erasing all that history of filthy usury

& black boys handing Bibles

through the bars... Abel’s

your bro, Ez – cain’t you see?

Ah... the shudder of absurdity.

Knife-stab in Marlowe’s eye

– over the Jew of Malta,

of all things!  It cannot be.

It is.  Villon grins in your face,

King Flibberty-Gibbet.

Grimace may be safety net

for every reprobate.  O prodigal race...

5.4.19

 

only a sketch : Jozef Czapski

JOZEF CZAPSKI

Only a sketch, a drawing, a cartoon.

Scrawny shivering prisoner

reading a book (Siberia).

This upright Pole, from a dead platoon

survived, somehow (so tall, so

innocent).  Budding artist

from Paris, now of Tashkent –

following Proust into gulag, ghetto.

Somehow.  Like mast on frigate.

Colors mime sky...

Poland, we must die.

Yet he shows up (seraph, implicate).

Survives.  Grows old in Paris,

having kept his conscience

into Moscow (blessed

nonsense... bunks his paradise).

Grace is the sign of something human,

intelligence the trace

of civilization, Falcon-Ace

(O hoary Horus of the hunted men).

Isis (in West Branch) is your mother,

Belgium’s deep divide

the humdrum Hoover prelude

to a splenetic Grant Wood war –

Virgo, we know not who we are.

Speak of the grain of wheat,

Persephone.  Complete

your D.C. scan (Henry’s North Star).

3.3.19

from Jozef Czapski, Inhuman Land : Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941-1942 (NYRB, 2018)

stone for bread, bread for stone

ANCIENT DATE

The soupy heat slouches toward

July.  Flesh sags &

drips, we’re breathing und-

erwater.  Jonah’s gone overboard.

A billion fins of fans rotate,

create more heat.  Hobo

lies flat under a willow.

He daydreams of an ancient date

by Highland Water Tower; the whole town

spread before them, just

beyond the graveyard.  Lost

her name somewhere.  Don’t drown

me in false memories, he begs.

Canova’s statue (broken)

of George Washington

writes its own ave over his crossed legs.

Farewell, Columbia.  Guard well

her statue in the harbor.

Beggar not they neighbor.

Muzzle Nero, tripping up from hell.

That shimmering seine, the veil of Isis

shrouds the face of Henry’s

Clover.  Out of bleakness

of the grave, young spring may rise;

beyond the azure of the Golden Gate

one facet of euphoria –

one artophoria

of stone – revives... brings light to fate.

6.29.18

American Gothic

SPRING CLOVER

This light foam of wild spring clover

on a green hummock, like

a burial mound, back

to the river... O my Irish rover.

& only the plain brown smock

on a Quaker wife

(with the quincunx life-

crux) remains – to lead the flock

in a morris dance (slim track

to paradise).  American

Gothic.  Meridian

through cornland, by the clapboard shack

which was Birthplace of Herbert Hoover –

where a Belgian oasis

for inscrutable Isis

echoes the cenotaph to Henry’s Clover

(the other Henry, in another city).

Wind wafts through green

montage like a has-been

Hobo, wheezing dew (for pity).

Hard to make a go of it, under

them glum St. Louee flying

spirit-flings!  Crying’s

no help – you have to be Apollinaire.

The spray, the veil, the rosy foam.

The train, the backward boots.

Minotaur, with his galoots.

Ariadne with her pigeon, humming home.

6.11.18

In the vein of Atlantis

SUNSET GATE

Spring, a project of the Earth.

While she waits for Homo Sapiens

to get over his aggressions –

revert to innocence (a Maypole mirth).

In the beginning... all the begins

of the Beguines... the big

innings.  Whirligig

of river-prairie syncopations...

I went down into the Bottomland,

down to Monk’s Mound.

A Mississippi sound,

a tuning fork of lightning (&

thunder).  I looked into my hand

& felt a gentle eye

look back (speaks Ioway).

Fishnet... veil of mystery... grand

Isis-Life.  Her cryptic tripod

out of Flanders fields

(a Jenna-quivering) yields

Triple-Flem – from Seeker linchpad

over Providence, through keystone

arc, westward... stray

crois (her sunset Gate) –

one orange firetread in the ozone,

warped on muddy waters (surging

to Lousanna).  So

the shield of Buffalo-

Mandan feathers her circlet (corralling).

5.10.16

from Monk's Mound (Cahokia, Illinois)

Statue of Isis (West Branch, Iowa)

Lilacs in West Branch

WOOLLY FLOCK

Soon the lilacs will be blooming

in West Branch, Iowa.

Old John Brown’s hideaway

among earth Quakers (humming

his grave tune, without the guns).

There Harriet’s railroad

tugged through Negus-made

tornado shelters – Grandma’s cousins

too.  I trace an equilibrium

through reams of loveletters

in turquoise blue (scatters

from Scattergood to end of time).

The clay looms closer on those farms.

Isis herself unveils

just past our Hoovervilles –

beckons with Everlasting Arms.

A refuge from the storm, where corn

& flowers grow.  Mild Shaidlock

led a mighty woolly flock

from Ohio to Muscatine, in 1849

(they write); his great-granddaughter Mary

married Jack Ravlin, & thus

they came to Minneapolis...

they rest, remain.  Spring memory.

The silence of unvarnished truth

glances from shepherd eyes.

Proud histories of lies

axed by one pine (standing on earth).

4.20.16

Henry Negus farm (Springdale Township, Iowa, ca. 1900)