In a Scattergood world

PURE SOUND

                              i.m. Robert Treuer

Back East, in Rhode Island, the big snow

coming.  Thinking of William

Blackstone, hermit-pilgrim – the

one who went to live with Miantonomi

& the other red-men.  To the House

of 4 Pines – under

cartouche of Little Bear,

North Star.  Out of Nazi Austria

sped a peregrine, by grace of God

& pity of strange braves

(Scattergood saviors,

anonymous donors... meek just good).

To a tree farm he fostered (in remote

forest).  Led into circle

of silent First People,

tending ashes (sitting shiva).  Little

prow of acacia, rocking near Itasca-

Nile... your upside-down

fire-drill will drown its

candle in stony Minnehaha.

Sigh, winging out into grey sound

(b-flat at midnight).

The musicologist

from Florence mutters back to ground

just so – back to the pigeon-clay

of primordial, steadfast

Bee (until the last

dragon of Sheol fades away).

1.22.16

The Hiawatha

SMOKE-SIGNUM

I carry Sophie through the snow

to the summit of Tower Hill.

She says, It’s magical

(prodigal 2-yr-old). & so

it is.  That conical moss-green

Witch’s Hat crowns

a Yeatsian limestone

keep (prehistoric submarine

barnacled with biomorphic

hieroglyphs).  Isis

the octopus gathers

her segmented sea-worm (limbic

bronze phosphorus monarch child)

in streams of time – before

the 9th planet was born,

or knowledge-tree known (wild

afterthought of smoke-signum).

Chicago Hiawatha

arrowed here, truer

than rue – trained consummation,

like soft carnation in Quaker lapel

(hexagonamatrix).  Rule,

Scattergood Friends School –

your West Branch harbor (charitable

agape) a hostel in a hostile time.

Justice for orphan, widow,

refugee.  Praise be, grey

catenary icon (9-twined lime).

1.20.16

Tower Hill (Prospect Park, Minneapolis)

Finished Suite Francaise. Moving, beautiful, heart-rending. Tremendous. Goes into "metafiction", as at the end you read her journal entries, in which she plans new sections of the novel (fascinating entry into compositional process), & comments with searing clarity, insight, irony, on the situation in France and her own impending doom (she was murdered, as was her husband, in Auschwitz). Astonishing story of this book's survival.

(Interesting to read this after having read H.L. Hymes' Underground City.)