February, face-to-face

VERTIGO-CURL

It was a night of misty melting;

Hobo, the boho, sawed

through his dark glass so

in old St. Paul.  Janus was hinging

everything on sister Sue’s nag,

at the racecourse (Mordish

Hippodrome) – his wish-

ful thinking left him holding the bag.

The sky mottled gray, like a blurred

chessboard of dirty snow.

An alleged RI rainbow

filtered through Amina’s pocket (mirrored

Pocahontas), while a Balkanized

cannibalism consumed

the demos, knocking Sue

Mixam to the maximum (paralyzed).

Irma admired the Emir’s muscle

from her stolen distance.

In that mossy manse

with her ear to the hearth, the hustle

all over the earth seemed a triangle

built by Souperior Deo

for a bonfire canoe

– his own, by Odin’s kayak!  & to bungle

it was Man’s bad gamble.  Sal

Miniato & Silo

Paennim could tell you

as much – ‘twas comet Groundhog’s tail

                        *

after all.  So they went eel-gathering

all over Galilee for that

matter of Bretagne, mate –

the official King, along with his blathering

& corny Maid Minniver, his lovey-

dovey yaw-way L-vessel.

She would sail through hell

for old Ossifer Osiris – hand-in-glovey

with him, all the way!  Ecstatic Itasca

purled in the tiny whorl

of her Vertigo-curl,

like a Topsfield spanner in Alaska!

She was very moving, that sheepish yak

shellacked in the clay.  Like

an emerald in the smallest tyke

of a state, of all states – the Union, Jack!

She dwelt in the heart-hearth of Odd Eddy,

looming through mystic slips

like Evangeline E. Nilegnave (skips

across rocks down Jeannie’s Mississippi);

like a raven over Neva, like Anna

acting the dove in our eye

– is you serious, Rus?  Why

risk ice for Osissyshipiris?  In Louisiana?

Hobo says, I see our sis Lady Liberty

surge like Old Ironsides

through the fog, on this Ides

of July.  Let’s go find her, Henry.

02.02.2020

signum of yearning

DOOM-BELL

The simple poem sets its seal on the day

(signum of yearning, lack

& bronze heartbreak).

It doesn’t create, but confirms, I say –

tacit equipoise of universe,

with roaring hearth

mirroring each heart

in Milky Way (our fiery nurse).

& of that translucent softest koinonia

the poem’s just a line.

Graven tattoo or riverine

El (whorled conscience of Columbia).

So when the Rabbi hums a restoration of all things

we understand what he means

& feel it in our bones –

sunlight in the kitchen supersedes all kings.

Liberty-tyranny-liberty; light-dark-light...

your Florentine chessboard

migrates its word-hoard

to Skye, & beyond (stern Ocean slate).

Your buoy rides the moiling salt

like a lucky pawn

become kingpin again;

Hamlet swings the doom-bell... halt,

who goes there? – solo Ophelia

hoovers up all Denmark

from her West Branch park,

& Evening Star glows like Astraea.

12.9.19

perhaps we are Hagia Sophia

JAPANESE NOTE

Down by Mirror Lakes, in Mendelssohn

Henry collects the silver

trading cards of a younger

self.  Still innocent (the future Hobo-man).

In that Providence springtime,

when we were setting out.

Pure Japanese note

of your own childhood (high chime

of Tokyo folksong).  Your Florentine

round pallor, papery

sheepglow (Butterfly).

Who knew I’d be the priggish Pinkerton

of Rensselaerville epithalamia?

Til that blindfolded boy

waving a Yankee flag (say,

can you see?) – sows stony drama...

Puccini’s on the turntable, at Amiata.

Her spectral Iris-wings

loft LIBERTY (to thee we sing)

unto this microcosm of liublyu stigmata.

Yet, perhaps... we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes.

The crucifixion of surprise

curves down, humbled with apatheia

– still time, still time, to turn

from the spent spirit

to that glad esprit

reflecting oui (edging Ravenna urn).

11.18.19

disenchantment of the sacred wood

 SECOND CHILDHOOD

This is that ancient harvest night.

Hobo curls deep into his nest

of old leaves, with his ghost

of a motherland... everything all right.

The Middle Ages were a second childhood

for homesick gentlemen, broken

by the gears of modern men –

the disenchantment of the sacred wood.

That light-filled limestone in the towns

offered to Mary Theotokos...

or the tart fervor of François

Villon!  Guild banners, pennants, clergy gowns

blazed with a commonality belied

by profiles of sad Synagoga,

goad for theological amnesia.

Her crown askew, her flock must hide.

Mum Quaker Hobo snores now

in a pile of aspen leaves.

Canada poplar sheaves,

he mumbles, to a sunflower (somehow).

She’s Pando in Italian, he dreams.

Largest clone colony

below the surface... maybe

the universe.  A raven-glance beams

at prow of her canoe, slips by.

Your motherland is endless,

someone whispers.  So this mass

of dead leaves limns one breathing aye.

                                                            10.31.19

implicate my speech

IRMA’S FLING

Sly Raven implicates my speech

with folded shade.  A bright

dove spangles dew-light

drifting the stream.  On the beach

by Mississippi, one yellow-black ensign

of cottonwood, one limestone

arrowhead.  An unknown

bird hums wings into a grey spine-

feather matrix – hovers droning

like yellow gyroscope

(totem for sun).  Hope

is the thing... the Word spins honing

like a drill toward a red diamond,

flaking hieroglyphs

& copper cypress skiffs

for one crossroad encounter (bond

of your voice, speaking soft to me,

from vise of mine).  Zone

of Mendelssohn tombstone –

of flint, cracked open for humanity –

to pour through like sprung torrent

& never cease flowing,

as when a raven crowing

from an empty cave (craven, abhorrent)

signals a seed flung by a planet’s wing –

smiles through the sea-gate

like Peacock Angel – fate

spannered by a checkmate (Irma’s Fling).

8.2.16

I recommend Irma Brandeis' superb (& brief) study of the Divine Comedy, titled Ladder of Vision. See her treatment of the "Farinata" episode from Inferno, for light on Dante's presentation of partisan factionalism and its moral effects.

Brandeis, in persona, was the model for the "Clizia" figure in Montale's "dantesque" poetry (30 years before her study was published). Montale achieved, for the Italian language, the "classic" as I've been trying to describe it.