dialect of high & low

CLAY NAVEL

Literature might be political.

The dialect of high & low,

the pyramidical Pharaoh

& Erich Auerbach in Istanbul...

slaves muttering (familial)

athwart the exaltations

of regal Lion-Suns

& River-Moons (extra-terrestrial)

their jocular contra-dance lingo.

Dantean, obsolete

vernacular (obsidian);

mosaic featherweight, grave Galileo.

Everything formed from nothing... out

of a pinhole in the universe.

Clay navel – Osiris hearse

called up by current, cattail flute.

Whorls of tree-rings mantle each mortal eye.

Isis in Iowa,

Blackstone of raven-sigh –

Cautantowwit, under the Milky Way.

The tacit origin.  Your motherland,

O King.  Incipient

restoration, air apparent...

transparent equilibrium (beatitude).

Near the steel vault of St. Louis.

In the seine of the fishermen,

over the Mississippi.  Sign

from tree-logs, Jessie Ophelia... always.

6.23.19

like a lost Osiris

photo by Aaron Siskind (Cuzco)

WAVY LIPS

On the coldest night in a generation

on a bridge in Minneapolis

one delicate snowflake melts

into her crevices of Inca stone.

Berryman, like a lost Osiris

wavers on the railing...

& maidens will be wailing

in Ramah, because she is

no more.  A forgotten Muse

of Memory – figure

of a little almond tree –

stays hidden (somewhere in D.C.).

I gather the limbs of Osiris

whispers Isis (under

her obelisk of wonder

blundering toward Sirius).

She remains behind her veil

out there in West Branch,

like a soft eyelash

encircling the ark of Israel –

like the cow-eyed prow of Argo

or sea-tossed glance

of Magdalen-experience;

the wavy lips of the vessel flow

into a primavera Ocean State...

your dream-song Jonah

breathing – hallelujah! –

from polar ice to coracle checkmate.

1.27.19

I take the zigzag iron

OCEAN CHRONICLE

Once more I take the zigzag iron

steps to the river, messy

with ice floes, shaggy

snow.  Leaning like a blind man

on a walnut cane – elliptical

wobbles part of the scene –

a yellow Mediterranean

hypercube out of Israel

by way of Ravenna, or Voronezh.

Brown Mississippi,

take me on your hippy,

roll me with your palm-cortège

like a Mardi Gras Chief, bowing

Guillem’s trompette marine

– don’t bow to none

but God & Queen Marie (wheeling

like a rose kaleidoscope, sheer

levitating waterfall).

All the birds of the air will

chatter in that live-oak cedar –

rainbows scattering in all directions

like arrows from the sun.

They speak for everyone –

whistling starling-projections

mapped onto a merry time-

space Ocean chronicle

the Lady will unshackle –

Shekinah, or Magdalen... L’Chaim!

12.9.16

Chess problem

REED MAT

Husks of cicadas, limestone shells.

These layers, a palimpsest

of leopard skins (East/

West).  Serpentine spells

(Alph to Yezidi).  In graven

hieroglyphs of human

dream – Solomon

& Shulamith (Ferrarese garden

bond).  A Mendelssohn mandala-

afterlife, of local

equilibria... after all

the Pharaohs have their sway (selah).

Battle of shade & pictograph

resolved by wind.  Cool

breeze, troubling pool

of sunken barge (regal riff-raff).

Vernacular archaic culture

architecture – simple

transmission of ample

gratitude for being.  Pressure

on the king (of everything).

Grey humming bird

omen signals absurd

sacrifice (pawn for nothing)...

his baby steps (Gypsy to Jew)

toward one wooden

nature morte (amen,

amen).  Reed mat, sheik.  Me & you.

1.23.16

Grapes in a landscape

Another topical sketch for Ravenna Diagram, ripped from these headlines :

Israel Aims to Recreate Wine that Jesus and King David Drank

Hope for Nefertiti's Tomb, and Egypt's Economy

ANCIENT AIR

Articulate inchworm, lifting

little arches across

King Tut’s chambers –

shape-shifting hero (glyphic

frogman), testing the submerged

crevasse for Nefertiti.

O Jealous Fertility

Goddess of the Wine-Splurged

Sea!  Accept our offerings –

these cracked amphorae

full of ancient air

& semaphore (dusty grain bins).

Do whatever he tells you, she

directed them; the wine

from prehistoric pine-

nuts will transport us into Galilee.

But you have saved the good wine

until last.  These grapes

are not Israeli types,

nor Palestinian; they shine

in the landscape; this is beautiful.

The purple embroidery

around your lips, my

Queen!  The fiery eye of Yule,

the burning hearth of infantile

desire.  A trim Beatrice

flickers through bound hay-

bales (kayak, limping up the Nile).

12.2.15

I lost my choo-choo of thought, because the computer died on me.

The constellation of "American Renaissance" poets, with Melville the new moon underneath.

Moon & Israel & the sea.

What meaneth "Israel", in this context? Yahweh & David. Which is the Trickster in context of Mesopotamia. Jacob & the stolen blessing. Solomon & Shulamit. Song of Songs.

What meaneth "the sea"? Olson wrote about this.

What meaneth "the Moon"? Good night, Moon. Good night, Coatlicue. Buenos noches, Mexico.

But back to the MN question. Back to purrty purrtry. Melville (etym. honey-city). Bees symbolic (& empiric) of Israel; he went there, writing long poem of title which I ferget.

At the center of Moby Dick, at the center of the mast of the Pequod (anybody following the "smoke shop" issue in Narragansett-land?), is nailed a gold doubloon struck in Quito, Ecuador : a symbol of chance and egualidad (have I got that right?).

Jubilee is liberation theology; the Sunday of the earth, the release from debt.

Dante represents poetry's victory over the trobar clus of medieval Romance. The vernacular reaches beyond the death of the Beloved and beyond the poetry of the death of the Beloved (Poe) to the poetry of the infantile love of God, the bambino-babble, the kingdom. A representation grounded in the Eddy-Pussy war between Latin & vernacular.

Dante represents the hope of metaphysical dance music, after the prose of Melville's penetrating dismal frightful intelligence (Herman-Merman-Leonardo : the deeper diver-diviner, the truer mama's boy. Deeper than Dante, maybe).

This is the difference between Melville's disaster & the Moderns'.